I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my kicks and hand chops. “Any quickie suggestions in case that guy comes around again?”
“Yes.” Alex set her wineglass on the coffee table and stood up. “I can teach you every martial arts technique known to man, but in the moment when you’re fighting for your life, my advice is to fight dirty. Bite him, gouge his eyes out, pull his hair, kick him in the groin, stomp on his feet. Scream. Do whatever you have to do to get away. Then run your ass off. You got it?”
“Got it.” I stood up and faced her in the middle of the living room. “Now show me.”
Chapter Eleven
As soon as our last party guests left, I pounced on Derek. I told him everything Alex had said earlier in the kitchen and demanded to know if he had been sizing her up, too.
“That’s one way to put it,” he hedged, as he filled two water glasses for us.
“How else would you put it?”
“I’d put it this way.” He bided his time, pulled a clean dish towel out of the drawer to dry the last of the coffee cups, and put them away. “I had never met her before, and yet you were determined to be friends with her. Given your recent history, I resolved to proceed cautiously. As you know, I ran the background check on her and it came up clean. Interesting, but clean.”
I pulled the barstool out and sat down. “Did you find out that she worked for the CIA?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, giving me the impression that there were other interesting details to be found in Alex’s background check.
But first things first, I thought. “So what was with the Vulcan mind meld happening between you two when I introduced you?”
“There was no mind melding involved,” he said easily. “I simply wanted to take some time and gauge my own first impression of her.”
“And what was your conclusion?”
He turned away from me to hang up the dish towel. “She’ll be a good friend to you.”
“That’s it?”
He looked back at me. “But that’s everything. That’s all I wanted to know. I needed her to answer a critical question and she did.”
“Silently? In one brief instant?”
“Sometimes that’s all it takes.”
I frowned. At times, his sense of British resolve was hard to appreciate. “It shouldn’t be that simple.”
“It is precisely that simple, my love.” He pulled me into his arms and held on to me for a long moment before speaking again. “You weren’t the only one devastated by the betrayal of a person you thought might be a good friend. I watched you suffer and it tore me apart. You’ve an open, generous heart, Brooklyn, and mine broke to see you in so much pain.”
“I’m sorry.” I had my arms wrapped around his waist and I hugged him a little tighter. British stoicism or not, he was wonderful. “Mary Grace fooled us all, but especially me.”
“I’ve had a hard time forgiving myself for that.”
“So have I,” I admitted, “but she turned out to be a psychopath. She was hardwired to lie. It’s like her life depended on it.”
“It did.”
Unwilling to dwell on the bad memory any longer, I said, “Let’s come back to the current situation.”
“All right, love.” He kissed the top of my head. “I like Alex.”
I leaned back to look him in the eye. “You do? Just like that?”
He chuckled. “Yes, just like that. She won’t take advantage of your good nature. She’ll return your friendship in equal measure. And she’ll make us awesome cupcakes.”
I choked on a laugh. “All true.”
“And I’ve elicited her solemn promise,” he said, frowning reflectively, “to kick anyone’s ass who comes around making trouble when I’m not here.”
? ? ?
“We got him,” Inspector Lee announced when I answered the phone early Monday morning.
My heart jumped once, then settled down in my chest. I took in a big, slow breath and let it out. I hadn’t realized how flipped out I’d been, waiting to hear her say those words about Horatio. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “I’d like to swing by in a few minutes and have you look at a few six-packs.”
I was pretty sure she didn’t mean beers. Or, sadly, half-dressed male models with good stomach muscles. “What do you mean by six-packs?”
“Photos of suspects. They’re on cards, six photos on each.”
“Got it. Do you want to come right now?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”