“There are three of us, and the ground will be soft,” Matt said.
Diego shook his head and started walking to the car. “I know you,” he told Brett. “The shovels are in the car, right?”
Brett grinned and nodded. “It pays to be prepared.”
*
That night, Brett, Matt and Diego traipsed into Lara’s duplex covered in mud that they’d tried to remove, though without much success.
Matt and Diego took turns showering in the guest bathroom, Diego first, while Brett used the shower in Lara’s bathroom. He’d suggested that he and Diego could go home to clean up, then come back to discuss their day. Lara had been about to insist that was ridiculous, but Meg had beaten her to it, saying that she was anxious to share information and didn’t want to waste time. She’d pointed out that pizza and lasagna were already on the way, and that they could borrow clean clothes from Matt. That had turned out to be unnecessary, since both men kept a change of clothes in the car.
Lara went upstairs to her room to leave a clean towel for Brett. She knocked, and when she didn’t get an answer she went in to leave it on the bed, only to discover that apparently he’d found one on his own.
He was coming out of the bathroom in his jeans, his chest bare, drying his hair. She tried not to stare at that broad expanse of tanned flesh, feeling a rare moment of sympathy for “breast men,” the ones who couldn’t quite raise their gaze to meet a woman’s eyes.
She forced herself to focus on his face, more than a little alarmed by the trembling she felt. She couldn’t help being suddenly plagued by the realization that it had been forever—it didn’t just seem like it, it was—since she’d been in a relationship, even a casual one. She had been so focused on her career that she’d hardly even noticed a man in a sexual way.
And now...
She wasn’t desperate, she assured herself. Brett Cody was damn close to perfect.
“Sorry,” she murmured, feeling herself blush. “I was just...” She held up the towel in his direction.
“Thanks. I’ll be down in a few. It’s been a productive day. We’ve located the grave we believe belongs to Pierre’s brother, Antoine, and we have the paperwork to exhume him tomorrow,” he said. “It will really help Kinny to have a second victim. Makes me wonder how many others might have died. How many experiments there might have been.”
She tried to pull her mind back from the place where it had gone. But he made that impossible as he moved closer to her, smiling and taking the towel.
“I guess I used your towel. My apologies.”
She shook her head, unable to speak. His sleek, still slightly damp chest was mere inches away.
She was in very sad shape, she thought.
“We had an interesting day, too,” she said.
“Oh?”
She backed away. She’d come on to him pretty strong the night before and he had walked away. She had to be careful here, keep herself under control.
“Yeah, I’ll... I should wait and tell everyone all at once. I’d better get back downstairs. I think I heard a call from the gate. Meg’s probably brought in the food, and Diego’s probably done showering, maybe Matt, too...”
She was babbling. She was a media expert. She never babbled.
“See you downstairs,” she finished in a rush.
She stared at him for another few seconds before she actually left. He was towel drying his hair, looking like anything but a tough-as-nails FBI. He looked like a male model.
She turned and hurried down the stairs, almost crashing into Meg and Diego, who were heading to the family room with the food. “I’ll get plates,” she said.
“Got more paper?” Meg asked.
“We’ll use the real ones. I hate paper in my lasagna.”
Brett and Matt appeared simultaneously a few minutes later.
Brett was wearing a T-shirt featuring a band called Bastille. Lara loved the group and imagined he did, too. He had the T-shirt after all. She lowered her head, smiling, wondering what he was like at a concert. When she’d first met him, she would never have imagined that he ever listened to live music.
“About time you got down here. I’m famished,” Diego said when the other men appeared. He looked at Meg and shook his head. “Brett never seems to care about eating, and you know as well as I do that regular meals are a job requirement.”
As soon as they’d all filled their plates, they started talking about the day. The men began by talking about their trip to the historic cemetery.
“So...all that digging and you found nothing,” Meg said, passing the lasagna around for seconds. “I mean, I know you didn’t expect to find Antoine’s body, but I hoped maybe there’d be evidence, a clue of some kind.”
“No, nothing,” Brett said.
“Are you sure you were in the right place? A cemetery like that, in the middle of nowhere, how would Boss Man or anyone else even know it existed?”