I washed my hair, careful of the lump at the back of my head. It was pretty tender, and there seemed to be a little dried blood around it. I couldn’t remember what hit me, or even if something hit me or if I managed some bonehead move where I hit my head on something. It bothered me, this blank spot in my memory. I was always proud of how good my memory was. I never forgot anything, yet I’d somehow forgotten that I’d witnessed Joe’s death.
Poor Joe. He was a good guy. I’d miss seeing him standing there at the door every night.
I stepped out of the shower and dried myself, realizing I’d forgotten to bring clothes with me so I could dress here. Ash and all his damn cameras. I wrapped my towel tight around me and slipped out of the bathroom, rushing to my dresser to search for something comfortable. I glanced over my shoulder, looking for the camera or some wire or something. But there was nothing obvious.
And then I heard laughter.
I snuck up to the door and pressed my ear against it. Again there was a titter of laughter. Female laughter.
Who the hell did Donovan have here in my house?
I dressed quickly, forgetting about the camera, tugging on a pair of sweats and a light t-shirt. My hair still wet and dripping a little down my back, I slipped out of my bedroom and walked silently down the hall in my bare feet. There were definitely two voices. Donovan’s baritone and a woman’s higher pitched, overly sweet voice.
“There’s that apple stuff that you like so much. I don’t know how you can stand that stuff,” the woman said.
“You should try it. Then you’d understand.”
“If even Ash won’t eat it…”
She laughed and then there was a little squeal, followed by, “Cut it out!”
I turned the corner of the archway that led from the living room to the kitchen and found Donovan towering over a dark-haired girl where she was backed up against the refrigerator. He was holding something in his hand and was trying to force it into her mouth, but her head was turned, and she was laughing so hard that she probably couldn’t have swallowed anything anyway.
She spotted me and the laughter died. That made Donovan glance in my direction. He didn’t seem in a hurry to let the girl go though. He popped whatever he’d been trying to get her to taste into his own mouth and stepped back, his hand connected to her hip for a long moment before it finally fell to his side.
“You must be Kate,” the girl said as she approached me.
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her, warning her to stay back. She took the hint quite well, pausing awkwardly a few feet away.
“Be nice, Kate,” Donovan said, as he watched the scene with slightly hooded eyes.
The girl studied me a long moment, the she turned to Donovan. “If you need anything else,” she said, leaving the statement open ended.
“Thanks, Stormy,” Donovan said, touching her arm as she passed him. She stopped and smiled up at him. I thought for a second that she might reach up and kiss him, but she just caught his hand and squeezed it before glancing back at me. Her lips were slightly parted, as if she had something she wanted to say to me, but then she left without saying anything.
“That your girlfriend?”
Donovan ignored me in favor of unpacking the grocery bags the girl must have brought. He pulled out coffee and juice and fresh fruits and an array of meats. There was enough there for several feasts, the kind of food Donovan and Joshua had always scoffed as teens. They’d rather devour a bag of Doritos than eat the pot roast our housekeeper slow cooked for hours and hours on Sunday afternoons.
“Are you hungry?”
I shrugged, even though I was starving. “You’re not going to answer my question?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I want to know the kind of people you’re going to have coming and going in my house. It is still my house, isn’t it?”
He tossed a couple of potatoes into the sink before stowing the bag in a dark, lower drawer in one of my cabinets before glancing at me.
“It’s still your house.”
“Then who is she?”
“She works for Gray Wolf just like me, just like all the other people I’ll have coming and going out of your house these next few days.”
“Well, excuse my disbelief. But the two of you seemed awfully cozy to just be coworkers.”
“Yes, well, we’re a family at Gray Wolf. With the kind of work we do, you tend to get pretty close.”
He opened a couple of cabinets, clearly searching for something. Then he glanced at me. “Do you have a frying pan?”
I grunted, pushing away from the archway to grab a pan from the drawer under the stove. I held it out to him.
“Don’t tell me you know how to cook.”
“I can fry a steak.”
I pulled the pan back before he could grab it. “I’ll cook. I’d rather not raise my cholesterol because you believe oil is a necessary seasoning.”
He held up his hands and stepped back. “You’re the boss.”
“If I was the boss, you wouldn’t be here.”