AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She raised her glass again and glared at me as I looked up. “To getting to know each other better.”
I grabbed my glass and raised it a tad. “Yeah.” I took a sip. “Now, I have work to do.”
She stayed seated across from me, twisting her glass around.
I went back to my laptop and started the video I’d paused when she came in.
“Okay, but I’m sorry my brother was mean to you.”
Her statement surprised me. Bensons didn’t ever apologize—not in my experience. But then, women would use anything to start a conversation before turning it to the inquisition they really intended.
I didn’t fall for the line. After pausing the video again, I looked up, forced a smile, and nodded. “Forget it.”
Forgetting the incident was something I’d never accomplish, but discussing it and reliving it were two things I always avoided. As if on cue, a pang went through my knee.
“Can we talk about it?”
“No.”
“I’d like to understand.”
She wasn’t getting it. Persistence was not a good quality at the moment.
I took a deep breath. “I said no, and I meant it. I get that he’s your brother and all, but he’s an ass. Just drop it.”
She huffed and stood. “You don’t have to be mean about it.” She walked to the kitchen, and a moment later she was climbing the stairs with her wine glass in one hand and the bottle in the other. Why wasnosuch a hard concept for her to grasp?
Words never helped when a girl got all emotional like this. She was lashing out, and I didn’t have the time, the patience, or anything approaching the right words to resolve anything for her. One tap of the keys, and the video restarted.
* * *
Five hours later,my eyesight was blurring and it was difficult keeping my eyes open at all. Reality TV, bank style, was sleep inducing. I still hadn’t found anything on the inside video of Gaithersburg that looked like our two Unsubs—the limper with the mask or the girl stupid enough to not wear a mask. Since the driver never got out of the car, we had even less to go on related to her.
Realizing we had nothing on the driver brought up an awkward possibility. We’d thought the Fawkes Crew were amateurs based on the gun play, but that could be a misconception. If they’d sent the driver in to case the locations, we’d never spot her on the surveillance videos. That would absolutely move them out of the amateur category.
After making note of where I’d stopped, I shut down and closed the laptop. I made a round of the doors and windows to check that everything was secure before heading upstairs. Two Advils down the hatch with a bit of water, and I was ready for another night on the floor. A stop in the downstairs bathroom to avoid waking Kelly finished everything on the first floor.
I turned off the hall light and waited twenty seconds for my eyes to acclimate to the dark before slipping into her room. With the stupid star dots she had on the ceiling, her room was brighter than the hallway. I pulled my sleeping cushion of a folded-over comforter from under the bed.
Kelly lay on her back, snoring lightly.
It would have been easy to slip in alongside her and spare myself the painful floor experience, and I considered it for a moment longer than I should have.
She looked angelic under the covers in the dim light with her hair spread across the pillow. But looks could be deceiving. As a Benson, she had evil in her genes in a way that couldn’t be undone.
People liked to debate nature versus nurture, but one didn’t have to look far to understand that nature always won. It didn’t matter how lovingly you treated a tiger as a cub, it would always grow up to be a killer. Heredity always prevailed.
We were all slaves to our heritage. More than physical traits were passed from parent to child. In the Benson case, that included evil intentions and a lack of morals. We’d learned that when they’d forced my uncle Jack’s move to New York. Her father might as well have pulled the trigger.
I resisted the temptation to play the fake boyfriend to the hilt and kiss Kelly before I settled onto my hardwood torture bed.
Chapter 14
Kelly
I priedmy eyes open the next morning to the sound of the shower running behind the bathroom door. A fuzzy image of last night’s wine bottle stared back at me from the nightstand. My leathery tongue and mild headache told me what my eyes couldn’t quite make out. It was empty, and I remembered why—my obstinate house guest, or protector, or tormentor, whatever he was.
Adam had slipped in last night without waking me. Probably not a hard feat, given the empty bottle in front of me.
