Chapter Fourteen
“Would you like me to park the car and help you in?”
Rook looked out the window at the sound of George’s soft-pitched question, surprised to see they were already in front of her townhouse. She glanced over at Zoey. Her eyes were closed and her head was resting against her shoulder. She hated to bother her, but they couldn’t just sit out in the car. “If you don’t mind getting the front door, I think I can handle the rest.”
She kept an arm around Zoey until they were inside where she eased her onto the couch, the blanket still wrapped around her. Rook smoothed out the blanket and murmured softly to ease her back to rest. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Zoey’s eyes were closed again, and Rook dropped a quick kiss on her forehead before she strode off toward her study.
She should make this call from the office where she knew the phones were secure, but she wasn’t about to leave Zoey alone so she decided to risk it. Julia answered on the first ring.
“What the hell, Rook? I thought one of your signatures was discretion. What did you say to this guy that had him eating his own gun hours later? This isn’t going to stay quiet for long.”
Rook took a deep breath. Julia was right. No matter what steps they took, the human element meant someone was going to talk about what had happened tonight at the Mitchells’ house. The wife, the kids, possibly a neighbor who’d overheard the sound of the shot that tore through Mitchell’s brain. Who would blab wasn’t the issue, but it was only a matter of time before someone burst from the strain of keeping a juicy secret. “You’re right. The story will break soon, so we need to work fast. He didn’t leave a suicide note per se, but he did leave a letter. It’s vague, but loaded with clues, and I’m working on it.”
“Clues? Are you saying this wasn’t really a suicide?”
“Blake says there’s no question he fired the shot.”
“She should know,” Julia said, echoing Rook’s thoughts. Blake had seen enough brutal killings in her capacity as a CIA operative to know how to read a crime scene. “Okay,” Julia said. “So, this guy was on your witness list and he offed himself. Any chance he was depressed about something else? Wife? Girlfriend? Boyfriend?”
“Remember I mentioned the clues?” Rook started at the sound of a loud clatter from the other room and she rushed to get off the line. “I’ve said as much as I can say right now, but there’s more to all of this than we originally thought. I’ll keep you posted.” She hung up before Julia could respond and dashed back toward the living room, but Zoey wasn’t there. She tried the kitchen next after matching the sound of the clatter with the sound of dishes and found Zoey standing by the sink.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quiet and still. “I knocked over a plate when I was trying to get a glass out of the cabinet.” She held up a small blue melamine dish. “Luckily, not breakable.”
Her lopsided smile tore at Rook’s heart and she stepped closer until they were only inches apart. She placed her hand over Zoey’s, eased the dish from her hand, and placed it on the counter. “Why don’t you go sit back down and I’ll get you something to drink?”
“I got it.”
“Seriously. It’s been a crazy long day. Let me help you out.”
“I don’t need your help.”
The strain in her voice belied the words and Rook reached for her arm. “Come on. I got this.”
Zoey jerked away. “I can get my own damn drink.” She started pacing. “And I can make my own decisions about who to call and what to report. I don’t appreciate you managing me. Is it because you hate the Army or is it just me you don’t trust?”
Warning bells sounded in Rook’s brain, and she cast about for ways to deescalate the situation. “I trust you. If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have brought you to Mitchell’s house tonight. For that matter, I wouldn’t have you here in my house.”
Zoey shook her head. “It’s not your call whether I get to go to the house of a fellow service member.” She ticked off her points. “He was on my witness list. I was one of the last people he talked to. He left a note to me. He is my responsibility.”
Rook wished she could turn back time and give Julia a big fat no instead of agreeing to work on this case. What in the hell had she been thinking? She had other clients, from large corporations to well-heeled celebrities and politicians who provided a steady run of work. It could only be hubris that made her cast aside her disdain for the military on an ask from the president. Did she honestly think getting involved with a case from the White House was going to be the pinnacle of her career? All it was going to do was crater her practice and drive a wedge between her and Zoey.
That last realization left her a little stunned. Why did she care about distance between her and Zoey? Zoey epitomized everything she didn’t like about the military from blind allegiance to orders to absolute faith in a system designed to fail from the sheer weight of covering its own tracks. Sure, Zoey had bucked the system a bit and become a whistleblower, but even that had been done through military channels. She wasn’t set up to see the bigger picture or relate to civilians in any way.
“Nothing about this investigation is yours,” Rook said. She heard the growl of frustration in her voice but didn’t care to hide it. “The military is an arm of the government, not the government itself. You don’t get to pick and choose who you investigate and who you don’t.” She stepped closer until they were inches apart. “You say it’s not my call? Well, it’s not your call either.”
“Maybe you should drop this case. Surely you have better things to do like prop up cheating husbands and drunk drivers?”
The words stung. Rook balked at Zoey’s barb, but she couldn’t deny the truth in her words. A large part of what she did seemed frivolous to some. She’d rationalized her work was important because she was there to help people in the midst of crisis when they were most vulnerable, but was her role as a savior diminished if the crisis was of their own doing? If so this case was no different. No one had made Bloomfield’s son risk his father’s future by purchasing the services of a call girl, but she’d shown up to help just the same. If Zoey couldn’t see the similarities between the cases Rook usually handled and this one, then they would never bridge the differences between them.
They stared at each other for what seemed like forever until Zoey broke the silence. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” Her face flushed and she rushed the words. “I shouldn’t have come back here with you.”
Rook filled in the blank she’d left unsaid. They shouldn’t have kissed. She’d brought Zoey back here, partly because they needed to talk about the letter Mitchell had left, and partly because she had been worried about Zoey’s physical state after witnessing the scene at Mitchell’s house, but there was a completely separate part of her that had hoped they might fall back into the easy intimacy they’d shared before Julia called to tell her about Mitchell’s suicide.
She’d been wrong to hope. Zoey’s anger was natural, and it was pretty clear she didn’t need Rook to hold her hand, but they still needed to talk about Mitchell’s letter, to debrief about exactly what Zoey had said to Mitchell yesterday that had prompted him to kill himself and leave his final words for a woman who’d only met him once.
But Rook didn’t want to do any of that. She just wanted to hold Zoey and tell her everything was going to be all right. Not the way she comforted clients in trouble, but like a lover, soothing away the trouble of her partner. But Zoey would never fill that role, and she wasn’t even sure why she wanted her to.
* * *
Zoey fumbled to put the key in the lock and then waved at George as she walked inside her dark and empty house. On the drive over she wondered what he thought of her, spending so much time with his employer and in her personal space. Did he often drive women home from Rook’s townhouse, late in the evening or was she an exception to the rule? Rook had insisted that he drive her home and she’d been too tired to argue. Now that she was here, stepping over boxes, she wished she’d checked into a hotel for the night.
The first thing she did was change clothes. Even though she hadn’t touched Mitchell’s body, she felt as though she reeked from the scene of his demise. She shuddered at the memory of his body on the ground, bits of brain splattered across the floor. Who commits such a gruesome act when they know their family will find them? He’d either been desperate, apathetic, or both.
She walked into the kitchen and rummaged through boxes, looking for a glass and the one nice bottle of whiskey she kept around for special occasions. It didn’t measure up to anything Rook had in her fancy liquor cabinet, but then again she was merely a public servant, not a high-powered fixer paid big bucks to ensure outcomes.
Okay, that was a little unfair. Rook had had opportunities she hadn’t and made choices that had never been available to her. Who was she to say that her life might have taken a very different path if she hadn’t relied on her connection to the service to get her out of Imperial, Texas, and the chains that bound her there.
As if on cue, her phone rang. She pounced on it, but it wasn’t Rook. “Good evening, General Sharp. I was just about to call you,” she lied, projecting assurance into her voice.
“Figured you would’ve called me a helluva lot earlier, Major.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I—”
“I don’t want to hear it tonight. Report to General Bloomfield’s office at oh seven hundred, sharp.”
He clicked off the line before she could respond, and she was both relieved and frustrated at the call. Now she had all night to come up with a reason for not calling him from Mitchell’s house—something besides “Rook Daniels told me not to,” because that would go over like a ton of rocks.
Resigned to a sleepless night, she dug through boxes until she found a juice glass, one of a mismatched set she’d collected over the years, and a bottle of eighteen-year-old Balvenie her last CO had purchased directly from the distillery on a family trip to Scotland. He’d given it to her on the occasion of her promotion to major and she’d rationed it over time. She poured the amber gold into a glass, doubling her usual dose. Was Rook enjoying a similar indulgence right about now, like the one they’d had before their kiss?
The kiss. As she sipped her Scotch, she relived every detail of their touch, from the soft, yet forceful press of Rook’s lips against hers to the way she teased with her tongue. She’d wanted more and had been prepared to ignore the cautionary voice in her head warning against getting involved with Rook, but the call from Julia had waylaid her plans. Considering how the evening wound up, the interruption was a godsend, but in the moment, she’d felt robbed, and now she was missing the connection.
The realization struck her. She’d lived her life with so little real connection to anyone else that the instant pull to Rook surprised her. Yet from the very moment she’d seen her at the airport, Zoey had been drawn to her. Cool, confident, effortlessly charming, Rook had won her from the start.
What had changed? Rook was still the same person who’d thoughtfully arranged a personal tour of the monuments along with a private picnic in a beautiful park. Nothing about that night had seemed designed to impress, only to please. And tonight, even after her burst of anger at finding out Zoey had spoken with Mitchell without telling her, Rook had come around to comfort her after the shock of seeing her name mentioned in Mitchell’s suicide note.
Maybe she was the jerk, not Rook. Maybe her lack of connection wasn’t a factor of time and place, but because she didn’t want to get too involved in the messiness of being a part of other people’s lives. If that was the case, Rook was better off without her. But the real question was, was she better off without Rook?
All signs pointed to no.