Page 29 of Shadow Strike
She let out the breath tightening her chest.“Is there anything you’d like to add?”
His head whipped toward her, as if questioning that she was giving him a voice in this.“I want you to know him as a person.The man who cared about family and his neighbors.He’s more than your facts reveal.He taught me to ride my first off-road motorcycle.Gave me my first set of sockets.At the campground, he was the one who showed me how to build a fire, and when I broke my arm, he picked me up and drove me to the ER.He wanted me to go to college.Told me to make something out of myself.”
She didn’t type, didn’t move.“He sounds like a good guy.”
CB ran a hand over his face.“He would have hated what the gang has become,” he said.“He died before my dad started dipping into illegal stuff.I used to think that was the worst part.”He paused.“Now I think it might have been a mercy.”
His eyes were darker in the low bar light, and now they were unguarded in a way she hadn’t seen before.He was sharing his personal family experiences with her.Opening up a vulnerable part of himself that she suspected few had ever seen.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth.She forced it back up.
Too late.He’d seen it.He didn’t look away.
Outside, a car passed on the highway without slowing.The refrigeration unit hummed its low, constant note, and the world beyond this booth felt very far away.
She skimmed his arm with her hand.“Thank you for telling me about him.”
His gaze roamed her face, stopped on her lips.He took a piece of hair that had escaped her bun and rolled it between his fingers and thumb.“I appreciate you giving me the chance.”
She’d been so lonely for so long.Even before her father died and she’d moved home, she hadn’t had any serious relationships.She’d tried a few casual dates, but even with that, she didn’t know how to be casual.Didn’t know how not to try and control it.
Her mother and father had been married for almost thirty-two years before he’d passed.They’d gone to school together and started dating in high school.Her mother always said they had a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love.
Regan had always wanted the same.
Yet here she was feeling desperate for anything.Any connection.Just something to make her feel less lonely.
No, not just lonely.
Alone.Even living back home with her mom, she felt so damned alone.
She leaned closer, licked her lips.He sucked in a breath and tilted his face toward her.Their lips were only an inch apart.She met his eyes, so green and steady.She was ready to press her lips to his, and…
His phone rang.
They both jumped back.
He cleared his throat and glanced at the screen.
She composed herself in the space of a breath and was grateful the bar was dark enough to hide whatever had just happened to her face.
The phone rang again, and CB seemed torn.“Go ahead,” she said, before he could explain.“Answer it.”
He did.“Claire?What’s up?”
She couldn’t hear the other end clearly, just the brisk cadence of a woman’s voice.She watched CB’s face instead, and wished she could slide under the table and hide.
“When can you come?”he said.A pause.“Two o’clock.We’ll be here.”
He hung up and set the phone on the table.
She waited.
“The C&D will be ready before Friday,” he said.“Kristina’s drafting it tomorrow after Claire takes our statements at two.They’ll go into the federal file.”He paused.“She said this gives them a thread on the Outlaws they’ve been waiting for.”
A federal file.A thread the FBI had been waiting for.A cease and desist that would be in her hands before the men who’d been threatening her showed up at her door on Friday.
Three days ago, she’d been alone in this bar with an envelope and no idea how she was going to protect her mother.
