Page 15 of Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad World

“Night, then.” Harris left the door ajar, enough to allow some light in and for Noah to hear danger approaching. He flicked off the light inside the closet before disappearing.

For a few moments, Noah watched Annabelle sleep while listening to the muted sounds of his teammates moving around in the room outside his door. Despite her being unwell, there was no denying their new mission was attractive. Based on her coloring, it seemed she was an American mutt—just like him: a mix of races and nationalities in her heritage. Although his leaned toward Irish and Eastern European, whereas hers seemed to lean closer to warmer climes. Even ashen with illness, her warm brown skin tone spoke of Caribbean beaches.

He closed his eyes and sighed at himself. The pain meds were making him think crazy thoughts, waxing lyrical about their charge’s appearance. She was a job. Her looks didn’t matter.

He opened his eyes again to study her. There was no denying she was pretty, though…

“You’re doing it again,”his dead wife’s voice sounded in his head.

Noah wasn’t surprised to see her standing beside Annabelle’s bed. “Doing what?” he whispered.

“You’ve gone into white-knight mode. You want to save the girl.”She studied Annabelle for a moment.“She’s a gorgeous woman and feisty too. I like her. But she isn’t some puppy you can adopt, you know that, right?”

“It never even occurred to me that she needed rescuing, let alone adopting. I’m just doing my job, which is to protect her.”

“Yeah, right.”Therese was unconvinced.

“Yeah, right,” Noah whispered firmly.

“You know,”she said speculatively,“it’s been five years since I died. Don’t you think it’s time you moved on?”

“I’m sore and tired, and I need to rest. I don’t have time to talk to a ghost right now,” Noah told her, closing his eyes. Maybe if he couldn’t see his delusion, he wouldn’t hear her.

No such luck.

“I’ll admit, if you’d walked into another relationship five years ago, when my body was barely cold, I’d have made your life hell. But now, I’m worried about you. Do you plan on being alone for the rest of your life?”

“I’m not alone,” he muttered. “You’re here. All. The. Time.”

“But you can’t touch me,”she said with sadness.“And the boys would be okay with it now—you moving on, starting again with someone new. Just think about it.”

“Therese, please.” He opened his eyes only to find the room empty except for his charge, who was still sleeping deeply.

With a shake of his head at his own craziness, Noah closed his eyes again and let his battered body relax.

Chapter Six

“So, how’s it going?” Noah asked Rochelle Davis the following morning.

It was half an hour before their team meeting, and Noah was showered and changed, thanks to someone having picked up some clean clothes from his new house. Sleep had done wonders for him, and apart from the odd ache, he felt fine. Well, if you didn’t count his slight limp. He pulled up a chair at the borrowed desk their boss had set up in the large office and stretched out his sore leg in front of him. If he could have willed it to heal faster, he would have.

“Let me see.” She folded her arms as she stood beside the desk, surveying the room. “Half the police force is upstairs, tramping over Annabelle’s apartment while the crime scene techs pry bullets out of her walls. We’ve been on this case barely a day, and one of my team’s already injured, another is aggravating the local cops, and our client can’t be removed from the building for fear she’ll have a complete psychotic break.”

“So, it’s going well then?” Noah fought a smile.

“Going great,” she said wryly. “The ADA just chewed my ear off about moving her witness to a safe house, and I had to tell her that wasn’t possible. Which was fun.”

“You spoke to Annabelle’s doctor, though, right?”

“Yes. And I agree with her diagnosis. Taking Ms. Simmons from here by force would cause irreparable psychological damage and be completely irresponsible.”

Noah had known Rochelle for years, but it was still easy to forget that before becoming an FBI agent, she’d been a certified medical examiner and forensic pathologist. Dressed in a pristine gray pinstripe pantsuit, the statuesque African American woman screamed law enforcement rather than medicine.

“How are your injuries?” she asked him.

“I’ll be fine in a couple of days,” Noah assured her. “Worst was my leg, and it’s barely a scratch. What’s going on here?” He nodded toward the partition the triplets were removing.

“We’re creating one large office space. I want this team where I can see them. Especially those three.”