Something About You (FBI/US Attorney #1)(61)
After drinks, he had returned to the senator’s offices and attended a series of meetings with the higher-level staff members and two of Hodges’s attorneys. The senator originally had planned to be back in D.C. by the following week, but given the FBI’s warning that he not leave the state, alternate plans needed to be discussed. First and foremost on everyone’s mind was how to explain the changes to the senator’s schedule without tipping the press off about his connection to Mandy Robards’s murder.
Secretly, Grant got a kick out of these conversations. The hushed tones, the tension-filled rooms, the worried glances over what the press and—gasp—even the killer might possibly know about the senator’s involvement with Mandy. They had absolutely no idea that the man they were talking about was sitting right at that table.
And he knew everything.
After the meetings finally ended, Grant had driven home, taking a few detours along the way to make sure nobody was following him. All in all, his day would seem like any other to anyone who might ask—except for that one missing hour. He’d have to come up with something to fill the void, just to be ready.
Grant thought back to the moment inside Cameron Lynde’s house when she’d first seen him on the stairs—the way she’d taken a step back and whispered, What do you want?
He wanted to stop looking over his f**king shoulder when he walked into his apartment, that’s what he wanted.
She said she didn’t know who he was. Although he liked to think people tended to tell the truth when feeling the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed against their heads, he wasn’t sure he trusted her. Fortunately, he didn’t have to.
For her sake, he hoped she was telling the truth. Mandy’s murder had been near perfect, almost artfully so. The best FBI agent in the city had been assigned the case, and still they had nothing on him. And they wouldn’t ever have anything on him as long as Cameron Lynde didn’t step out of line.
Of course, he’d taken precautions to know if she did.
They were so stupid. Pallas, the cops, all of them. It was right under their noses, and they didn’t even realize it.
If he’d known it was this much fun getting away with murder, he’d have done it years ago.
Twenty
SHE AND JACK would be living together.
The practical realities of the situation struck Cameron during the car ride to Jack’s South Loop apartment. He had asked Wilkins to drop them off so he could pick up his car and “a few things.” As they pulled away from the FBI building, he leaned over the seat and asked if she had any questions about how the protective custody was going to work.
She nonchalantly answered that there were none she could think of off the top of her head.
This was not true.
She had lots of questions. For starters, where exactly did Jack plan to sleep? Could she still go to work during the day? Did he expect her to cook meals while he stayed at her house? (Certainly the surest way to kill them both.) Would they do normal, everyday things together, like watch television at night? (Which reminded her—she really needed to delete those episodes of The Bachelor from her TiVo playlist.) And where, exactly, did he plan to sleep? (This particular question consumed such a vastly greater percentage of her musings, it bore repeating.) Was he allowed to leave her alone at all, like when he took a shower? Or, purely from a safety perspective, would it be better for her to join him in such undertakings . . .
“This will only take a few minutes,” Jack said as they rode the elevator to his fourth-floor loft. He looked her over. “Are you okay? You looked like you zoned out for a moment there.”
“I’m still processing everything that happened today,” Cameron said, hoping she didn’t spontaneously combust right there in the elevator at the thought of him naked in her shower.
When they arrived at the fourth floor, Jack led her to the apartment at the end of the hallway. He unlocked and opened the door, inviting her inside.
She didn’t know what she expected Casa Pallas to look like, perhaps something stark and Spartan with minimal furnishings and lots of gray, but that was not what she found when she walked through the doorway. The walls were exposed brick and the ceiling was vaulted. In keeping with the loft style, the main level had an open floor plan, with the living room running into the modern kitchen and what appeared to be a powder room and a small office down the hall to her right. There was a second floor; a floating staircase led to a small balcony. Beyond that were open double doors made of frosted glass through which she could see the master bedroom.
To say the least, the place was warmer and far more welcoming than she had expected. But that wasn’t what surprised her most. What really caught her attention were all the books.
An entire wall of Jack’s living room was filled with books—hundreds of them—organized neatly on dark mahogany shelves. More books rested on the lower shelf of his coffee table.
“Wow,” Cameron said, making her way over to the shelves. “You have some collection here.” It looked like a mixture of everything, fiction and nonfiction, hardcover and paperback. “You must be quite a reader.”
Jack shrugged. “It fills my spare time.”
Cameron would have loved to own such a collection of books—one of her plans for her house was to convert part of the third floor into a library. Not that she got a chance to read as much as she would’ve liked; a lot of her free time was sucked up by Collin and Amy. Which made her wonder whether Jack had a Collin or Amy in his life. Or anyone, for that matter. He seemed awfully . . . solitary.