Eye of the Falcon (Psychic Visions #12)(66)

He frowned. “I don’t like bargaining.”

She gave him a glimmer of a smile. “Can you give me another kiss?”

His jaw dropped. The face of the woman who sounded like a lost child now bloomed into a big wide grin. “Okay, it’s a bargain.” And so very gently he leaned down, tilted her chin up, and kissed her. Her lips were so damn sweet. Almost fragile and yet not. Nobody who survived what she had would be considered fragile.

Just as he pulled away, she reached around his neck and tugged him down toward her. This time she was kissing him. And suddenly he was ravaging her mouth. His body shook. They weren’t there yet. But they would be. When she healed. And that reminder was enough to cool his ardor.

He broke them apart, breathing hard, and whispered, “This is so not the time or place, and you’re not healthy enough for that yet,” he said with regret.

A grin flashed across her face, and he swore he saw a dimple. Where the hell had that come from?

She slipped off his lap, back under the blankets, and whispered, “Good night. And sweet dreams.”

He snorted. “You might have sweet dreams. Not me. Mine will be damn hot.” He got up and walked out. As he headed to the kitchen, he thought he heard a light chuckle from Tiger. Eagle was grinning like a madman when he got to Panther.

Panther said, “I don’t know what kind of magic that girl has, but she’s working it on you so very easily.”

“It has just been a little too long,” Eagle muttered. He slammed the first-aid stuff back on the table. “Let’s take care of that.”

With Panther sitting quietly, Eagle cleaned and washed the wound. “You need a couple stitches.”

Panther shrugged his massive shoulders. “Don’t bother.”

“You know as well as I do that wounds heal faster when pinched together.”

While he worked, the two men talked. “What’s next?”

“I need to track down the lock that key fits.”

“Don’t forget my dad’s a locksmith. If there’s something to learn about that key, he’d be the one to ask,” Panther said.

“Shit, I forgot about that.” Eagle finished, cleaning up the mess.

“Let’s take a picture of it and send it to him.”

He stopped, turned, and looked at Panther. “Pop knows how to use a computer?”

“Does he ever,” Panther said proudly. “He’s learned to do all kinds of stuff. Scary actually.”

Tiger snorted. “You’re not kidding. He’s always wanting at my computer so he can overclock my stuff.” He shook his head. “I don’t let him go anywhere close to my electronics.”

“However, some of that shit he did was pretty cool. He hooked his TV up to some kind of satellite box, then ran the wires to his computer, and he tapped into some archaic VCR system.”

Eagle laughed. “He was always good at inventing things, wasn’t he?” He retrieved the key, putting it on the table. “You guys recognize this?”

The two men studied the key, picked it up, felt the weight of it, and shrugged. “Could be for a safe-deposit box, but it would have to be an old one.”

“It might be a safe-deposit strongbox,” Panther said. “I’ve spent a lifetime around keys.” He took a picture and sent it to his father. “The old man might take a while though.”

But he was wrong. Less than two minutes later, Panther’s phone rang. He looked down in surprise. “Pop, what are you still doing up?”

“Cleaning up your ma’s laptop. Damn thing’s a pain in the ass because it’s not meant to be upgraded. She gave me some trouble, but I got her done.”

Horrified, Panther stared down at the phone he held out in front of him so everyone could hear the conversation. “Pop, does Mom know what you did?”

“Not yet. Getting it back together again before she gets up in the morning. Don’t you tell her, son.”

They all knew Pop, as they had learned to call him years ago. He was getting in and out of trouble on a daily basis. They were pretty damn sure that Mom, as they called her, was fully prepared for every new mess he created.

“The key you asked me about? You know what that is?”

“Safe-deposit box or strongbox? Right?”

“Yes. That deposit key is from a foreign bank.”

“Can we tell what bank?” Eagle stepped into the conversation.

“Eagle? Is that you? You in trouble again, young boy?”

Eagle winced. “What do you mean, again? It isn’t me that’s in trouble.” He looked over at Issa lying helplessly in the bed in his spare room. It wasn’t exactly something he wanted to explain to anyone, particularly not over the phone.

“You’re in trouble though. Do you have a way to track down what country?”

Eagle nodded. “Ireland.”

“So what did you bother me for? It’s a pretty damn old key. Doesn’t mean anybody still has the box. You know that, right?”

“So it could be a strongbox then too?”

“I reckon.” After that Pop rang off.

The three men stared at each other, frowning.

Eagle turned his gaze toward the bedroom again to check on Issa’s position. No sign she’d moved since he had walked out. “We have the two boxes retrieved from her place. I didn’t see anything in them referencing a key. We scanned it all as fast as we could, just in case they were stolen. But we still have the paper copies.”