Walker (Bowen Boys, #1)(13)
His dad walked out of the room with a pat on his back. Walker looked back at Caitlynne and she turned away from him. He wasn’t sure what to say to her so he simply leaned against the dresser and waited for Jane. She would be here very soon as she was a group member and lived not far from his parents. The door bell chimed four minutes later and he heard his nurse on the steps. Walker stepped into the hall to talk to her.
“I need you to remove her catheter and help her to dress. She’s going to need something for pain no doubt when you get her home. I’ll give you something to take with you so you can give it to her.” He tried to tell himself he was doing the right thing. “Don’t tell anyone where you take her, Jane. She’s been hurt because someone was chasing her.” Not entirely true, but she had been hurt. And probably by him and Khan more than she’d been hurt physically by those men. He glanced at the closed door again before continuing. “If she starts to bleed again or needs…anything I want you to take her to…take her to…” He didn’t know where to have her taken.
But Jane patted his arm. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’ll take care of her for you. You just leave it to me, Doc. I’ve got her for you.”
Walker nodded and started down the hallway. He was being a coward and, more than that, he was being an ass. He wanted more than anything to go back up there and kiss her again. Tell her things were going to be fine, that he and Khan would work this out, but he was reasonably sure that they never would and he’d be lying to the one woman in the world he was supposed to love above everything else. Walker left the house without stopping to speak to anyone. He was glad now he’d pulled on his pants before going for his brother’s throat when Caitlynne had hit Khan. He walked to his car he’d left there the night before when he’d brought Reed home and drove to his house.
His mate. His mate was within ten miles of him and he was alone in his house. When his phone rang he knew who it was immediately by the ring tone and ignored it. He wasn’t in the mood to speak to anyone right now. Especially not his mom and dad.
There were times when he didn’t much care for his brother Khan. Like last night. Khan had been wrong to tell him he forbid him to see Caitlynne. Khan had been equally wrong to have attacked him today, especially in front of Caitlynne. Moving to the kitchen, Walker tried to remember when the last time his brother had been out. Or for that matter, the last time he’d laughed.
Walker pulled a beer out of the refrigerator and stood in the kitchen, drinking it. He wasn’t the least bit surprised to see his brother at the door knocking a few minutes later. Walker opened the door for Marc and told him to get himself something to drink.
“Her name is Caitlynne April McCray and she lives at—”
“I don’t want to know.”
He sat at the table while Marc continued with a nod. “She lives in a house. What she does for a living might surprise you. It certainly did me. I just don’t—”
Walker cleared his throat, knowing that once Marc was on a tangent, he’d never stop.
“Right. She’s a school teacher. Junior high home economics, as a matter of fact.”
“School teacher? Which do you not believe? The teacher part or the home economics part?” He tried to imagine her standing in front of a room full of adolescent boys and couldn’t do it. She was more of a… “Are you sure she’s not like the shop teacher or something?”
Marc laughed. “Nah. Home Economics like I said.”
Walker waited for him to continue and decided that he was going to kill more than one of his siblings today. When nothing more was forthcoming, he realized that Marc wasn’t in this room. Physically he was, but his mind had wandered. He waited, knowing that he’d come back sooner or later.
“There’s too much money in her account. Not to mention she has really nice digs too. Something out of one of those house fashion mags Mom is always buying.”
Red flags were going off everywhere in Walker’s mind and he wasn’t even an investigator like Marc was.
“Could be she just does a really awesome job, but her bi-monthly deposits make me think she works for someone higher on the food chain.”
“You think she’s into selling drugs? Or something along those lines?”
Marc shook his head.
“What then?”
“Her house and truck are locked up tight. But there’s something…off about them. The truck is too low to the ground, and her house? I’m thinking that whoever broke her window a week ago had to have been better than those idiots that had her. The kind of people I’m talking about play for keeps. The security system she has in place is expensive and very smart. She knew what she was having put in and why. I just wish I knew her well enough to ask her if I could look at it closer. Am I going to get to know her better, Walker?”
He didn’t answer him.
He and Marc had steaks on the grill and two baked potatoes each. Neither of them was into girly salads and he didn’t even bother with mushrooms or anything else to take away from his rare sixteen ounce steaks. Marc didn’t seem to mind either.
They talked about nothing at all and when they were out on his deck when the sun was going down, Marc brought up Caitlynne again. He was like a dog with a fat bone.
“You had me investigate, yet you let her go back to her home. There are any number of reasons I can think of as to why you’d do that, but I know the real one.”