The bathwater stopped running, and a few seconds later, a splash sounded.
“You okay?” Oliver couldn’t help but call out.
They were back in Darling’s apartment. To celebrate, Darling had indeed drawn herself a bubble bath.
“I’m fine,” she answered through the door. “You can stop hovering now!”
Oliver fell into the couch when he was finished with another security sweep. He settled his back against the armrest so his sight line to the front door wasn’t obstructed, a habit. The conversation with Nikki started to replay in his head.
He was no longer a bodyguard.
All to save Darling.
He hadn’t fought Nikki after she had asked for his resignation. It was a choice he didn’t resent. Funny, he thought, how once upon a time he had left Darling to protect her, and now he was staying to do the same.
Why was it so easy to sacrifice everything for a woman who would never trust him again?
“Oliver!”
In a flash he was off of the couch and standing at the bathroom door. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine! I was just going to see if you were hungry?”
“Hungry?” he repeated, his adrenaline on the brink of spiking.
“Yeah, I haven’t eaten in—” She stopped. Oliver almost opened the door all the way to make sure she was okay. “Breakfast yesterday, I suppose. So, I thought we could maybe order something? There’s a pizzeria on Main Street that delivers. Unless you need to go back to work?” She had hesitated before her last question had slipped out. It made Oliver wonder if she knew about his conversation with Nikki. He pushed that thought away.
“No, I can stay,” he answered. That was a conversation he didn’t want to broach through a partially opened bathroom door. “And pizza sounds good.”
“Wonderful,” she almost sang. “I don’t have anything here to eat. There’s a magnet on the fridge with the number. Order whatever you want. Just make sure there’s a lot of whatever it is.”
Oliver shut the door and did as he was told.
Instead of sitting back down to swim in his deepest thoughts, he looked around the living room. Like the rest of the small apartment, it was filled with character. He found he liked it more than his apartment.
The bathroom door opened.
“Need any help?”
“No,” she replied, frustrated. “But I sure do hate crutches.” They clinked against the hardwood floors as she started to go for her bedroom. That gave Oliver an idea.
“Wait, are you dressed?” he asked, though he was already moving.
“Yeah, why?”
He held up his finger to get her to wait and walked past her into the bedroom. Going straight for her minioffice in the corner, he grabbed the chair and rolled it back into the hall.
“It’s no wheelchair but, really, isn’t it a chair with wheels?” He cracked a smile and Darling laughed. She wore a long-sleeved white robe that fell to her ankles and tied around the middle. Her hair was wet and wound up into a bun atop her head. It was the first time in eight years he had seen her without a lick of makeup on, and he had to admit she was still as beautiful as ever.
He helped her angle herself into the chair and placed her crutches against the wall.
“Where to, madam?” he asked with little bow. She laughed again. He liked the sound.
“I heard the couch is all the rage this time of the year,” she said playfully. “A five-star destination second only to the kitchen bar.”
“Then that’s where we’ll go.” He did another quick bow and began to roll the chair toward the living room. He kept an eye on her foot, careful not to jostle it. They reached the living room, and without letting her stop him, he lifted her from the chair and placed her on the couch, her back against the armrest and legs stretched out. He sat on the edge of the coffee table right in front of her.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
“My foot is sore, but I guess that’s normal for having it split open and stitched back up. I didn’t get it wet in the bath. I was too afraid,” she admitted, rotating her ankle. As she spoke, Oliver’s gaze went to the bruises on her neck. “It doesn’t hurt that much,” she whispered, tone changing with her mood.
Oliver couldn’t help it. He reached out and traced the skin around the bruise on her right. It made Darling shiver. He stopped but didn’t pull away.
“I thought you were dead,” he breathed. “When I found you in that car...for a moment I thought you were—”
“But I wasn’t,” she interrupted, voice soft. Her hand covered his. They sat still, both caught in a moment that couldn’t be summed up in words.
Oliver leaned in. “I’m glad,” he whispered.
Darling searched his face, but he only had eyes for those lips. Careful not to spook her, he slowly closed the space between them, giving her plenty of time to move away. His heartbeat sped up when he realized she wasn’t going to.
The kiss was soft and warm. A ribbon drenched in sunlight. He wanted it to continue—to get lost in a moment that could be so much more—but he let it end.
After everything that had happened, Darling was vulnerable, whether she wanted to admit it or not. And he couldn’t deny he wasn’t in the best spot, either. He didn’t want to take advantage of her. He was finding that she still meant too much to him.
He pulled back and smiled. The private investigator’s cheeks were tinted red, her lips a shade of dark pink.
“Better than I remember.” As the words left his mouth, Oliver feared he had overstepped their relationship by bringing up the past. However, Darling didn’t seem to mind it. She mimicked his smile and opened her mouth to speak. Her response was cut off by a knock at the door.
“If that’s not at least a large pizza, I’m going to be so upset,” she said instead.
“I did you one better. I ordered two.” Darling thrust her fist in the air in victory, and just like that, they returned to normal.
Ten minutes later, they were seated at the kitchen bar, plates covered in pizza slices and minds set to work. The question about who they were together was put aside for a time when one of their lives wasn’t in danger.
“You know what I don’t get?” Darling asked after putting down another large bite. “Why take me in the first place? I mean, I realize that stripping me down and dumping me in the cold is a pretty clear way to kill me without having to actually kill me, but why take me?”
“You must have gotten too close.”
“But why not warn me instead?” It must have been a question she had been wondering about for a while. She put down her food and angled her body to face him. The top of her robe opened a fraction, giving him an uninhibited view of the top of her bare chest. She didn’t notice his glance downward. He tried to refocus. “I get a folder of pictures of Nigel and Jane Doe with a note telling me to do the right thing—plus the article with my parents—and I follow those instructions. Then I go to get my camera with pictures of the hotel crime scene and there’s another note, warning me to stop snooping. The camera is returned before I go to the police, but this time with no note.”
“Then we take a trip to the gas station, confirm Jane Doe was there and get the security footage. You find out the woman Jane Doe talked to was Harriet Mendon. The next day Acuity is ransacked and the security tape is gone,” he continued.
“But with no note.” Darling said this with a punch, as if it held more importance than all of the rest.
“Yes, but then you come back here and get taken. There’s a new note with a threat saying you have one more strike left. Though you didn’t see that note.” Anger began to build within him once more. He pictured her sitting in that car again, motionless.
She kept on, not noticing the tension. “Right! One more strike. Implying that I hadn’t yet crossed whatever line had been drawn.” Darling lowered her voice. “So, I ask again—why take me less than two hours later, and why not leave the note at Acuity?”
“Whoever it was, they got sloppy.”
“You’re right,” she exclaimed. “They did!”
“Wait, what?” Oliver tried to follow the train of thought she was already on but came up short.
“Oliver, I think we’re dealing with two killers. Hear me out,” Darling began. “Two people are trying to frame Nigel. Note Writer enlists my help to make the case seem more valid. He—or she—is observant, smart. He knows what to say and when to say it. He’s careful. But then he trashes my office without a note? Then kidnaps me? What’s the point in leaving a threat on my door and then taking me after I clearly hadn’t left the apartment or done anything else on the case?”
“You think that like all the good crime-fighting and crime-committing teams, one of them is the brains and the other one is the hothead,” he finished for her.
“What’s more, I don’t think they’re communicating all that well, either. I think the brains wrote the last-strike threat without knowing about Acuity being ransacked or vice versa. The note writer wanted to scare me. The other one wanted to hurt me.”
“If this is all true, then our problems just doubled. What’s worse than one killer? Two.”