In Close Quarters

She spun around and jerked the refrigerator door open again, this time reaching for the bottle of wine. But as she thunked it onto the counter and opened the drawer to grab the corkscrew, she froze as the enormity of her actions slammed into her.

What the hell was she doing?

She swung her gaze back to the bottle. To the goblet she hadn’t even realized she’d placed beside it. How many times had she seen her mother with a goblet and a bottle just like this one, on a kitchen counter just like this one? And how many times had she sworn that no man would make her do the same?

Disgusted, she slapped the corkscrew back into the nest of utensils and slammed the drawer home. She turned back to the oven and yanked the door open. Removing the still-warm containers of Luigi’s legendary take-out linguini, she dumped them into the trash compactor. Finally she added the unopened bottle of wine to the top. She was not recycling that bottle—because it was exactly where it belonged, along with any chance of ever dining with TJ Vаsquez again.

In the garbage.

Then she turned on her heel and went to bed.

She was going to be angry.

TJ stood at Karin’s door, his motorcycle helmet resting gingerly in the crook of his left arm, the knuckles of his right hand poised, inches from knocking, as he acknowledged the truth. No matter how much he had tried to deny it on the ride over, he knew Karin was going to be angry.

And that was if she let him past the door.

He pulled his hand back. Perhaps this was not a good idea. Dios m?o. He knew it was not. Unfortunately he needed to see her. Tonight. For several reasons. The least of which was the message she had failed to get.

Then there was the other.

He knocked.

As ten raps became twenty, he increased his force—and his worry. Where was she? Had she not left the hospital as he had asked this morning? Had she confronted Doug Callahan, instead, even though she had promised she would not?

He refused to believe she would be so foolish.

He chose to believe she was safe.

S?. Most likely, she had grown tired of waiting for him to arrive and had packed as he had requested. At this very moment she was no doubt tucked between satin sheets at her mother’s home in La Jolla. He was about to pick her lock and make certain when he heard a noise from within. The scraping of a chain sliding across its track.

The door opened.

Karin’s beautiful face, heavy with sleep and heavier with anger, greeted him. “Good, you’re alive.”

The door slammed back in his face.

He waited a moment, then knocked again.

And again.

“Cari?o, open the door.”

“I did. Now go away.” The words were muffled, but soft they were not.

He sighed and cursed as he shifted the helmet, growing heavier by the moment, to his right hand. “Five minutes, this is all I ask, s??”

“No.”

“Cari?o—”

“I said no. Now go away before I call the police.”

“I am the police.”

“Wrong. You’re DEA, and I’m smart enough to know the difference. Now leave.”

He stared at the door, then up and down the dimly lit hallway. “I will go—after we talk. Unless you would like me to knock loudly enough to wake your neighbors?”

“You wouldn’t.”

But he would.

And evidently she knew this. Because the door reopened. A crack. Her huge blue eyes filled the space.

“May I come in?”

“Don’t press your luck.”

“Five minutes, no more. I give you my word.”

Her gaze narrowed. “No, and you have five seconds.”

“Cari?o—”

“It’s two in the morning, Agent Vаsquez. You want five minutes, come back at nine.”

He sighed. If he had but five seconds, he had best get started. “I am sorry I missed dinner.”

“Apology accepted. Good night.”

Dios mio. She was furiosa. Definitely angry enough to slam the door in his face again. He wedged a boot into the narrow opening just in case.

“Get your foot out of my door.”

“Un momento, por favor.”

“Now.”

It was late and he was tired, or he would have caught the warning fire in her eyes—and heeded it. Certainly before she whipped the door open and slammed the heel of her palm into the pocket of his shoulder.

He stumbled back to absorb the blow, grunting at the shaft of pain that stabbed through his shoulder before slicing across his chest and down his arm. He was dimly aware of her answering gasp, and then she was standing before him, shoving his leather jacket aside and gasping again.

“Oh, my God, Tomаs, what happened?”

He stared down at the spare T-shirt the paramedic had given him, at the scarlet stain seeping through the gauze beneath and rapidly spreading into the white—and groaned.

Madre de Dios.