Colby Velocity

Surprised, he looked her straight in the eye. “Something wrong with what I wear?” He was a jeans and boots kind of guy. Sure he wore the requisite button-down shirt and sports jacket, but never suits. Well, almost never. Occasionally he had no choice.

She shook her head. “Nothing a little polish and silk won’t take care of.”

“Ha-ha.” He pretended to be annoyed but deep down he was kind of happy that she’d bothered to observe what he wore. She sure hadn’t given the first indication that she’d looked at him long enough to notice. “Nice to know you care.”

“Appearances are everything, Rocky,” she said, surveying the entrance to the airfield as the driver made the turn. “At the Colby Agency appearances are extremely important.”

His anticipation flattened. Her attention was related to business.

Like always.

Chapter Three

Washington, D.C., Capitol Hill Diner, 1:55 p.m.

Kendra waited through the lengthy hold. When Castille’s secretary returned to the line, Kendra didn’t give her time to pass along the no she knew the senator had likely given. “I have to talk to him, Jean. It’s urgent, as I’m sure you know.”

Rocky lounged on the other side of the booth they’d claimed once the lunch crowd started to dwindle, his expression resigned to the idea that she was butting her head against a brick wall. But he had to hand it to her; she didn’t give up easily.

“Kendra, I wish I could help you,” Jean offered, her voice hushed. She wouldn’t want to be overheard consorting with the enemy.

“I understand that an appointment is out of the question,” Kendra put in before the woman who’d worked with the senator his entire senatorial career could continue, “but if you can give me some hint of his schedule for this afternoon I’ll catch him on the run.” Kendra had some idea of Castille’s daily agenda. Two years as his personal aide had provided significant insight into his usual activities. But it had been three years.

Things changed. So did people.

“What about his three o’clock at the club?” she prodded. During Kendra’s tenure as his aide, Castille hadn’t missed a Wednesday afternoon sit-down with the boys at the club. The Summit catered to high-level D.C. politicians and businessmen, providing classic luxury along with a three hundred percent markup on beverages. Membership was required for entrance, but the sidewalk outside was fair game as long as one wasn’t a reporter. If any of the old staff remained, she might just get inside. But she wasn’t betting on it.

“I can’t confirm that he’ll make that standing appointment today, considering what’s happened,” Jean advised, her tone somber.

That was all Kendra needed. “Thanks, Jean. I owe you.” Kendra closed her cell phone and gazed triumphantly at the man waiting across the table. “I can catch him around three.” The club was barely twenty minutes away. Arriving ahead of schedule wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, it might work to her advantage.

“I’m impressed. The secretary must remember you more fondly than her boss does.”

Jean Brody had no children of her own. The sixty-year-old and Kendra had bonded very closely, but even that bond had never breached the woman’s loyalty to the senator. What she had given today was a confirmation of something Kendra already knew. It was their mutual respect that kept Jean off Kendra’s list of persons to interrogate. As well as the knowledge that no amount of persuasion would prompt the secretary to speak ill against Castille. She was a rare breed.

“You could say that, yes,” Kendra said in answer to her partner’s assessment.

Rocky made an agreeable sound and resumed his monitoring of the street outside the wall of plate glass that ran the length of the diner’s storefront. He was slightly out of his element but he hadn’t let that cloud his attitude.

Kendra studied the man seated across the table from her. She didn’t yet have a complete handle on his thought process regarding the case of her connection to the players. That he continued to act cooperatively went a long way in easing her concern about working with him. Not that he was a bad guy, he absolutely wasn’t. But he was a former Equalizer and the merger with the Colby Agency had been a difficult pill to swallow to some extent for Jim Colby’s entire team. Most of the bumps were behind them now.

That her attention, despite the current situation, settled on the usual details about him annoyed her, but it was what it was. An unexpected attraction that could not be allowed to proliferate.

Rocky was tall, heavily muscled. Coal-black hair and unsettlingly vivid blue eyes. Everything about him somehow refuted his background. Reared and educated in Tampa by medical professional parents, he dressed like a cowboy—sans the requisite hat. From the first time she’d met him she’d fully expected the man to drawl out a “yes, ma’am” to match that swagger of a champion that attracted the eye of every female he encountered—including Kendra’s. When he walked into a room he owned it, insofar as female interest was concerned.

As if she’d made the statement out loud, her partner swung his gaze back to her.

She rerouted her thoughts. “I left a voice mail for Wayne Burton.” Keep going with the details. Rocky had been in the restroom when she’d made that call. “He’s a contact in D.C.’s homicide division I reached out to on occasion … before.” Before she’d recognized the writing on the wall and the hard cold fact that she was not cut out for this world. And before she’d tried a relationship with him that couldn’t have fit in a million years. “I’m hoping he’ll agree to brief us on the path the investigation is taking at this point.”

Those startlingly blue eyes searched hers a moment as if looking for the motive behind her words. “A reliable enough contact you have reason to believe he would go out on a limb to give you a break in a potentially sensitive and high-profile case?”

Rocky wasn’t asking about reliability. What he had actually asked was had she slept with Wayne Burton. His eyes confirmed her analysis. “Yes,” she said, unashamed. Wayne was reliable and she had slept with him. But that was history. History Leland Rockford had no need to know. She hadn’t communicated with Wayne in three years … other than the occasional e-mail.

“That should make life a lot simpler.” Rocky plucked a cold French fry from his plate and popped it into his mouth. “For the case anyway.”

Kendra let the innuendo slide. She moistened her lips, shouldn’t have stared at his, but it was difficult not to. He had very generous lips for a man. Everything about him was a contradiction. His appearance gave away nothing of his past life. His slow, methodical manner of conversing totally belied his state school academic record. The man was incredibly smart and far more insightful than he apparently wanted anyone to know, including his current partner.

And yet he didn’t seem to get how this was going to play out. “Nothing about this investigation will be simple,” she warned. “This is a community filled with secrets and powerful people who know how to keep the important ones—unless it benefits them somehow to share those secrets. We’ll have to dig deeper and work harder for every single detail.”

Rocky propped his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Good thing neither of us is the type to surrender without a fight.”

She resisted the impulse to recline deeper into the faux leather of the booth to regain those few inches of distance he had claimed. He’d done this at the hotel when he’d insisted on opening the door to her room and seeing her inside before going to his room next door. He’d gotten closer than he’d dared before, had looked her directly in the eyes and spoke quietly as if what he had to say wasn’t to be overheard. That it was somehow intimate. Maybe it was her imagination but she hadn’t noticed him doing that before.

She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that he’d made her shiver. Something no other man had done with such ease.

Quite possibly she was making too much of it. She’d had zero sleep and Yoni’s murder had her on an emotional ledge. She stared at her untouched food. Her appetite was AWOL. But she needed to eat. Coffee alone wouldn’t keep her on her toes.

She kept replaying every moment of last night’s meeting with Yoni. What had she missed? Had he said anything at all that should have clued her in to the fact that he was in imminent danger?

How could she call herself a private investigator when she’d completely misread the urgency in a potential client she knew so well?

“You shouldn’t beat yourself up.”

Kendra blinked. So now he was a mind reader? “I was just—”

“Thinking how you should have seen this coming?”

Definitely a mind reader. “Maybe.” Surely she’d missed something relevant in last night’s meeting. Something he’d said …

“He failed to tell you everything.”

She wanted to challenge that assessment. To defend her friend … she had known Yoni as well as anyone who’d worked with him could have. But logic told her that Rocky had pegged the situation. Yoni had been worried enough to contact her, to draw her from her new life. Yet he hadn’t once mentioned fear for his safety … only for his professional reputation.

“It’s possible he had no idea the source of the threat would go this far,” she proposed. “Frankly, his murder may prove unrelated to his reasons for coming to me. There’s no way to guess.”

“But you don’t believe that,” Rocky suggested with equal conviction.

“No.” Rocky was her partner in this assignment. Choosing not to be completely honest served no purpose. “I believe there is more … that he didn’t tell me.” It pained her to say as much, but it was true. “If that proves the case, then he had a compelling reason for leaving me in the dark.” Yoni wouldn’t knowingly put anyone in danger.

Rocky pulled out his wallet and dropped payment for their lunch on the table. “All we have to do is determine what that reason was.”

Kendra reached for the check the waitress had left, then for her purse.

“It goes on the same expense log,” Rocky reminded before sliding from the booth.

Giving herself a mental kick for again being slow on the uptake, she scooted across the bench seat and stood. “We should get into position to intercept Castille.”

“Since you know the way, why don’t you drive?” He gestured for her to go ahead of him.