As long as Noah stayed away from him for the next hour. Or year.
Lucy frowned, her dark, soulful eyes seeking something in his. “Sean?”
He smiled, trying to mask his simmering anger. He’d worried her, and that was the last thing he wanted.
“Were you wearing your seat belt?”
“Of course.”
“Bet your chest hurts.”
“Yes, but—”
He slipped the gown off her right shoulder, since she hadn’t been driving. A nasty bruise was already forming where the seat belt restrained her. “I’ll have a lot of fun playing nurse tonight,” he said with a grin. His vision blurred, but he averted his eyes. The nurse looked at him a moment too long. He faked a smile. It didn’t work.
“This really sucks,” Lucy said. She squeezed his hand.
Sean forced himself to relax. Lucy was alive. Nothing broken. Just bruises. “I’ve never heard you say that word before.”
She rolled her eyes. “Genie’s foul mouth is rubbing off on me.” She said to the nurse, “Monica, right?”
“Yes.” The young nurse seemed pleased Lucy had remembered her first name.
“Would you mind checking on Detective Genie Reid for me? She didn’t regain consciousness in the car, and I’d feel a lot better if I knew she was okay.”
“I’ll see what I can find out. Stay put, the orderly should be here in about ten minutes to take you to X-ray.”
“And then I can go.”
“And then the doctor will look at the film and let you know.”
The nurse left and Lucy said to Sean, “I’m not staying tonight. I didn’t even want to come, but Noah made me.”
“Where is he now?”
“He met me at the scene, I briefed him, he said he’d stop by later. They’re looking for Ivy. It’s all jumbled in my head, but I told him they’re all connected.”
Ivy … the name was familiar to Sean, but he didn’t know why. When Noah called him earlier, he’d been worried about Lucy, but now he wanted to remember why Ivy was important. “What’s connected?”
Lucy whispered, “Wendy James and the two prostitutes. Their murders are connected. I think Jocelyn Taylor was trying to help them all.”
“I’m three steps behind you. Noah didn’t tell me anything.” Lucy’s brow dipped in concentration, and Sean tried to stop her from thinking too hard. “You can catch me up later. You need to rest. You could have a concussion.”
“If you make me tell you that I’m fine one more time, I’ll call Dillon for a ride home. I just need to get my thoughts together. Everything was falling into place right before the crash.”
Sean sat on the edge of the bed and kissed her, trying to ignore the cuts and scrapes on her arms and face. He kissed her again because it felt good. To remind him that she was here, whole, healthy.
“You keep scaring me like this, I’ll have to hire myself to be your bodyguard—and I don’t do personal security. For you, Princess, I’ll make an exception.”
“Me? You’re the one who fell two stories down a mine shaft not two months ago.”
“You crashed my plane.”
“Did not. It was shot down.”
Sean raised his eyebrow.
“You,” she added, “were kidnapped by a lunatic.”
“So were you.”
“I’d say we’re even then.”
“Maybe we should move to an uninhabited island where neither of us can get in trouble.”
“We’d probably run into a poisonous snake.” Lucy brought Sean’s hand to her lips and kissed it. “Now, where was I?”
“You weren’t going to tell me you were fine.”
“Right.”
Sean breathed much easier. In their banter, Lucy’s tension eased, making him calmer as well. Unlike him, she wasn’t a good actress. If she was stressed or worried, she wouldn’t tease him.
He kissed her again. “So you put these murders together?”
Again, Lucy made sure no one could overhear, and she kept her voice low. “Some of this is just theory—”
“Lucy, no qualifications, okay?”
“I told you about the crime scene this morning?”
“Briefly. A triple murder at the Hotel Potomac?”
“Yes. The woman was a social worker for a nonprofit. She specialized in working with teenage prostitutes. The other woman was a girl named Maddie, a known prostitute and drug addict who was on and off the wagon. And the third victim, the husband, a congressional staffer.”
“Congress? Don’t tell me he worked for Crowley.”
“Dale Hartline.”
“I know next to nothing about who’s who in the Capitol.” That wasn’t completely true. He knew enough. RCK was often hired to provide personal security for high-ranking officials when they traveled overseas, but Sean rarely, if ever, took those assignments. He did, on occasion, run background checks for campaigns or high-security checks that weren’t covered by the FBI or another agency.
And it was clear that Lucy didn’t buy his disclaimer. She said, “And he used to work for Senator Paxton. In fact, the last call Chris Taylor made before he was killed was to Senator Paxton.”
“Paxton,” Sean said flatly. He had mixed feelings about the senator, from the time he’d first met him in January, but he didn’t share this with Lucy. Paxton had been her mentor for years, though after Women and Children First was shut down six months ago, they had a strained relationship. Lucy didn’t talk about it, and Sean suspected she had grown tired of trying to fill the shoes of Paxton’s dead daughter. Sean had seen pictures of Monique Paxton. The resemblance to Lucy was uncanny.
“He said Chris called to meet with him for advice, then admitted that Chris likely wanted money to help Jocelyn and the girls, but he was vague on details, claimed Chris didn’t give him any. I think he was more or less telling the truth about the call. What tipped me off that he knows something more was that he recognized the prostitutes we showed him.”
“He said that?”
“No. He kept his face completely blank, showed no recognition whatsoever.”
“Does he have a tell? Did his eye twitch or something?”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “No. It was his total lack of empathy. You know him—he’s hired you and RCK, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“He has this way of being quietly enraged when women are in danger. It’s subtle, but it’s always there. And he buried it. I think because he didn’t want to show that he recognized the girls.”
“You’re not stretching on this? Reading something into it?”
“No! Dammit, Noah said the same thing. But I swear, Ivy Harris is the type of girl he feels compelled to save. Same basic physical features as his daughter.”
“And you.”
She closed her eyes.
“Luce, talk to me.”
“Today was the first time I saw Jonathon in nearly six months.”
“Why is that strange? WCF was disbanded. Would you have a reason to see him?”
“Maybe not.”
But something was on her mind, and he pushed. “Did something happen when you last talked to him?”
“I haven’t talked to him since the last WCF fundraiser, the week I learned my boss was a killer.”
“But I took you to the Capitol to see him. Remember? A few weeks after that fiasco.”
Lucy didn’t say anything, and Sean had the uneasy sensation that she was trying to come up with a lie. Lucy was one of those rare people who couldn’t lie convincingly.
“Lucy?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Something is bothering you, what is it?”
“I didn’t actually talk to him.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t talk to him?”
She looked at him, her eyes uncertain. “Did you ever know in your heart that something was true, but couldn’t prove it?”