Ride the Lightning - Aimee Nicole Walker Page 0,12
the paper towel, he added, “It’s a good thing I started keeping extra clothes in my closet once you started working for me. At least you didn’t scald my crotch again.” Jonah ignored Avery’s stifled giggle. “You seem extra animated today. What’s up?”
“I have a blind date,” Avery replied miserably.
That explained the shirt and haircut. “Tonight?” Jonah felt like someone had punched him in the gut, rendering him breathless.
“No,” Avery replied. “At lunch.”
“Who goes on a blind date during their lunch hour from work?”
“A person who knows nothing will come from it and wants a valid reason why he has to leave,” Avery replied.
Jonah just blinked at him for a few seconds. “That’s actually kind of genius.”
“If it goes really, really bad, I can leave even earlier by using my asshole boss as an excuse?”
“Me?” Jonah asked. Was he an asshole to Avery?
“Yep. I can say you don’t do anything for yourself, and I have to pick up your lunch, dry cleaning, or your boyfriend’s birthday present.”
“Boyfriend? Dry cleaning? How long have you been thinking up excuses to leave this date?”
“Since my best friend set it up,” Avery replied. Jonah had heard Avery talk about Karlee enough to know she wouldn’t fix him up with a loser. Avery stared him directly in the eyes and said, “He’s not who I want.”
The moth flew closer still. Jonah’s body heated with the possibilities. Who do you want? They’d been dancing around each other for months. Four little words and he could learn the truth once and for all. That wasn’t the question that came out when he opened his mouth. “How could you possibly know that when you haven’t even met him yet?”
“I just do.”
“Stop focusing on the negative things that could happen and trust your friend to have your best interests at heart. It’s how I ended up with you as my intern. Maybe you’ll have a great time.”
Avery smiled. “An excellent point.” He tipped his head to the side and scrutinized Jonah. “You seem extra broody. Is something wrong?”
The door swung open, and two agents entered the restroom, saving Jonah from having to answer. He wasn’t ready to talk about Marla to anyone yet. He’d half-convinced himself he’d dreamed the entire conversation until Jonah saw her leaving in a cab at eight in the morning. Marla didn’t like to be awake before noon or show her face to the world before two. Jonah regretted he hadn’t insisted on driving her to her appointment with the oncologist.
“There will be times when I might need to take you up on your kindness, baby, but tomorrow isn’t one of them,” she’d said on his porch the previous night.
The two agents, Paxton and Meyers, looked between Jonah and Avery as if they’d interrupted something. Paxton wore a bemused expression while Meyers maintained his typical stony façade. The partners were as different as day and night—in looks as much as their temperaments. Paxton was tall and whipcord-lean while Meyers was short and built like a block of ice.
“Avery, Mary is looking for you,” Paxton said after a few awkward seconds. “She said you have a visitor in reception.”
Avery gasped. “He’s here? I thought we were meeting at the restaurant.”
“Hot date?” Meyers asked.
“Blind date,” Avery said. He moved past the two agents to wash and dry his hands.
“During your lunch hour?” Paxton asked.
“You explain it to them,” Avery said over his shoulder on his way to the door.
The two agents looked at Jonah expectantly, so he repeated what Avery had said.
“That’s damn smart,” Meyers said. Paxton nodded.
Standing around the men’s room and chatting with these guys wasn’t on his list of things he wanted to do. Jonah tossed his wet paper towel in the wastebasket and headed toward the door. “See you around.”
“Hey, St. John,” Paxton called out.
Jonah sent a silent plea for mercy as he slowly turned to face the men. “Yeah?”
“For what it’s worth, I think you got a raw deal yesterday with Trexler,” Paxton said.
Meyers nodded.
“The man has it out for you,” Paxton said.
“Real bad,” Meyers added.
“Thanks for the heads-up, guys,” Jonah said, although they weren’t telling him anything new. “See you later.”
He retreated to his office and decided to work through his lunch hour since it might be the only free time he had to look into Earl Ison’s murder.
Before Jonah had joined the Savannah branch of the GBI, the process would’ve required an agent to dig through moldy, dusty case files at a storage facility. Jonah had overseen digitalizing thousands of