The Escape (US Marshals #1) - Lisa Harris Page 0,101
boss.”
He winked. “Oh, and there is one more thing.” He pulled a little box from the bottom of the bag and held it up. “Chocolate Mocha Cheesecake.”
“It’s six thirty in the morning.”
“This is for later. I know it’s not Friday, but I thought we might need to celebrate your first day back over dinner. Unless you’re busy tonight.”
“No, I’d like that.”
Somehow over the past three months, they’d made Friday nights a standing “date” between the two of them. Though she’d never officially call it a date. It started with Jonas coming by with takeout as an excuse to check on her after she got out of the hospital. She’d tell him the boring details of what she did that day in physical therapy, then she’d probe for details on whatever case he was on. Eventually, they ended up working on one of the DIY projects in the house she’d bought after the shooting. With his help, they managed to paint her bedroom, redo the floors in the living room and kitchen, and update the tiles in the guest bathroom.
Once, instead of their normal takeout fare, he made her shrimp linguine that was so good, she told him he might have gone into the wrong business. Boy, the man could cook. Their time together was something she’d come to look forward to, like Sunday dinners with her father and her sister’s family. Except with Jonas, she could talk about things she couldn’t discuss with them.
Her sister teased her that there was more between her and her partner than just friendship, but Madison ignored the not-so-subtle hints. They’d only officially worked together two times. The first was a few years ago when she trained under him at a shoot house in Nashville, and the second was just before her incident. The two of them had tracked an escaped felon across the country. But the bottom line was that they were friends, nothing more, and that’s how things were going to stay.
“This is delicious.” She took a second bite of the croissant. “You can feel free to stop by with breakfast any morning of the week. I promise I won’t complain.”
He laughed at the comment and picked up one of the bacon croissants. He took a bite. “Did you run this morning?”
She glanced out the window, not surprised it was still raining. “I chose to bike indoors over getting soaked.”
“I don’t blame you.” He wiped his mouth, then caught her gaze. “How was your last day in physical therapy?”
“Worried about my overdoing it?”
“Maybe?” He took another few bites of his croissant, finishing it off in seconds.
“I passed, Jonas. I even did a ten-minute mile.”
“Not bad, though you have worked hard these past couple months.” Jonas grabbed a second croissant. “How are you sleeping?”
She avoided his gaze, focusing instead on her breakfast. “Why the twenty questions?”
“Just making conversation.”
Right.
“I know I slept, because I dreamed a lot.” She kept her voice even, not wanting him to worry about the nightmares that woke her up most nights. Or the memories that refused to surface.
“The memories will come back eventually,” he said, reading her mind. “Just give yourself some time.”
Except she’d given herself time, and three months hadn’t been enough.
She waved her hand like it didn’t matter. “Stop worrying about me. I’ll get through this. It’s part of the risk we take every day.”
Ironic, though, how she could chase a convicted felon halfway across the country and end up with barely a scratch, and then turn around and get shot in her own house. The place where she was supposed to be safe. It was part of the reason she’d put her old house on the market and snatched up the property she’d been eying in a different neighborhood. All new locks and double bolts on the doors had helped ease her anxiety. Running scared wasn’t something she was used to. She was the one who went after the criminals. Not the other way around.
But what she did know about the incident terrified her. Whoever shot her had also murdered her husband.
“I just wish whoever shot me wasn’t still out there.”
“We’ll find them,” he said.
“How? We have nothing.” She grabbed a napkin off the bar, wiped the sticky sugar residue off her fingers, then eyed the spinach croissant. “No forensic evidence. No DNA or fingerprints. Even our one eyewitness—yours truly—doesn’t have anything, and we know I was just a couple feet from the shooter.”
Or at least that’s what she’d been told from the ballistics report.