Dead by Midnight - Beverly Barton [124]
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah, I can see you are.”
“It’s three-thirty.” She pointed to the lighted bedside clock. “I’m going back to bed. I suggest you do the same.”
“Yeah, sure. I…uh…I…”
“What?” she asked.
He took a few tentative backward steps. “You know that you don’t deserve what’s happening to you, don’t you?”
She eyed him quizzically. “Yes, I know.”
He nodded.
“Is there anything else?”
He shook his head.
“Good night, Mike.”
“Yeah, good night, Lorie.”
He turned, walked away, and couldn’t get back to the guest bedroom fast enough.
Chapter 24
When Nicole Powell woke, she found herself alone in bed. She stretched her arm out over Griff’s side and caressed the wrinkled sheet. The room lay in darkness, only the glow of dawn glimmering through the windows and balcony doors hinting of the time. Since Griff occasionally couldn’t sleep and would get up at odd hours, she wasn’t overly concerned. But she knew that Shelley Gilbert’s murder weighed heavily on his mind, as it did hers. The death of a second Powell Agency employee so soon after Kristi Arians’s brutal murder had the entire agency in an uproar. They had sent Mitch Trahern to Dunmore to represent the agency. As a former federal agent, his investigative skills were unequaled, so Griff trusted him to find out every detail, even confidential information.
She lifted her head enough to look at the bedside clock. 5:38 A.M. Groaning softly, she turned over and lay flat on her back. When Griff got in one of his pensive moods, she usually left him alone. He often sought her out in his own good time. And if he sometimes kept his thoughts to himself, she knew that he found comfort merely in her presence. She knew because he had told her so. Even now, after three years of marriage, she didn’t always understand her husband.
Flipping over onto Griff’s side of the bed, she grabbed his down pillow and hugged it to her body. She might not always understand him, but she always loved him, even when she was angry with him. He wasn’t an easy man to live with and he would be the first to admit it. Demons from the past haunted him. Dark secrets lay buried in the depths of his soul, secrets that he had been unable to share with her. Secrets that bound him to Sanders and Yvette.
Nicole shoved the pillow aside and got out of bed. After putting on her robe and slipping into her satin house shoes, she went in search of her elusive husband. As she descended the stairs to the main level of their home, the early morning quiet surrounded her. The first place she looked was Griff’s study, his private sanctuary from the world. But the door stood wide open and the room was empty. Had he left the house? Gone for a solitary walk around the lake? If so, he would return soon enough.
Knowing she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, Nic headed for the kitchen. She could make coffee. She might even make scones or muffins and scramble some eggs and have breakfast waiting for Griff when he came in from his walk.
As she neared the kitchen, she noted light coming from beneath the closed door and heard the mumble of voices. Griff was in the kitchen. And he wasn’t alone. Or perhaps he was on the phone talking to Mitch Trahern or one of the other agents.
She tiptoed up to the door and stopped. Listening quietly, she recognized the other male voice. Sanders.
“We must not assume anything,” Sanders said. “Reading more into these deaths than there actually is would be foolish.”
“And ignoring the possibility that Kristi Arians and Shelley Gilbert were killed solely because they were both Powell Agency employees would be just as foolish,” Griff replied. “If someone is targeting our employees—”
“If someone is—and that is a big if—then we have no way of knowing what his motive might be. It could have nothing to do with Malcolm York.”
Nic gasped silently. What would make Griff think someone connected to Malcolm York had targeted Powell agents? York, the man who had kidnapped Griff when he was twenty-two and held him captive for several years, was