The 9th Judgment - James Patterson [70]
He wouldn’t let me do a thing.
I was on my back in the center of the bed, looking up at him, huge and gorgeous in the soft light coming from the desk lamp and the streetlight outside.
“Don’t move, Blondie,” Joe said.
He tossed his towel over the door without taking his eyes off me. My breathing had quickened, and I fumbled with the belt that cinched my robe at the waist.
“What did I tell you, Linds? Doctor’s orders. Don’t move.”
I laughed as he stretched out on the huge bed beside me.
“My nose itches,” I said.
“I’ve got an itch, too.”
“Okay, goofball.”
“Goofball, huh?”
He turned onto his side and kissed my neck, a certain way he has of getting me from zero to sixty. I reached up to put my arms around his neck, and he put them back down. “Lie still.”
He undid my robe and shifted me—and then we were both naked under the covers.
We lay entwined, facing each other, my leg hooked over Joe’s hip, his arms wrapped entirely around me, my cheek in the hollow of his neck. I felt safe and very loved and had a sense of wonder that after all the ups and downs we’d weathered, we’d arrived at this wonderful state.
Joe gathered my hair and twisted it around his hand, then kissed my throat. He reached around me and pulled me closer. I made a small adjustment with my hips so that he could enter me. For a moment, I forgot to inhale. I was at the edge of a precipice, and I didn’t want to stop.
“Hang on a sec,” Joe said, reaching across me to open the drawer in the nightstand. I heard the crinkle of the foil-wrapped packet, and I put my hand on his arm and said, “No.”
“I’m just getting dressed here.”
“No. Really. Doctor’s orders. Don’t.”
“Hon? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Joe kissed me deeply and, while holding me tight, rolled us both so that I was lying on top of him. I raised myself up and folded my knees along his sides, placed my hands on his chest, and looked into his face. I saw the light in his eyes—his love for me. He put his hands on my hips, and, with our eyes wide open, we rocked slowly, slowly, no hurry, no worry.
There was no place I’d rather be.
No one I’d rather be with than Joe.
Chapter 101
I WAS AT my desk when Brenda buzzed me on the intercom. “Lindsay, there’s a package downstairs for you. Kevin doesn’t want to send it up without you checking it out.”
I took the stairs down to the lobby and found our security guard waiting near the metal detector. He held an ordinary black nylon computer case, my name on a label, many yards of clear packing tape wound around it. I wasn’t expecting a package. And I sure didn’t like the look of this one.
“I ran it through the metal detector,” our security guard said. “There’s metal in here, but I can’t make out what it is.”
“Where did this case come from?”
“I was checking people through, a whole bunch of kids from the law school, looking in camera bags and so forth, and when I turned around, this case was on the table. Nobody claimed it.”
“I’m calling the bomb squad, no offense,” I said.
“None taken,” Kevin said. “I’ll get the head of security.”
I was shaking again, my clothes sticking to me, my bruised shoulder throbbing. The hard crack of exploding bombs went off in my mind, and I thought about Joe saying that it was so easy to make a bomb, it was scary.
I called Jacobi from behind a marble column at the far side of the lobby and told him about the mystery case. I said that Peter Gordon probably had the skills to blow up the Hall of Justice.
“Get out of there, Boxer,” Jacobi said.
“You, too,” I said. “We’re evacuating the building.”
As I spoke, the alarm went off inside the Hall, and the head of security’s voice came over the PA system, ordering all fire wardens to their posts.
The building was emptied—judges and juries and prosecutors and cops and a floor full of jailed detainees all filed down the back staircase and out to the street. I left through the main door and listened to my heart lay down a three-four beat