13. Chapter 13

thirteen

Lucas

D amn that woman. She was so stubborn she was going to end up getting herself killed just because she didn’t want me to help her.

And I needed to help her. Not just because I needed to see the light at the end of the tunnel on this case, but because she really wasn’t a bad person. She was annoying as all shit, but spending time with Mom this morning showed me just how much compassion she had in her.

Maybe everything really was just a coincidence. Maybe she really wasn’t into anything shady. Maybe Leo Lombardi just decided to take matters into his own hands after a shitty date because he was a shitty person.

I began a circle around the house, keeping an eye out along the base for the promised outlet. There. It was near the back door, scarily close to the hose bib. Was Athena trying to electrocute me, or was that a coincidence, too ?

I leaned closer, feeling at the spout, but it was dry as a bone. No visible water leaks to mess with the outlet.

I grabbed my charging cord from my pocket, plugging it into the wall before connecting my phone to the loose end. I glanced around, seeing a couple patio chairs and a small table a few feet away. I hauled one of the wooden Adirondacks over, but a flash of a floral curtain in an upstairs window caught my attention as I turned back around with the little table.

Was that Athena or was someone else in her home?

I gently set the table down to the side, inching forward while my hand went to my gun. I didn’t take it out of the holster yet, but I wanted to be prepared. I glanced at her back door; there was a regular doorknob and but the deadbolt looked brand new, unlike what I’d seen on her front door. If the deadbolt was engaged, I wouldn’t be able to get in through that door.

I glanced back up. The curtain of that upstairs window stayed open a couple inches and someone was definitely moving around up there, but I still couldn’t be sure who it was. Surely Athena would have noticed an intruder and screamed by now if she was in danger. Right?

I glanced back down, noting the windows framing the door, a little higher up than strictly necessary; I was probably facing the kitchen, the windows raised higher over the countertops. I could use one of the lawn chairs to climb up to one of those windows and break the glass if Athena was in trouble.

But then I saw her face in the upstairs window.

I let out a sigh of relief, holstering the gun again. She said she would be taking a shower, so that room was probably her bedroom or upstairs bathroom.

I froze at that realization. Was she getting ready to get in the shower up there?

The gentleman my mother raised warned me to look away, but the professional in me worried about her being so exposed—and not in a naked way. If I could see her here, so could a sniper. I glanced around the yard, but nothing seemed out of place. I couldn’t see any neighbors looking over the fence or through their windows.

Plus, it would be smart to wait and see if she exposed herself in the traditional sense so I could be thorough when I told her just how stupid she was being. I didn’t want to be in the wrong if I scolded her and it turned out she was just standing in front of a hallway window. She would think I was even more of a dick. In a way, waiting to confirm everything I could or couldn’t see would be the right thing to do so she could get ready more modestly in the future. It would be gentlemanly, like my mother would want.

I wasn’t fooling myself with all that circular logic, but I still took a step back and sat in the remaining Adirondack, shifting the chair slightly so I was facing the house before leaning back, waiting.

Athena was walking back and forth into frame, grabbing this or that. With my much lower angle I could see her from the waist up, still in that little purple tank top she slept in, a brush in hand before she walked back out of sight. A moment later I saw her again, her shoulder-length hair twisted up and out of the way, a towel wrapped around her torso as she faced away from me. This was definitely her bathroom. She was about to get in the shower and she was already naked .

I reached down to adjust my cock.

I could see steam starting to build around the room, the edges of the window beginning to fog.

I did another quick perusal of my surroundings. Not a peep from the neighbors. No one else was around.

I debated the merits of fully grabbing my cock and releasing some of the tension when it happened. Athena, facing into her bathroom, back to the window, dropped her towel. I held my breath, waiting for the moment she’d turn around. I didn’t want her to do that; I wanted her to stay modest for freaking once and not give the neighbors a free show. I didn’t want her to turn around and show me the tits I’d been doing my best not to think about since I held her body against mine at the airport two days ago.

She turned her body. Not enough for me to see anything indecent, but my heart still pumped hard in anticipation. I lay my hand against my dick, but otherwise didn’t move. I didn’t want to have to use my imagination if I didn’t have to. If I could just be a little more patient, I might not need to.

Her body turned to face the window fully, but her arms were crossed to cover her chest as she kneeled down until I could only see from her collarbones up. Too late I realized that she was pulling back the curtain and looking right at me, hand on my dick while she was naked in front of me.

She pushed the window open enough to stick her head out.

“Pervert!” she called down to me. I dropped my hands to my sides. “I told you to stay out of my bathroom! That includes looking inside like a peeping tom, too! ”

I felt a blush start to rise in my cheeks, but my embarrassment flagged when I saw her cocky little smirk. She did all that shit on purpose.

“Not my fault if you leave your curtains open for me to take in the view. Or are you so used to flaunting your body everywhere and to everyone that you don’t care who sees you?”

Her smile dropped. “Are you calling me a slut?”

That wasn’t my intention. I was too busy sticking my foot in my mouth over and over to actually think about the words coming out of there or what they implied.

“Screw you,” she said, slamming the window down again and closing the curtains.

“Shit,” I said, feeling like an ass. To be fair, I knew that I was an ass, no question.

I sighed, knowing there wasn’t anything else to do about it now. I never should have let Athena distract me. I should have called up to her and told her to close her damn window because she was a target.

Why was I letting myself get distracted? Why was it so hard to focus on the mission around her? I needed to put the Morelli syndicate behind bars and put this damn case to rest so I could move on. It shouldn’t be this difficult.

Getting onto the CACHTU was what mattered. I was (usually) good at my job, and my skills could be utilized there. I didn’t want anyone else to suffer the way my family did when Dani disappeared. Was there someone as committed as me on the team when she went missing? If there was, would she have been found? Nobody deserved to suffer the way Mom still was suffering so many years later. Not even time could repair some broken hearts.

The CACHTU was my top priority. It had been since the day local law enforcement told us they were letting the case go cold, told us what probably happened to my baby sister, what she most likely experienced, and that there was a good chance she was dead after the first forty-eight hours, nonetheless the six months since she was reported missing.

I graduated college with the aim of going right into the FBI. Finding the truth—no matter how grisly—and stopping the bad guys from making other people go through what we did were always my top priorities. Every single day for the last eleven years.

But I was letting Athena get in the way of that. Why? She wasn’t my type at all.

My girlfriends were always kind, pretty, traditional kind of women. They baked, gardened, and crocheted. They would happily cook up a good meal, something that tasted great after I’d been working hard all day when I didn’t want to microwave something from the freezer. They were dainty, letting me feel like a man when I helped open up a stuck jar or relocated a spider back outside. They were polite and demure, never saying such uncouth things or dressing in such scandalously short dresses as I’d seen on Athena’s social media. They never would have dreamed of teasing me with their naked bodies through their bathroom window.

I stopped and swallowed deeply over my dry throat. I just needed to find a new girlfriend. I needed to get laid. It had been longer than I’d ever gone without sex since I lost my virginity at seventeen. The lack of sex was just messing with my brain, confusing my instincts.

Athena was all wrong for me, and I needed to stop focusing on her wicked little smile and focus back on the case. It’s not like she was all that special.

I jumped out of the chair facing her bathroom and moved to the one I’d dragged up close her house, settling in to check my email and focus on anything except that upstairs window. I still hadn’t received the surveillance photos and videos I’d requested so I sent out a couple strongly worded emails, knowing I’d get a response back fairly quickly. Then I glanced through all the files I’d already scoured several times over.

I was back to rereading the information Witness C gathered before she went into hiding about various consultants and vendors the Morellis worked with. Mark had helpfully been in the file recently, verifying information as factual and providing additional context where it made sense.

I paused when I got to the part I’d read just the other day. Margaret Keenan, accountant, had worked on the Morelli financials. She was recently deceased, survived by her daughter, Athena Kane and pre-deceased by her husband George Kane many years prior.

Athena’s father had been dead for the last fourteen years. Who the hell was she talking to on the phone? What kind of shady shit was she getting into right under my nose?

I welcomed the return of my anger, knowing it was a better motivator than feeling sorry for myself. If she was straight-up lying to me, then who knew what her real motives were? What kind of fucked up game was she playing ?

This is what came of trying to skirt the rules, of letting Mark’s words get under my skin and tempt me. The last time I blatantly broke the rules I got Dani a fake ID so we could all go out partying for her seventeenth birthday, and we lost her. It never would have happened if I’d just taken her out to an age-appropriate place.

Rules existed for a reason. I couldn’t break them and risk something even worse happening. I needed to stop thinking about Athena as anything except a suspect.