Page 76 of Untouchable

A month ago, she’d be after this man without another thought. She would have made sure they fucked before the day was over. And it was troubling—deeply troubling—that she liked him a lot but had absolutely no interest in fucking him.

Clearing her throat, she pushed the thought aside, gave Jack a little wave, and started for the elevator.

In the silence, she could no longer keep an even more troubling revelation at bay.

It was true. It was horrible, but it was true.

She didn’t want Caleb to be guilty.

17

Caleb slammeddown his coffee mug in a futile expression of frustration.

Unfortunately, the mug was halfway full, and the impact sloshed hot coffee over his hand.

He impatiently pulled his hand away, waving it in the air to dry and cool it.

It was almost five o’clock, and the whole day had passed on an equally exasperating keel. Only very occasionally, on the worst days, did he keep drinking coffee all day long like this.

He’d just hung up with his investigator, and there was still little progress on looking into Kelly’s background. After the one lead he’d gotten last week about the Russians in Brighton Beach, they’d run into a dead end.

At Caleb’s sharp comment, the investigator had been trying to explain to him just now that they had to rely on word of mouth or documented evidence. There was little documented evidence of any of Kelly’s relationships, and the Russians were, for obvious reasons, a closemouthed community.

Caleb hadn’t taken the reasoned explanation particularly well. He’d laid the man out in his coldest tone, the one that made his staff want to run and hide.

He turned his desk chair so he could stare out through the wall of windows in his office. His view of the DC cityscape was enviable, but he wasn’t even seeing it at the moment.

The tension at the back of his head was almost unbearable, and he raised his hand idly to rub at it.

If Kelly would just tell him who the man was, he could take care of it for her.

She didn’t understand the depth of his connections, so she might believe his confidence was inflated. It wasn’t. He didn’t have simply money and connections. He had the entire DiMauro family network at his disposal.

She didn’t know that, however. She assumed, despite his money, he was bound by the limits of the law.

He wasn’t. He had the number of a guy who cleaned up messes, no matter what the messes were. Caleb could have Kelly’s mess cleaned up for her without the slightest twinge of his conscience. He’d done it before, and in this case he’d do it with pleasure.

But he could only help if she gave him a name.

He picked up his mug and brought it to his lips, but the coffee was lukewarm now, so he put it down without taking a full swallow. He kept rubbing his neck, picturing Kelly’s face if he could tell her that she’d never have to worry about the bastard threatening her again.

“Mr. Marshall.”

Caleb heard the voice with one part of his mind, but it didn’t register immediately.

“Mr. Marshall.”

This time the words sank in. He blinked a couple of times and twirled the chair around to see Linda standing in the doorway of his office. She’d obviously just knocked and spoken to him twice.

“Oh, sorry,” he said with a rueful smile. “I was out of it.”

“I apologize for interrupting,” she said although she had nothing to apologize for. After working for him for fifteen years, she still wouldn’t call him anything except Mr. Marshall. “Did you miss the call to Jim Strait?”

Caleb made his brain focus and realized he was supposed to have called someone fifteen minutes ago, a call that had been scheduled for three days now. Linda had even reminded him of it five minutes before he was to make the call.

But then the investigator had called about Kelly, and he’d completely forgotten about everything else.

He stifled a groan. “Shit. I totally forgot. Can I call him now?”