Chapter 15: Eleven O'Clock

Lark's POV

By ten that night I had a man with a cracked rib sitting on the edge of my bed with his shirt off.

I held a bag of frozen peas against his side and tried not to look at the rest of him.

"Hold still," I said.

"I am holding still."

"You breathe like a person being interrogated."

"It hurts to breathe."

"Then breathe smaller."

He laughed, and winced, and put his hand over mine on the peas.

His hand was warm. The bruise under it had gone purple and yellow, the size of a dinner plate.

Three men had put that there for a box of old paper, and I had not been in the alley in time.

I wanted to find every one of them and say so.

"Tell me what you're thinking," Calvin said.

"Case talk."

"It's ten twenty."

"Then I'm thinking about the clinic." I kept my eyes on the peas. "You said a single word to Monique. You took the ring and you left."

"What was I supposed to say?"

"Anything. Most men would have made her crawl."

"She crawled enough." His thumb moved over my knuckles. "I'm tired of watching people be sorry in rooms."

I looked up.

He was watching me with those steady gray eyes, and I forgot what I was going to say next.

Tomorrow he would walk into his grandfather's will and come out owning a lumber company, a lake house and a trust.

By Monday he would have a lawyer, a driver and a hundred reasons to be somewhere else.

I had run those numbers a dozen times since Wednesday.

Men with money don't keep women with a cuffing on their record.

"Lark."

"I'm here."

"You're a long way off."

"It's eleven in forty minutes," I said, and put the peas on the nightstand. "I've decided the rule is off until then."

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