Page 39 of Keeping Lilith
“Are you okay, J?” The moniker tripped off her tongue as if she’d been saying it for years and not for the first time.
He looked up with surprise and a flicker of happiness in his eyes, as though he liked what she’d called him. “Yeah, why?”
“You look worried. Is there something you need to tell me? Is it about Micah?” A shudder of revulsion tracked down her spine as she said the name she’d been trying to forget since she swore she saw him at the restaurant a few nights ago.
But it had been so fleeting. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. As if her mind had conjured him up, and he hadn’t really been there at all.
“No, but I did find out something about him.”
Fear threatened to engulf her, but she pushed it aside. She wasn’t going to cower every time a reference to her past wasbrought up, even if, only seconds ago, she’d been repulsed by simply saying his name. “What?”
Julian got up and came over to where she was sitting, dropping on the couch next to her. She welcomed the warmth of his solid body beside her. Since their date, they’d made out a lot, but Julian hadn’t taken it any further. She wanted to, though. How she wanted to feel his hands all over her body. Run her hands over him.
Maybe tonight.
But that thought was for later. Julian had said nothing since he’d sat, and it was setting her worry meter into overdrive. “Talk to me, Julian. What’s going on?” she asked when he still had said nothing.
“After the other night when you saw him, I pulled the files on the takedown of The Hopeful Sunshine. Micah gave the agents investigating sufficient information for them to believe that he wasn’t involved as much as his position in the leadership group would suggest. They concluded he didn’t really know the inner workings and that he was as much a victim as the others were.”
“That’s rubbish! Micah was always in Staunton’s office. Always walking with him. Always sitting beside him and talking to him. Micah lied. He fooled those agents into letting him go.”
The very idea that he was walking the streets filled her with anger and panic. He had always been one of the meaner men in the group. Always looked for a reason to yell at the women. She didn’t want to think about how he treated his “wives,” as he had a few. And it wouldn’t surprise her if he had also forced his way into the beds of some of the single women.
“What else do you know about him?” Julian asked.
“Just what I told you. He can’t be trusted, that’s for sure.” Panic threatened to drown Lilith, and she concentrated on her breathing to keep the attack at bay. “You need to tell whoever you work with that they need to watch him.”
With what Julian had told her, Lilith was convinced that Micah had been at the restaurant.
Julian’s warm hand clasped hers, and some of her panic receded. “I will. I’ll make sure they locate him and bring him in for further questioning.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. Now that Micah has his freedom, he will not want to go back. He’ll likely convince whoever questions him that whatever they’ve heard about him are all lies. I doubt he’ll be easy to find as well.”
“You forget we also have a secret weapon in Cass.” Julian brushed his knuckles down her cheek. “She’ll be able to locate him if the Feds can’t.”
“I hope so.” She recalled what Julian had said when she initially asked about Micah. “You said that Micah wasn’t what was worrying you. What is? Can you tell me? Or is it part of one of the cases you’re working on?”
Julian didn’t talk much about his job, and she respected that, as she was aware it was imperative that what he did, and what he was working on, was kept under lock and key. “You’re right, I can’t go into specifics but . . .” He squeezed the hand he was still holding. “I’m going to have to go away for a few days. We’ve got the go ahead to take down a person of interest we’d been watching. It’s a complex case, and the guys from Alliez will be joining us.”
The panic that she thought she’d conquered fluttered to life again at the prospect of being by herself. Alone in this house with Micah roaming the streets of LA. If he’d found her once, he could find her again. “Oh” was all she managed to get out.
“I know this is probably freaking you out, so I wanted to suggest that maybe, while I’m away, you go stay with Cass. Irish is going to be on the trip as well, so she’s also going to be by herself.”
The idea wasn’t a bad one, and she did like Cass, but maybe she needed to be by herself. Learn to be independent. It wasn’t as though Julian was keeping her under lock and key, but she hadn’t ventured far from his house since she’d moved in.
Wasn’t she supposed to be taking command of her life? Make decisions about the direction her life was going to go in?
“Do you know how long you’ll be gone?” she asked instead of saying she’d go to Cass’s place.
“Hard to say. I would like to say that I’ll only be gone a couple of days, but things happen and sometimes we have to pivot.”
Something struck Lilith. Something that he’d said to her not long after they’d rescued her. “You said you don’t normally go on the missions. That you come in after everyone has been taken away. Why are you going this time?”
“This one is more complex than usual. I’ll still be carrying out my typical duties, but my boss wants me to be on the ground with this one.”
As far as answers went, it said a bit without saying a lot, and she appreciated what Julian had given her. “Can you at least tell me where you’re going?”
Julian smiled sympathetically at her, and she had her answer even before he said the words. “I can’t.”