Read Online Kindred Intentions by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli - Free Book Online Page A

“You said there’s something to eat over there?”
    “Only non-perishable food, I don’t go there
often. Anyway, yes.” He paused to check his watch and then gazed at the sky.
“There’s also warm water.”
    “Warm water …” She’d let those words escape in
a dreamy tone. She could take a shower, maybe there was something else to wear.
She had to throw away what remained of her suit. The sooner she did it, the
faster she would forget her pain at having destroyed such a beautiful outfit.
Then something even more desirable than a shower occurred to her. “Is there a
phone, too?”
    “Yes.” As he spoke, Mike kept looking in front
of him distractedly, leading their strides. From time to time he pulled or
pushed her sideways, or gestured with his arm, so that she could avoid an
obstacle. And she had learnt to follow those hints automatically. So much for
always hating to go hiking. “But …” he added, like he was correcting himself.
“There’s no signal in that area.”
    Okay, his last remark had left her even more
disoriented. “And what use is a phone with no signal?”
    “It works if you move three miles westwards.”
It sounded easy.
    But Amelia was still confused. “Convenient.”
    “Well, usually I don’t go there by foot and
that phone is just a spare one. Normally, if I needed it, it’d be no big
trouble to drive three miles by car.”
    No, that explanation was still absurd, but she
decided to overlook it. Spy business. She didn’t want any part of it. “Okay,”
she said, hardly convinced.
    “This story with Goldberg and the murders is
bigger than what you at the police can handle. You should have kept out of it.”
He had addressed her with a frown.
    So she was right. Mike was involved in some
investigation. He hadn’t ended up there by chance. Maybe in the end she wasn’t
the one they wanted to kill. In that case, they really had let her go, even if
the mysterious dynamics of what had happened in the cottage kept unsettling her
thoughts.
    “Murders occurring in the City are the
business of the City of London Police , we couldn’t stay out.” She liked to refer to the police in the
first person plural, it made her feel part of something important, gave her a
sense of authority.
    “I know that.” He offered her a serious gaze.
“I was referring to you, only you.”
    Amelia felt embarrassment together with a hint
of indignation. “Hey, I’m a trained officer. If they give me orders, I obey,
and I can perfectly handle any situation.”
    “Yes, I’ve seen you know your way around.”
Mike nodded, ill-concealing his amusement. “Except when you were about to earn
a bullet in your head, because you decided to chase a killer on your own.”
    She was caught by regret for her recklessness.
In that case she hadn’t followed orders at all and had been about to be killed.
And she would’ve succeeded, if he hadn’t intervened.
    “Anyway this isn’t the point,” he continued,
without lingering on that subject that humiliated her a bit. “Let’s say …” He
hesitated. “It would’ve been a shame if you’d ended up killed because of this
circumstance. It would’ve been a waste .” And he cracked a smile at her.
    Was he flirting? Not that she disliked the
idea, actually! But perhaps he was just trying to distract her so that she
wouldn’t ask more inappropriate questions or think too much about his
involvement in that mess. And he was definitely succeeding.
    A loud noise over their heads. They turned
their gazes upwards by instinct. But it hadn’t been thunder that caused it.
    “Is it your friends?” Amelia asked, at the
very moment that Mike dragged her under a tree, away from the sight of the
helicopter.
    It wasn’t his friends.
    “I said they wouldn’t give up.”
    Mike was leaning against the trunk and holding
her from behind, holding her around the waist with both arms. The cold she’d
felt until a second earlier vanished as if by magic.
    “Don’t move, be