“She did?”
Kira nodded. “She was one of the first people I met here in Renegade outside of the hospital. First at the country club, where we played tennis. Then she invited me to a charity gala. They’re do-gooder types, so it doesn’t really make sense if it’s her husband who’s behind it.”
“Unless she has no idea.” Luca shrugged, an easiness to his movements. Maybe trying not to betray to Kira exactly how intense the situation was.
But she’d experienced it firsthand.
Kira shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe Destiny is busy with the foundation and she doesn’t really know what his business is. You talked to them both. Do you really think he’s some kind of criminal mastermind? He seems like one of those down-home types—even if Destiny lives like they have crazy amounts of money.”
“Definitely worth looking into.” He frowned. “Not that I’d take anything Jenkins says at face value. He’s probably just giving me the runaround just for the sake of it. It does seem like there’s a whole lot of misdirection going on. Maybe the only way Jenkins thinks he’ll stay alive is by pointing a finger at Ralph. Meanwhile, Ralph is playing dumb until someone can prove he isn’t innocent. I might not even put it past him to be faking the attempts on his life to make it look like the syndicate has it out for him.”
“That would be frustrating, not knowing who is telling the truth and who is lying.” She glanced at the windows and her sheer floor-to-ceiling drapes. Her mother would have loved those curtains. “Why can’t people just say what they mean?”
“As in, be up front?”
“I don’t like when people say one thing to your face, then behind your back they’re telling a completely different story.”
“Sounds like you’ve been burned.”
She looked at him, expecting to see her insecurity reflected on his face. Like he thought she’d been too naive to avoid it. “I just like honesty.”
“Honesty is good.” Luca rested his arm along the back of the couch. “I like to dig for the truth and solve the puzzle of what’s really going on.”
“I do that sometimes when I’m diagnosing a patient. But it should be straightforward. It shouldn’t be a challenge to work out what’s wrong with someone and how to treat them.” She shook her head. “Maybe I’ve just seen too many people who suffer from the same thing. Like a kind of shared trauma, or an outbreak.”
“The kind of thing you walked away from. Working in the refugee camp.”
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but the truth is that it was slowly killing me.” Why was she telling him this? She hadn’t even admitted that to herself, despite the fact Jordan had tried to explain it more than once. “Trying to navigate people’s expectations and do a job I didn’t plan for, when all I ever wanted was to be a doctor.”
“You got in over your head.” He shifted in his seat, reaching over and squeezing the top of her foot. “But you got out.”
“I didn’t do it on my own. I have a friend, and she made me choose life.” Kira rolled her eyes, smiling to herself. “That’s what she said. She told me I couldn’t keep going the way I was, that I had to choose life.”
“Sounds like a good friend.”
Kira nodded. “She is.”
And why did he look relieved by that?
Oh, because her friend was female?
She didn’t know what to think about any of this. Talk about being in over her head. She got the feeling this relationship was a whole lot different than burning out at work while trying to juggle everything—plus orders from clandestine agencies.
If she built a friendship with Luca, eventually she would have to tell him what she’d done. How her actions had led to the deaths of so many. And what was he going to think about that? Surely he would walk away from her and never look back. A guy like him, a hero, wouldn’t want anything to do with someone like her.
“Too bad we can’t erase what we’ve done.” She’d certainly tried though. “Walking away from it doesn’t change what happened.”
“I’ve rebuilt my life from nothing enough times to know that who you are always stays with you,” he said. “But why would that be a bad thing? Your whole life is about helping people get well.”
“It has to be. I’ve got a lot to make up for.”
He stared at her, a slight frown drawing his brows together.
“But that’s another conversation.” One she didn’t want to have right now, in this quiet moment.
“That implies you’re interested in doing this again. Or maybe we meet somewhere else, like a neutral location.”
“Is that an operator’s way of asking a girl out?” The question slipped from her lips before she realized what she was saying. She didn’t even know if she wanted to date him. She’d been thinking only in terms of friends and how who he was just seemed to fit her. He would understand the things she told him far better than anyone else.