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.“You aren’t the only one,” Boone agreed.“We’ve been willfully blind.” Clark sighed.Kilraven joined them.“He’s a great kid,” he said.“I wish I’d realized the connection before this, but Rogers never spoke about her family.We only knew that she’d had a lot of personal problems.Her ex-husband hounded her, you see,” he added, “always trying to get things from her to buy drugs with.He carried off Matt’s new motorized wheelchair and sold it.”“What a bum,” Winnie said angrily.“We’ll get Matt a new one,” Boone said.“No problem.”“We can get him an Xbox 360, too, and some games for it,” Kilraven said.He glanced at the tiny television.“And a bigger TV to play them on.”“Maybe an Xbox Live gold card, too,” Clark suggested.Kilraven was thoughtful.“He can stay with Winnie and me for a few days, after we’re married,” he said.“I have a three-bedroom apartment.We won’t be able to go down to Nassau for a couple of weeks.The senator’s wife had a change of heart and went to visit her sister in New York, but she’s supposed to be going to the Bahamas week after next.”“You spies know everything,” Clark said.Kilraven grinned.“Of course we do.”Winnie moved closer to him.“We could wait to get married….”“No, we couldn’t,” Kilraven said firmly, looking down at her.She averted her eyes, but the reply pleased her.Maybe he was getting used to the idea, and just maybe he wouldn’t want a divorce at the end of the pretense.MATT WAS BUNDLED INTO Boone’s big Jaguar, along with a ratty suitcase full of things he thought he’d need, and the apartment door was locked.“We’ll bring you up to the hospital tomorrow to see your mother,” Boone assured Matt.“I want to see her, too.”The others voiced their assent.“I’ll bring Winnie home in a little while,” Kilraven told them.“We still have things to talk about.”“We’ll leave a light on,” Keely said with a smile.They waved the Sinclairs off and got back into Kilraven’s own Jaguar.“This has been a very strange night,” Winnie said heavily.“I have a brother I didn’t know about, and a mother who’s a well-known police detective.I feel as if my life just turned on its axis.”“I can understand that.” He moved out into traffic.“He’s quite a boy,” he said, smiling.“Yes, he is.It’s amazing, how easily he speaks of his handicap.”“It’s only a handicap if he makes one of it.I had a friend in Iraq who had lost both his legs to a rocket attack.He was fitted with artificial ones and he wins races now.He said that as long as he still had his life, he wasn’t bothered by trifles.Trifles!” He laughed.“Can you imagine?”“Soldiers are tough,” Winnie said.“Boone came out of the service with wounds much worse than he ever told us about.Keely said some of them were bone-deep.He never said anything, and we never knew.”“We all have scars of one sort or another.”She glanced at him.“You said you’d had bullets dug out of you.”“I have.” His tone was grim.“One out of my lung, another out of my hip and one out of my arm.When I’m older, I’ll probably have some arthritis because of the way the bullet went in.They did repairs, but no repair is as good as the original part.”“Battle scars,” she said quietly.“Yes.”Her eyes narrowed.She looked at him evenly.“You wanted the most dangerous assignments you could find,” she said aloud, speaking as if she were accessing information from some intangible source.“You asked for them.One took you right into an enemy encampment and you walked straight at a man firing a machine gun…!” She broke off because he slammed on the brakes.Thank goodness they weren’t in traffic.“Who told you?” he asked curtly.“Who?”She was disconcerted.“Nobody,” she said at once.His eyes narrowed.He wasn’t buying it.“I don’t know anyone who was with you overseas, Kilraven,” she said reasonably.“Then how did you know that?”She grimaced and looked away.“I don’t know [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]