Special Forces Saviour. Janie Crouch
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case.”
Without another word, Derek turned and walked out the lab doors. Jon and Liam said their goodbyes as they left, too. Molly finally began breathing normally again.
But as the doors closed, she heard it, although they obviously didn’t mean for her to: quiet laughter and the words Mousy Molly.
Molly stayed where she was against the evidence table as if glued there. It wasn’t Derek who called her mousy, it was never Derek. But it was everyone else. Molly didn’t think Jon and Liam meant any harm by the expression, but it was true. Molly was mousy in all its elements: nervous, shy, lacking in presence or charisma. Heck even her coloring was mousy: brown eyes, brown hair.
Okay, yeah, it hurt a little bit. Molly didn’t want to be mousy. And really most of the time she wasn’t that bad. It was just when she was around Derek that she became unbearable to herself.
Molly brought her hands down to her waist where Derek’s had been. Derek had actually touched her. That didn’t happen very often. Although they saw each other a few times a week, Derek was very careful not to touch her in even the most casual way.
He really hadn’t touched her at all since the time he showed up at her condo three years ago—drunk—and they’d had sex.
Molly still grimaced when she thought about it. He’d been inebriated, he’d needed a friend. She should’ve just made a pallet for him on her couch and let him sleep it off.
Instead of taking him to her bed and having the most wonderful night of her life.
Except Derek had been gone when she woke up the next morning. And he had never brought it up again, so she assumed he didn’t remember much about that night at all. But Molly did. She also remembered their embrace in the lab about a year ago... The only other time he’d touched her.
Molly sighed and pushed herself off the table. There was no way she was going to start thinking about this again. She had entirely too much work to do. She would put in a call to David, the newest young tech, and see if he was willing to make some extra money by coming back in and helping her with this processing.
There was a lot of important work to do and she planned to get it done. She might be Mousy Molly like the guys said, but there was one thing she knew how to do well: her job.
Derek cringed when he heard Jon and Liam’s Mousy Molly comments as they followed him out the lab doors. How he hated that nickname. He knew the guys didn’t really mean any harm by it, neither Jon nor Liam would ever purposely be unkind to someone like Molly, but Derek still hated it.
“I think you probably could’ve pushed to get more of our evidence processed tonight,” Jon said with a little snicker as they walked down the hallway. “I don’t know why Liam and I even tried talking to her. We should’ve used you from the beginning.”
“It’s not like that, Jon.” Derek kept walking, hoping they’d just drop it. They had a meeting with Omega’s Critical Response Division Director Steve Drackett in five minutes, teleconference with state officials not long afterward.
Both men laughed. “Uh, it’s exactly like that. Of course, it’s always like that with Molly when it comes to you,” Liam told him.
Jon continued, “Yeah, if you had asked her to process all our evidence tonight I bet she would’ve done it. If she could’ve managed to get a sentence out.”
Liam stopped walking and, with a dramatic sigh, grabbed Jon by the waist and pushed him up against the hallway wall. Liam pulled out a pen and held it in front of Jon’s face.
Derek stopped to watch the show that was obviously for him.
“Just this one piece of evidence, Molly.” Liam deepened his voice to mimic Derek, wiggling the pen and keeping his other hand on Jon’s waist.
Jon’s falsetto was even more annoying, especially given he was three inches taller than Liam’s six-one. “B-but D-Derek, we’re s-so busy.”
If anything, Liam’s voice got even deeper. “Please, Molly. For me? Because I’m Derek Waterman and I’m the best agent in the world.”
“For you D-Derek, anything.” Derek watched as his two coworkers embraced, then pulled apart, bowing.
Derek raised an eyebrow and just stared at them. “You morons done?”
He started walking down the hallway again.
“Oh, come on, Derek.” Jon caught up to him first. “We like Molly as much as anybody. Hell, everybody likes her, she’s so sweet and kind. But she gets so awkward around you, it’s pretty entertaining.”
“Obviously, she’s not your type,” Liam continued. “That’s cool.”
“What do you mean she’s not my type?” Derek knew he shouldn’t let himself get drawn into this conversation, but couldn’t help it.
Of course Liam was right, Molly wasn’t his type. Molly was sweet, kind, tender, gentle.
Everything Derek knew he should stay away from. Everything he knew he would destroy if he allowed himself near.
“I just mean you’re not interested or attracted or whatever. It’s obvious by the way I’ve never even seen you touch her before today.” Liam shrugged. “You don’t take advantage of her feelings, which is admirable.”
Yeah, Derek tried not to touch Molly, because every time he did it went further than he wanted. Like a few minutes ago. He’d touched her waist, and all he could think about was sitting her up on that table and kissing her until neither of them even remembered what the word evidence meant.
“Yeah, I wish someone would get that tongue-tied around me,” Jon said. “At least you got her to process the important evidence.”
“Molly works hard, you guys. She’s probably going to be here all night, doing what we asked plus all her other stuff. None of us will be working all night. So stow the comments.”
That shut them up. Good. Derek needed to drag his focus away from Molly Humphries and back onto this case since they were walking into the director’s office.
“Quite a mess today, gentlemen,” Steve Drackett, division director, said as he opened his office door and met them in the hallway. “Walk with me on the way to the teleconference room.”
“Yeah, it was a mess,” Derek told him.
“What happened?” Steve’s tone wasn’t angry or condescending.
Derek explained what happened this afternoon, about the suspect killing himself and the house being burned to the ground. Since no harm had come to any bystanders, it was a little easier to report.
“So today was both good and bad,” Steve said.
“Mostly bad,” Jon muttered.
They made it to the conference room door. Derek opened it and they all moved inside. Steve had been giving daily briefings to a group of DC state officials—a committee of congressmen, senators, members of the Department of Defense and Department of Justice—each day since the Chicago bombing. Since Omega Sector’s Critical Response Division was a multiagency task force made up of the best people each agency had to offer, faster, better and more detailed results were generally expected. And they were expected from people very high up in the governmental food chain.
So not having those expected results, hell, not having any results at all when they reported every day was getting a little old for everyone.
“We’ve got just over seven minutes until the call,” the technician working the room told them. In seven minutes they would be staring down five different government officials on different screens.
“The only good thing to report about today is that