Home - COD Simon Ghost Riley X Female OC

Chapter 3

"She says Corrado's dead."

"Proof?" Price looked through the photos Ghost had handed him.

Simon resisted the urge to shrug and instead clasped his hands behind his back. "She saw Halcon kill him."

"Hm." Price flipped to the others. He studied them and the notes, and said nothing else.

Simon stood in silence. He knew why he had been sent in with the photos. To judge the woman's reaction. They already had an idea of most of the names, who was who. It was about her. About feeling her out. It was nothing he hadn't done before, but the innocent way she answered, the obvious honesty in the face of very raw wounds had made him feel dirty doing it.

Price laid the file down. "We keep her until we know next steps. Get to know her. There's more for her to say, I can guarantee it."

"That sounds like next steps."

Price shot him a look and dismissed him. He left feeling no better than he had last time. But damn if he was going to let himself be bored.

Two more days passed and MJ had mustered the courage to ask Leeanne again if she knew how long they were going to keep her. The even keeled woman gave her the same answer as before, and so she began hoping someone new would walk through the door. Not that she knew where she would go.

New York was home, sure. Or it had been. Really, it had stopped feeling like home six months before she was taken, when her parents died. If she went back there now, she didn't know if she would have a place to live, she didn't know if her friends remembered her, she wouldn't have her place back at the firm. She would have nothing. The thought sunk her, and she rested only in knowing there's know way she could return to the low she was at a few days prior.

She hadn't really believed them when they told her she was nearly dead when they found her, but she did now. The improvement the time had made was monumental. She could sit up, lie down, she was awake long enough to watch a movie that the medic had played for her. She ate solid food three times in a day and wasn't sick. But she wasn't sleeping as much either, and she had questions.

An angel loosely disguised as a devil answered her prayers sometime that afternoon when Simon Riley let himself into the room where she still lay. No one had sent him back since he returned with her IDs of the men from before. He returned on his own to do what Price had originally told him to do. Get close, get to know her. See if she's lying, see if she's loyal.

"Hello." Her smile reached her eyes this time. She had color in her face.

"Hi." He settled into the same chair next to her bed.

"I was wondering when you would be back." She said, turning away and taking a sip of water.

"How do you feel?"

She turned back to him, searching for something genuine behind the question. She shrugged. "I feel better. I've eaten twice today already. And they want me up and walking soon."

He nodded, shifting in his seat. "I have some more questions for you."

That color he had seen in her paled slightly. She didn't answer. She had known why he was there, but having to face it turned her stomach anyway.

"What happened in New York?" His voice, same as ever, wasn't unkind.

She nodded, as if she had suspected he might ask, and her fears were confirmed. She looked down, away from him, and fidgeted with the edge of her blanket for a moment.

She spoke quieter this time, guarded. "Will it help? Talking about it now, I mean." She swallowed. "Will it help you stop them?"

He nodded without thinking. He had no way to know if it would help or not. Suddenly, he wasn't there to determine if she was a liar. There's no way she wasn't being genuine, not with eyes like that. He was there out of curiosity. To know what makes a woman who can survive what he wished he didn't know. What he wished she hadn't had to tell him.