“You must have mentioned it,” Dani said, her eyes on her shoveling.
He hadn’t. There was no way he’d said anything of the sort.
“My coat told you that too?” he asked, flabbergasted.
She wiped at her nose, still avoiding his gaze. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” he whispered. He resumed shoveling, suddenly too stunned to be cold.
“What does a Treasury agent do in the Bahamas?” she asked after they’d cleared another few feet. “That’s a long way from Washington.”
“Vacation,” he grunted.
“Oh.”
He wondered if she knew he was lying. She didn’t say anything more, and the camaraderie between them was gone. A few moments later, she stopped, her cheeks flushed with exertion, and asked him if he could finish up on his own.
“I did not ask for your assistance, Miss Flanagan,” he said, sounding like a schoolteacher. What an ass. But she had discombobulated him. Again.
“No. That’s true. But thank you.” She went inside the house but came back moments later shouldering an enormous canvas laundry bag. She walked past him without pausing and turned west when she reached the street.
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
“It is not your concern, Mr. Malone.” Her voice was as frosty as his had been.
He set his shovel against the side of the house and trotted to catch up with her.
“Let me carry that,” he insisted, feeling like an apology was in order.
“No . . . thank you. I can manage,” she huffed.
He took it from her arms with an impatient yank and settled it on his own shoulder, wondering in amazement how she’d managed it. It wasn’t light.
“What is this?”
“Clothing. A lot of clothing. I never know what I will need.”
“I see.” He didn’t, but that didn’t matter. He could help. “Lead on,” he directed. She didn’t move.
“I usually pull a wagon,” she said. “But with the snow, it would only get stuck, and I don’t have too far to go. Just up two blocks and over another.”
“Let’s go then.” He began walking in the direction she’d been headed. It was her turn to trot after him, but she seemed slightly panicked.
“Really, sir. I can manage,” she said, hurrying alongside him, kicking up snow with every step. God, what a miserable place. And had she just called him “sir”？
“I thought you were going to try to call me Michael,” he said.
“I was. But . . . it doesn’t roll off my tongue.”
“No. It doesn’t roll off anyone’s tongue.” No one but Molly called him Michael.
“Perhaps that’s because you’ve had so many names?”
“Good God, woman. How do you know these things?” he snapped, coming to a halt. The bag wobbled with his abrupt stop, and he almost dropped it.
Dani didn’t answer for a moment, her eyes on her feet. She dusted off the snow that was clinging to her skirt. Then she looked up at him in apology, and she told him.
“Your hat. You must have thought about what name you would use when you walked into the shop that first day. When I took your things, all the names were there, clinging to the brim like little plastic monkeys.”
Little plastic monkeys. He could picture them, the little monkeys, wearing his aliases.
“Like what? What names?” he asked, refusing to believe.
“Are you testing me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let me see if I can remember. Patrick O’Rourke. Mike Lepito. Mikey . . . or was it Micky? Micky Monahan? Michael Malone was the biggest monkey.”
He would have laughed at that had he not been so flabbergasted.
“I mean the biggest name,” she amended in a rush. “Most likely . . . you had spent a lot of time in that hat . . . thinking about who you are,” she explained.
He trudged along beside her, hardly knowing where he stepped, feeling a bit like a plastic monkey himself.
“Where are we going?” he asked five minutes later as she slowed in front of a nondescript building. He followed her to the rear, stepping in the tracks she made in the unblemished snow.
“I told you last night . . . I ready the indigent dead for burial.”
“Here?” he gasped, dropping the laundry bag with a grunt.
“Yes. Here.” She began unlocking the door next to a single loading dock. From the outside, it appeared to be just another storage facility. It was unmarked, unassuming, and as dreary as every other structure on the short street.