Chapter 4
GRAYSON
Over the next several hours, Macy and I go over the details of the operation I’m praying like fuck will bring her sister home before she gives birth.
I can see the guilt in her eyes and the way she’s wrestling with the desire to live her life even while her sister is missing.
It’s a torment I know all too well because for the past seventeen years, I’ve struggled with a similar guilt.
It is a constant battle between wanting to move on and the anguish of not knowing what happened to Cameron. Or worse, what is happening to her.
While gritting my teeth, frustrated that these feelings only ever surface while working with a woman I’m only meant to see as a colleague and friend, or when a significant family event is on the horizon, I return my focus to the paperwork.
I attend every family gathering, offer my congratulations, and embody the role of devoted brother, uncle, and son with perfection. Yet as soon as I return home, guilt swamps me.
They’re the weeks when I live off minimal sleep and gallons of coffee, only resting when my eyes can’t remain open for a second longer.
It is harder to put those logics into play when you can’t escape the circumstances that usually swamp you with guilt.
This assignment is close-knit. Our two-person unit lacks an office space at HQ, but instead of dreading the upcoming days like I usually do, hope trickles between the cracks of despair.
Mercifully, the amount of paperwork in front of me saves me from looking more deeply into my odd responses today. It is almost overwhelming. Macy made detailed notes and crafted a well-thought-out plan to move forward with her covert operative, but the urgency of her efforts is too great to ignore.
We’re running out of time—both for Macy and for me. Cameron is nearing the age when they dispose of most victims, and Macy will give birth in just a few weeks.
We can’t give up, though.
Failure is not an option.
As the clock ticks away the hours as if they are seconds, I work through the paperwork spread out around me. The case files have millions of notes, photos, and undocumented evidence, and I am determined to find the needle in the haystack.
“Did the satellite imagery ever document anyone under the age of thirteen? One of the baby-making rings we took down years ago used to let the mothers keep the children they classed as defects.”
I glance up from my notes when Macy remains quiet. She usually responds before all my question leaves my mouth. That is how appreciative she is to have help.
Macy sits behind the kitchen counter, her eyes struggling to stay open. She’s spent the last six hours clarifying queries I made in the first hour of our joint operation, and as much paperwork surrounds her as it does the couch I’m seated on.
“You should go to bed.” I scrub my eyes, vying to keep them open. “You look exhausted.”
A grimace stifles her yawn before she denies my suggestion. “I can’t.” I figure her response will mirror my sleepless nights—haunted by the ghosts of her past—but she demonstrates otherwise by proving that dicks come in human-shaped forms. “You’re sitting on it.”
I raise a brow, mostly confused but also bristling with anger. “What do you mean?”
Macy wipes away some gunk from her right eye while saying, “There’s only one bedroom in this apartment, and I lost the bed it comes with to the agent I was undercover with at the start of our assignment.
I’ve been sleeping on the couch since…” She pauses to calculate a figure, and when the delay announces her number will easily reach three digits, I am furious.
She’s pregnant, for fuck’s sake. That ranks higher than anything.
“You can have the bed.” I force my reply through a tight, firm jaw.
“Then where will you sleep?”
I drag my hand across the couch, doubling the pang of guilt beaming from her impressive eyes. Macy’s eyes show she bears more than she burdens and that she’s as exhausted from living life in the fast lane as I am.
They also show that she is a beautiful woman unaware of her appeal.
I stop looking at a fellow agent in a way I have no right to when Macy immediately rejects my offer.
“I can’t take the bed, Grayson. Not after you’ve allowed me to continue leading this case.
” She slips off the stool and pads into the living room to collect papers off the couch I’m hogging and return them to the bulletin boards.
“I’m fine with the couch. I am used to it. ”
I stand up, my head shaking. “It’s not fine. You’re pregnant. You need rest. Take the damn bed.” I glare at her, halting her protest. “I insist.”
She finally gives in, either too exhausted to argue or aware I am a stubborn fuck who doesn’t go anywhere without his gun and his handcuffs.
I have strategies to get her to accept my offer without my gun leaving my hip, and foolishly, my cock twitches at the reminder instead of shrinking.
After pinning heat sensory images of a property thirty clicks beyond the Mexican border back to their rightful spots on the bulletin board, I place my hand on the small of Macy’s back and guide her to the only closed door.
The bedroom is situated across from the bathroom and a compact laundry room. It is modest, barely big enough for a bed and a dresser.
When I flick on the light switch, Macy slowly enters the room, her exhaustion evident.
“Get some sleep.” Aware of what she needs to hear to ensure that’s a possibility, I add, “I’ll keep working on the case. You can take over from me when you wake.”
Her sigh brings back the tomato-and-cheese scent of the pizza we shared. “Okay. Thank you, Grayson.”
My heart races from her unexpected praise. After smiling reassuringly, I switch off the light, close the door behind me, and then return to the living room.
I spend the next two hours resecuring Macy’s evidence to the bulletin boards. Then I retrieve a file from my bag so I can dedicate a couple of hours to Cameron’s investigation, confident it will ease some of the guilt weighing heavily on my chest.
Working from a couch isn’t ideal, though I’ve experienced worse.
Nothing deadens your ass faster than a rock-hard hospital waiting room chair.
The reminder of the time I sat on one for hours on end prompts me to take my phone out of my pocket and dial a recently called number. It’s late for me, but it’s a somewhat decent time on the other side of the country.
Brandon James, a once fellow agent and my somewhat best friend, answers my FaceTime request in two rings. He signals to me that he’ll be with me in a minute before his focus shifts to someone in his recently restored farmhouse on the outskirts of New York.
“I’ll be out to feed Socks with you in a minute.” As he speaks to someone in front of him, his smile widens, turning blinding, before he completes his reply in sign language.
His wife, Melody, was born deaf, and although she had cochlear implant surgery a few years ago, they keep their filthy words out of their hearing children’s ears by using sign language.
I won’t tell you what Brandon signs, or you might end up as exhausted as I feel when I shift your dreams to nightmares.
“Still burning the midnight oil, I see,” Brandon murmurs once his focus shifts back to me.
“It’s almost dawn, punk. And I’m chasing something far more succulent than a worm.”
He laughs before reminding me that his exit from the bureau didn’t lessen his nosy-nancying. “It’s dawn here. It is three a.m. where you are.”
“Keeping tabs on me, pipsqueak?”
“Always,” he answers without shame. He has the right.
He bared his soul to me years ago, and I thanked him by doing the same.
He is the only person outside of my family who knows about Cameron and the investigation I’m conducting outside of bureau hours.
“Do you think this could be the entity that took Cameron?”
I shrug, honestly unsure. “Macy has a ton of info—”
“Macy? As in Special Agent Macy Machini?”
His ear-piercing tone arches my brow. I’ve not heard him use that pitch for anyone but his wife, and it balls my hands as quickly as it clenches my jaw.
“Yes, Macy, as in Special Agent Macy Machini.” The jealousy in my tone can’t be missed, so I won’t mention my expression. “Do you have something you need to tell me, punk?”
“No.” He cocks a brow and twists his lips. “Do you?”
When I glare at him through my screen, his cheeks redden, aggravating him further. He hates that he’s a blusher, and it sees him folding in under thirty seconds.
“Rumors are spreading like wildfire that Macy is pregnant.”
“Yeah, and?”
He takes my frustration in stride. “The same people who once said you guys had a thing are spreading them. They’re saying you’re her baby daddy.”
I scoff as if the idea is preposterous. “That would be a little hard considering I haven’t seen her in person in over three years. My dick is big, but I doubt it can stretch across the country.”
Brandon wrongly reads between the lines, preferring to go in that direction rather than imagine the size of my cock. “So you guys hooked up previously?”
I don’t know what the fuck his hand gesture means, but he needs to stop immediately before masturbation is off the table for me as a way to relieve stress.
“No, we haven’t.” I drift my eyes to the bedroom door to make sure it is still closed.
“Macy is a friend and colleague. That’s all she has ever been.
” My jaw involuntarily quivers during my last sentence.
Usually, it is a telltale sign that I’m lying.
This time around, it is more in disappointment and anger.
Macy and I became close while working together; however, things changed quickly after I let her plead self-defense for a murder she didn’t commit.
I’m also not looking for a relationship. Not now or back then.
How can I when the one I entered seventeen years ago never officially ended?
Needing to get this conversation off my failures, I say, “I know you miss seeing my handsome face, pipsqueak, but I called for a reason.”