Chapter 29 Macy
MACY
Through one of the many monitors in the surveillance van, I watch Grayson approach Cameron’s apartment, my breath caught somewhere between my ribs and my throat.
Despite the pleas of my heart to shut down the feed, I don’t listen.
It’s like a crash site. Although the thought of witnessing the scene up close repels me, I can’t tear my eyes away.
My heart thumps in my ears when Grayson’s knuckles hover near Cameron’s door but never connect with the highly varnished wood.
He’s hesitating. I know that look. It’s the same one he gave me before he left the van five minutes ago.
He wasn’t sure if leaving was the right choice, as if he feared I might disappear the moment he turned away.
Cameron’s disappearance left him with many neuroses, particularly a fear that one glance could be the final one.
I told him I’d be fine, and I meant it. Mostly.
I’m not worried about the dangers that target partnerships like ours.
I am a trained agent who has taken down perps double my size.
I’m afraid that I am setting myself up for heartbreak.
The fear that I’m minutes away from losing Grayson gnaws at me and makes my chest ache.
But despite the anxiety, I will risk having my heart decimated for him.
He’s been through more torment than any of us, and he deserves to be happy.
If that happiness is with Cameron, I will accept his decision and support him as he has always supported me.
Though I assured Grayson I didn’t need a babysitter, to be safe, he wired himself up as if he were attending a sting undercover before ordering Brandon to keep an eye on me.
Brandon watches me as closely as I watch Grayson. Being treated as a fragile artifact should bother me, but it doesn’t. I’d rather they mollycoddle me than forget me and leave me in the dark.
“Are you sure we should be encouraging this, Mace?” Brandon asks, stealing my focus from Grayson, who is still building the courage to knock. “Alex didn’t send him to the other side of the country for no reason. You know that, right?”
I wish I didn’t, but I do. It wasn’t a coincidence that out of all the agents in the bureau, Grayson was the one to land at my doorstep.
Instead of answering Brandon’s question, I remind myself that Grayson needs this more than anything. “We just need to support him as he always has us.”
Brandon hums yet offers nothing further.
I check my oxygen levels when Grayson shifts his weight, then knocks once. The bang of his knuckles on the glossy wood echoes through the feed. It is as thumping as my pulse but as hollow as the pit forming in my gut.
When Grayson’s knock goes unanswered, I lean forward and squint through the brightness of the screen. Cameron’s apartment is silent yet occupied. Brandon conducted surveillance while Grayson and I were traveling to her building.
It was pretentious of me to involve Brandon in this while faking a lengthy bathroom break, but I didn’t want Grayson walking into a potential situation unprepared.
Cameron is a victim, but certain aspects of her demeanor rub me the wrong way.
Maybe it’s jealousy, but I couldn’t live with myself if I dismissed it as envy and then something went wrong.
“She’s home, right?” I keep my voice low so Grayson’s earpiece doesn’t pick up my question.
Brandon doesn’t look away from the monitor. “Yeah. Her car is in the lot, and infrared has registered movement inside her apartment. She’s just ignoring him.” His frustrated sigh whistles through the speakers, drawing out my annoyed huff.
I bite the inside of my cheek, fighting not to retaliate to Cameron’s deliberate silence with more than a huff. She’s making Grayson wait, or worse, making him chase like he hasn’t already been pursuing her for seventeen years.
My nostrils flare to cool my rising body temperature.
I hate how upset Grayson looks when he knocks again, harder this time.
His shoulders are lower than they were seconds ago, and he’s biting the side of his lip hard enough to mark—both telltale signs that his ego is being slapped with back-to-back whacks.
He needs this closure, and I detest that Cameron is keeping it from him.
I straddle the line between good and evil before my love for this man overrules all rational thinking. “What’s her license plate number?”
Brandon’s brows knit as he glances at me, confused. “Why?”
“Just tell me.”
He sighs, taps a few keys, and then reads off Cameron’s license plate number. Worry that I’m making a mistake trickles through my veins when I jot it down, but the plan has already formed, and I do not back down when challenged.
Grayson returns to the van ten minutes later, his knocks unanswered. Anger and confusion pinches his face, and he clenches his jaw tight, as if holding back a torrent of words he knows he can’t take back once he releases them.
I meet him at the sliding door of the van, looking relaxed. He’s wound up tight enough for the both of us, so I won’t add to his frustration.
“She didn’t answer,” he says, like he isn’t wired up.
“She will,” I reply. “It’s not over yet.”
His lips twitch as his brow gets lost in his rigorous hairline. “What do you mean?”
I hold up the spark plugs I removed from Cameron’s car engine, dangling them as if they’re prize-winning fish.
“She has a meeting tomorrow. Something important. She won’t want to miss it, so she will be more than willing to accept the help of an apparent”—I air quote my last word—“stranger if he’s her only means of transport. ”
His eyes widen in surprise before another emotion I can’t decipher narrows them back to their normal width. He looks as torn as I feel, but instead of praising my brilliance, he reminds me that I usually play good cop. “You shouldn’t have done that, Mace.”
I follow him into the van, slot my backside in the passenger seat, and then fasten my belt. “Once she sees you, she will want to talk to you. We’ve just got to force the first contact.”
Force wasn’t the right word for me to use. It sinks Grayson’s shoulders further and sees him pulling out of the alleyway like I told him my water broke.
We head back to the apartment. The air between us is thick with everything. I’d like to tell Grayson that I’m here for him, that he’s not going through this alone, but then I remember that this isn’t about me. It’s about him and the steps he needs to take to heal.
“She still loves you,” I say quietly.
His grip on the steering wheel firms, but that is the start and end of his reply.
“I asked her if she had ever loved you, and she said, ‘Of course I love him. It’s Grayson. He is impossible not to love.’” I float my eyes over the scenery outside, hiding their watery appearance.
“She said love, Grayson. Not loved. That’s why I took her spark plugs.
It will only take you confronting her once for those feelings to come rushing back in.
” I wet my suddenly dry lips as I remember the way my heart thumped when I first spotted him on the stoop of my apartment.
“Love doesn’t die. You just learn to hide your feelings for what you believe is the greater good. ”
When silence teems between us for the next several seconds, I glance over at Grayson. He appears to be watching the road, but I feel his eyes on me. He flicks them between the road and me until we arrive at the undercover parking lot of our building.
The cause of my weary bones is undeniable when I follow him to our apartment.
The sun is dipping below the skyline, painting the living room windows with streaks of orange and violet.
When we veer past Adeline’s apartment, I’m tempted to tell Grayson about how she wasn’t sick, but I think better of it.
He has enough on his plate right now. He doesn’t need more.
Grayson unlocks the door, and I follow him inside. The scent of coffee and dried ink on paper greets us.
“Hungry?” His voice is casual despite the tension still hardening his jaw.
“Starving,” I admit. I haven’t eaten all day, and I am beyond famished.
We move around the cramped kitchen, falling into an easy rhythm. I wash the vegetables we chopped earlier this week while Grayson heats oil in a pan. The sizzle of the olive oil fills the silence. It’s domestic, but also intimate, and it sharpens the ache in my chest.
Grayson nudges me with his elbow, grinning when I grunt as if side-swiped by a truck. “I think they’re clean.”
I laugh after taking in the drowned vegetables. The carefree nature of my reply even surprises me. “You can never be too cautious. What looks shiny and clean can harbor something nasty on the inside.” I didn’t mean for my reply to come out so cautionary. It just occurred.
I glance at Grayson in silent apology before placing the vegetables in the microwave to steam, and then I gather the pre-cut chicken strips from the refrigerator and hand them to him.
We work so well together that you’d swear we’ve done it for years.
In a way, I guess we have. It’s just never felt so personal.
Once dinner is ready, we sit at the island with our plates piled high and eat in companionable silence. The food is simple—chicken stir-fry tossed in a saltless but garlicky sauce—but it tastes like comfort. Like home.
As we eat, Grayson’s shoulders relax, and the smile I struggled to conjure up over the past few hours occasionally pops up. We slide back into the comfort of being workmates and friends, and the awkwardness melts away as familiar banter and a shared focus take over.
He describes details of Kendall’s case and how he contacted the NY task force for information about a misplaced document for inquiries made during the first seventy-two hours of her disappearance. Then he moves our conversation to the sting that brought Cameron back into his life.
“Samuel is a CI.”