Chapter 23 Salem
CHAPTER 23
SALEM
Salem watched with a lead weight in her gut as someone other than her looked at her murder board for the first time. She didn’t know how it would appear to someone
on the outside. Obsessive, maybe? Passionate? None of the adjectives she would have particularly associated with herself.
Caz moved around the area, his sharp gaze taking in every single element on the board. He went over the notes she had printed or scribbled on the sides in the margins, the threads connecting and going through different parts of the board, the reports she had found and pinned, and the photographs. He lingered particularly on the photographs, observing each face with a keen eye she knew from experience didn’t miss details.
He moved from one side of the board to the other in silence, and her heart rate kicked up a notch.
Though he had met her while she’d been hovering over a dead body, this was different. That could have been an accident, any innocent passerby stopping out of curiosity. This was darker, so much deeper, so detailed. This showed her darkness and dogged determination in pursuit of uncovering the truth. This showed him a side of her she had never been comfortable showing anyone, and anyone who had seen it had rejected it immediately, calling her odd and ostracizing her from their life.
Salem bit her lip and pushed her glasses up her nose, tugging at the end of her hair behind her back in a nervous movement, trying to stand still in place and brace herself for his reaction.
She didn’t know how she would take it if he reacted to her innermost thoughts the way others who had just had a glimpse in her life had. She didn’t know how she would react. Externally, she was confident she could school her expressions and not betray a thing. But internally, she didn’t want to think about it.
“How long did all of this take you?” he asked in an even tone, not giving a thought away.
She bit the inside of her cheek and then swallowed. “I started two years ago but really got into it last year.”
He nodded distractedly, reading some of her notes in the margin of a report. She liked the fact that he wasn’t rushing through but taking his time, but she hated the fact that he did it without giving any kind of reaction to her, to reassure her and calm her overworking mind.
She observed as he shifted from photo to photo, pausing over Tanya, the one they had met over on the beach.
“She was in my department,” he mused. “Talented too.”
That’s what Salem had heard when she’d asked around as well. Tanya had been a very talented young artist with a bright future ahead of her. Her death seemed very odd and out of the blue.
“She was pregnant when she died,” Salem told him, something she had forgotten to write in the notes somehow. She saw him cut a look to her sharply.
“What?”
Yeah, it had shocked her too. She nodded. “I have it on good authority. Her pregnancy wasn’t known but she was definitely expecting a baby.”
Caz stared at Tanya’s photo, a flash of something dark crossing his face, making Salem’s stomach suddenly knot for an entirely different reason.
“Do you know who the father could be?” she asked tentatively.
He shook his head but the tightening of his jaw told her the truth. He was lying. Why? Was it a friend of his? Or was it…?
Horror washed over her at the mere idea. “You’re not—”
“Fuck, no!”
Her breath of relief was loud. The vehement, quick denial combined with the disgust on his face confirmed the fact that he’d had nothing to do with it. But he knew who had and he wasn’t telling her for some reason. Was it a member of whatever club he was in? Was that why? Was he protecting her again?
Questions danced in her mind as she watched him take note of every little thing, his eyes finally coming to the one of the unidentified bodies of the only male on the board.
Caz stilled.
Took a step back.
Took another.
Stepped forward.
And stared.
Stared at the photo with an energy she had never sensed coming from him, not like this.
Rage.
Pure utter rage.
It filled the air black, made the air around her thicker, harder to draw in her lungs, like tar, sickly and ugly. Salem froze in response to his fury, watching his hands fist by his sides, his arms shaking with the sheer control he seemed to be exerting on himself, trying to contain whatever was happening inside him.
“Caz?” she called softly, not wanting to jar him when he seemed to be lost somewhere else.
When he didn’t respond, she took a step toward him, then another, careful not to startle him, and placed a hand on his bicep. “Hey.”
Her touch seemed to jerk him out of whatever headspace he was lost in. He turned to look at her, the pupils of his eyes blown, the gray darkened to a storm she could see brewing. She didn’t ask him what had happened, it didn’t seem like the time for it, not when he looked two seconds away from exploding.
Caz seemed to shake himself out of whatever state he had gone in to. He extended his hand and brought the cover on the board down, hiding everything from sight, his hands gripping it for a second too long before he let go, fisting his hands on the wall and leaning against it, dropping his head.
Salem looked at the board, at him, and something clicked in place in her head.
He had lost someone too. That was why he was there, doing whatever he was doing and keeping whatever secrets he was keeping.
She really didn’t know exactly what was going on with him at that moment, but if her suspicion was true, she knew what had brought her a modicum of peace when she’d been in an overly emotional state.
Stepping behind him, she tentatively wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her front to his back, and gave him a squeeze. His hands shook with some surge of emotion she couldn’t identify, one he was clearly trying to hold back. She could feel him drag deep breaths in, feel his back expand against her face, and she held on tight, grounding him as he’d grounded her, showing him affection as he’d unknowingly showed her.
He let her, not saying a word, not accepting or rejecting her touch, just being as she was being, their bodies fused together, their breathing falling in sync, in and out, together as one.
She didn’t know how long they stood there like that, didn’t know how long she let him take and let herself give, didn’t know how long they existed like that.
But slowly, very slowly, she felt the storm pass.
The rage simmered, becoming a low flame compared to the blazing inferno, his muscles losing stiffness and relaxing. His head came up and he straightened, opening his hands from fists on the wall and flexing his fingers, bringing them down to her hands where she was holding him.
He broke her grip and turned around, and somehow, it became worse.
Because right there, in his beautiful, mercurial eyes, was such deep, raw pain it took her breath away. Salem stared up at him, feeling the agony in his eyes within her chest, like it was her heart breaking and her eyes burning, somehow the connection between them making her feel what he was feeling. She would take his annoying smirks any day over this agonized sorrow.
He cupped her face, pressing his forehead to hers, and drew steadying breaths in.
“I have to go,” he told her, his voice rough.
Salem didn’t want him to go, not in the state he was in. She didn’t know where he would go, what he would do, and she didn’t know why but the idea of him going out like this, hurt and in pain, made her stomach twist.
But she could see the determination in his stance. He wouldn’t stay, not this time, not even if she asked him to.
“Are you sure?” she asked, because she wasn’t sure. He hadn’t said anything to her about the board, nothing about why he’d reacted like he had, and though Salem had never cared for validation, she felt vulnerable too, needing just one sign from him that he wasn’t repelled by everything she had trusted him with, that it was his own demons chasing him, not hers. Because if that was the case, she would hold down the fort.
But he didn’t give her a sign.
He just let her face go and stepped back.
Without another word, he walked to the main door and slipped out, taking all the energy with him, sapping her. Salem sat on the bed, watching the door he had walked out of, wondering if he had just become another one of the people in her life to abandon her.
“I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.”
—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations