27. Chapter 26
The people who show up for you during the bad times and the good times, those are the keepers.
By the time she returned to their bedroom, she was even more keyed-up and annoyed. Mostly with herself.
When she stepped into the room, Bradford was texting on his phone and she wasn’t sure why it bothered her so much. Okay, lies. She knew. She wanted all his attention on her while simultaneously wanting to bury her head in the sand.
So healthy.
He set his phone down when she closed the door behind her. “Your phone went off a couple times. I wasn’t sure if I should answer it.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, glad he hadn’t. Having someone else answer her phone after building up so much trust with the people she was writing stories on wouldn’t have been the best. When she saw Lex’s phone number on her missed calls, she held up a finger to her mouth.
“It’s my PI friend. I’m going to put him on speaker but don’t let him know you’re with me. ”
Bradford nodded and sat forward slightly as she got into the bed next to him .
Lex answered on the first ring. “Hey. You okay?” There was concern in his voice, surprising her.
“Yeah. Why?”
He shoved out a breath. “Whatever story you’re writing that’s linked to this family, walk away.”
She raised her eyebrows at Bradford as she responded to Lex. She’d told him that the Killeens were loosely linked to a story she was working on, but had kept it vague. “Why?”
“When I started digging, I got a call from a hacker friend of mine who told me the same thing. Then he sent me an article that I’m going to send you. Sending it to your phone right now.”
She clicked on the link to what turned out to be a story out of Arkansas.
“I vaguely remember reading about this,” she murmured, hating that it hadn’t been bigger news.
“Fifty bodies found in a mass grave, linked to a potential war between drug dealers.” She read out the article title.
“There was speculation that it might be cartels, right? They’re linked to this? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“I honestly don’t know. But something happened to an established heroin operation in Arkansas. Right across the border from Louisiana. I only know this after heavy research, but apparently they were linked to some outfit out of New Jersey. Not cartels.”
“That’s a surprise.”
“It’s a new world,” Lex said. “Anyway, someone came in and cleaned house, killed everyone at what turned out to be a heroin farm. No one took credit for it. But when I started asking around about the Killeen family, a contact of mine sent me this and told me to stop whatever I was doing unless I wanted to end up like these guys. It was his subtle way of telling me that they were behind this.”
“Thank you for letting me know. ”
There was a short pause, then, “You’re not going to drop this are you?”
“Of course I am.”
“You’re a terrible liar. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Lex disconnected before she could respond.
Bradford was already on his phone as she set her own down. “I just sent the article to Berlin. That’s…a new link.”
“A terrifying one.” She sat back against the headboard, digesting everything. “If Edward Killeen took out fifty people…”
“He’s not going to get near you. He doesn’t know who my people are and what we’ll do to stop him.” There was an edge to his tone that promised retribution to Killeen if she even stubbed her toe.
She shivered and leaned into him. Thankfully, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.
“Can you just hold me right now?” A cold had seeped into her bones as she thought about how differently things could have gone if Bradford hadn’t been here, if he hadn’t come to see her at her father’s funeral.
“Of course.” He moved both their phones onto the nightstand and pulled her against his chest while she curled into him. “You always handle things with so much ease, sometimes I forget that you’re not Superwoman.”
She snort-laughed as she fought back stupid tears that wanted to bubble up.
“That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she whispered.
And he wasn’t wrong. “Being in war zones or dealing with death threats online is, I don’t know, different, I guess. This threat is so visceral, so real.”
“So close, and it has a face,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head.
“Yeah. And that face maybe ordered the murder of fifty people. At least. Part of me can’t believe that it wasn’t a bigger story.”
“It did the rounds. I remember,” he added. “But when it was linked to drugs, people didn’t care so the story never gained much traction.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. If people don’t think stuff like that can happen to them, they don’t bother to click on the story. It loses steam before it ever gains it.”
“He doesn’t know where you are, and we know exactly where he is. Just a reminder. He’s not going to touch you.”
“Thank you.” She buried her face in his chest for a moment, soaking up all his strength. Even though she wanted him physically—the understatement of the century—sex wasn’t what she wanted right now. She simply needed to be comforted by the man who’d shown up.
The man who was consistently there, whether she asked for help or not.
People might disappoint her, but Bradford wasn’t people.
That realization struck her with such force she stopped breathing for a moment. Then she dug her fingers into his side as she curled up against him, and to her surprise—and horror—tears sprung to her eyes.
She hadn’t cried in years, not really. And it was like they were all coming up at once with a storm-like intensity she was unable to stop.
Even if she’d wanted to.
But right now, after years of keeping her shit together, of acting like nothing ever affected her, she just wanted to let go and cry. To embrace all her emotions.
So she held on to him, and he held on to her as she finally let go of more than just the present situation, but of everything from her past. Maybe she wasn’t letting go, but she was allowing herself to grieve her lost childhood, her mother, her father and even Bradford.
She wasn’t letting him go though, wasn’t running anymore. That much she knew.