Chapter Twenty-Six
Sara
I walked into the diner, my body humming with a nervous, high-frequency tension. Every alarm bell my training had ever installed was screaming at me. This is a trap. This is a mistake.
Or, hear me out, my heart urged. Maybe this is where we start over.
He was already there, in the same booth, the one tucked away in the corner.
He wasn’t looking at the door, but out the window, a mug of coffee cupped in his hands.
He looked different. The haunted, broken look was gone, replaced by a quiet stillness, a solid presence that seemed to take up more space than his body.
When he finally turned and his eyes met mine, there was no rage in them.
Just a deep, weary calm that was somehow more unsettling.
I slid into the booth, the worn vinyl sighing under my weight. The air between us was thick with unspoken words, with the memory of his lips on mine and the sound of my door slamming shut. The guilt was a physical stone in my gut.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, his voice low and even.
I just nodded, unable to form a coherent thought.
He was quiet for a long moment, studying my face. “I don’t hate you,” he said, the words so simple, so direct, they struck me with the force of a physical blow.
My breath hitched.
He continued, “I did. Discovering you weren’t who I thought you were was another log thrown onto a fire that was burning me to the ground.
” He let out a sigh. “You didn’t put me in the situation I was in, but you were part of what helped me break free.
I can’t hate you for that even if it wasn’t real. ”
I searched his face for duplicity, but all I saw was strength and resiliency. “Some of it was real,” I said just above a whisper.
We sat there for a moment staring into each other’s eyes like we might find answers there.
He held my gaze and his lips pressed together in a line, before he said, “Thank you for bringing Sparkles to me.”
“I . . .” I started, my own voice a stranger. “You were in a tailspin. Understandably so, but you’d made a promise to her and . . .”
“I didn’t feel like I had anything left to give anyone so I wouldn’t have gone back for her,” he said, his gaze so honest it was hard to hold. “And that decision would have haunted me for the rest of my life.”
We sat in another stretch of heavy silence. “So you kept her.”
“I sure did. We stayed at Gene and Leslie’s house for a while. They don’t have a dog, but Dylan does and Stanley needs a lot so Dylan often asks Mark to watch him. Mark is busy so he ends up with Gene who spoils him. It was a good place for me to learn how to care for her.”
“I’m glad.”
He nodded. “She and I moved over to Scott and Monica’s farm. Being there has been good for me. I don’t feel lost anymore.”
“Scott and the others have been good to you?”
“They call me family. It still feels too good to be true, but all of them have been nothing but kind to me.”
Blinking back tears, I couldn’t help but place my hand on his. “I’m so sorry about everything you’ve been through, but so happy that you went to them. Going to them for help took the kind of guts few people have.”
His fingers intertwined with mine. “I did it for you.”
My mouth rounded. “Me?”
His grip on my hand tightened slightly. “I’d decided I couldn’t stay where I was, but there was no way a strong response wouldn’t quickly follow any attempt I made to leave. I didn’t have the resources to protect myself, never mind you.”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” was my kneejerk reaction.
His response was a look that had me stopping to take time to really hear what he’d just said and his words landed harder the second time. “You went to them for me.”
“I did.” He blinked and looked away. “I needed to know that no matter what happened to me you’d be safe.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know what to say. I feel horrible . . .”
He searched my face then squeezed my hand and looked me in the eye again. “I believe you.” After a moment, he asked, “Was he real? Max. The man you told me about. Did he really help your mother and you out of a bad situation and then die?”
The question was so unexpected, so full of genuine curiosity about me, that the professional armor I’d been clinging to cracked. “He was real,” I whispered. “Every word I said about him was true.”
He nodded slowly, accepting it. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The sincerity in his voice was my undoing. He was comforting me, after everything I had done to him. We were in a freefall, and I had no idea where we were going to land.
“He died of a heart attack?”
“Yes.”
“Recently someone told me to never trust a man who grows oleanders and knows more than one person who’s died of a heart attack.
You’d have to test for cardiac glycosides, they’re relatively stable organic molecules.
Not sure if a toxicology test is still a possibility, but if so, it might be worth looking into. ”
My mouth hung open a bit.
He continued, “Simmons died from it and much later, oddly, Max died too. Poisoning from that plant mimics a heart attack.”
In that moment it didn’t matter if Simmons was the one who’d killed Max or if I’d ever have conclusive evidence of who did—Ashen cared enough to bring me a possible lead and that touched my heart more than any bouquet or gift could.
That thought had me asking, “When you signed the note you sent me, you wrote Ashen.”
He nodded. “I needed a new name, and I met this woman once who sold that name well. My legal name is now Ashen Ryse.”
Damned if tears didn’t blur my eyes again. “It fits you.”
Looking down, he shook his head slowly. “I’ll always miss Helen Bart. The world felt lighter when I saw it through her eyes.”
“I miss her too,” I said huskily. “For that reason and . . .” I didn’t need to say that Helen had a chance of forever with Ashen. Sara Linde? I wasn’t the type who lit up the rooms I entered.
Ashen’s expression shifted, a flicker of something I tried to interpret. “Are you still investigating the Gravestones?”
And there it was. The crossroads. My training, my duty to O’Dooley, my own self-preservation—it all screamed at me to lie. To be vague. To protect my sources and my methods. But the man sitting across from me wasn’t a mark. Not anymore.
Not ever again.
What we were to each other? I had no idea. But I didn’t want to ever lie to him. Taking a leap off a cliff into the unknown, I said, “Yes. I am.”
He looked like he already knew I was.
I could hold back, but was there anyone who deserved answers more than this man? Even if I told him the truth and it got me killed, at least I’d die feeling I’d done the right thing. “And if you want to hear about it, I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Won’t that jeopardize your case?”
I shrugged. “My investigation has never been official and the more I dig, the wider the circle of corruption is revealed. It’s too big for me to expose on my own, and I’m still trying to figure out who I can trust.”
He turned my hand over in his. “But you trust me?”
Without hesitation I said, “I do.” I took in the taut lines of his face.
“I also think you’re in a position where it’s better to know the truth.
Especially if any of you are considering looking for more twins.
You’ll need to know the kind of people you might brush up against. Simmons couldn’t do what he did alone.
” After taking a deep breath, I continued, “I don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle, but this is what I do know . . .”
I left O’Dooley out of what I told him, but the rest of what I’d uncovered poured out of me.
I told him about how the Gravestones had been paying someone to watch me.
The web of shell corporations. The money funneled to the women who had birthed children as well as the people I suspected killed them.
And then, my voice cracking, I told him how the Gravestones had even used him to move some of that money around.
“I don’t understand what Simmons wanted with all those children.
Human trafficking? That’s the part of all this that frustrates me the most. My gut tells me that Thane, Jesse, Zachary, Scott, Dylan and Mark were some of the children Simmons used surrogates to birth, but I didn’t understand his motivation for it.
Was he selling newborns to families? If so, why did some of them end up in financially unstable homes? ”
He listened, his expression hardening, and I couldn’t guess at his thoughts. When I was done, I slumped in my seat and marveled that he was still holding my hand.
With his free hand, he reached into the jacket hanging on the seat beside him and retrieved a small silver flash drive.
“This is for you,” he said. “It’s everything.
What Simmons had on the Gravestones.” He looked me dead in the eye.
“As well as why Simmons wanted those children.” He slid the flash drive across the table.
It came to a stop next to the saltshaker, a tiny, innocuous object that felt like a bomb.
My training screamed at me—don’t touch it without gloves, don’t plug it into anything unsecured, treat it like the explosive it is.
I gave him a look, trying to convey a dozen things at once—gratitude, caution, a sense of shared gravity—and picked it up carefully by its metal edges.
It was cold against my fingertips. I dropped it into a small, clear evidence bag I pulled from my purse and sealed it. Old habits die hard.
“This diner is too public,” I said, my voice low and all business. “Come with me.”
He followed without a word. We walked out into the late afternoon sun, the familiar sounds of the street feeling distant and muted.
At my car, I didn’t unlock the passenger door.
Instead, I went to the trunk and popped it open.
From a locked, shielded Pelican case, I retrieved a thick, rubber-cased tablet.
It wasn’t a sleek consumer device; it was heavy, matte black, and looked like it had been designed for a battlefield.