Minka
MINKA
I let Fletch and Archer start the dig, since it’s all on record anyway, and the cameras carefully document every movement of the shovel. I keep my voice low and my eyes on the men, but I stand beside Aubree, and she’s smart enough to know my words are for her. “The hell is wrong with him?”
She watches them, too. Her bright eyes focused on every stab of the shovel into the dirt. Or really, mud. Sloshy, sticky, bacteria-filled mud. “What’d Detective Gilbert want?”
I narrow my stare and bring it around. “To update me on the case. You have a problem with that?”
“Depends.” She digs her hands into her coat pockets and bounces for warmth. “What was the update?”
“He spoke to a couple of the moms of the abducted girls. Questioned them on their memories from the days surrounding their child’s disappearance. He has eighteen to call, and each one takes at least an hour just to get through their newly surfaced grief since Janiesa’s on the news and bringing everything back to the forefront. Your turn; what’s up with Archer?”
“I told him about yours and Detective Whatshisface’s romantic past.” She meets my stare with a challenging look of her own. “That’s fine with you, right? Since it’s not a secret?”
My stomach churns, and my heart skips with a painful thud that sends spires of pain scorching through my chest. But I keep control of my words. I smooth my tone and tamp down on the heat burning through my veins. Homicidal rage is like a tidal wave begging to drag me under. “Not a secret,” I grit out. “Though hardly an appropriate time to discuss such matters, considering we’re here for someone else’s case, don’t you think?”
“I’d normally agree. But you brought him here. Not me.”
“And now Archer’s pissed for no reason at all.” I gnash my teeth and force my focus back to my husband, his shovel piercing the earth as rage burns in the air surrounding him. He risks his entire case if he digs too far, too fast. “It boggles my mind that you felt entitled to mention it at all. He’s my husband. Those are conversations he and I should have had in private.”
“Which you could have done last night. You had the opportunity and plenty of time, but chose not to. You brought Paxton into your home. You did that.”
“And you stuck your nose in and upset my husband for no reason except because you wanted to be an ass.” I hate that my stomach hurts. That my heart thrums and my soul quivers. “You inserted yourself where you didn’t need to.”
“No. Detective Gilbert inserted himself, and you had the chance to erect healthy boundaries and limit those communications. Instead, you skipped date night, brought the dude into your home, and today, you lost focus on the case we’re supposed to be working for a case on the other side of the country. He did that, and you held the door open.”
“I’m trying to help, Aubree! Why is everyone so caught up on geography when a child’s life is at stake?”
“Because—”
“A little girl is missing! And seventeen before her were brutally murdered. Who gives a shit that I live here now? If I can h?—”
“You’re not needed,” she bites back. “There are a dozen medical examiners right there in New York who are closer and more involved. He called you for a reason, and that reason has less to do with Janiesa than you’d like to think.”
“So what?” I grab her jacket and tear her off balance, yanking her away from the muddy hole and releasing her only when we’re at the back of our van. And since that’s not far enough for me, three sets of eyes trained on the side of my face, shovels stopped, I shove her into the back of the van and yank the door shut until we’re locked in. “Why are you being so fucking weird about this? He’s a dude. He called. I’m a professional, doing my damn job, answering questions, and helping with a case that could never have too many hands. Why is this becoming a thing?”
“Because his motives are not pure! He intends to disrupt the life you’ve created in Copeland.”
“How could you possibly know? You haven’t even met him!”
“I know because?—”
“You don’t know shit! You have this gift, and you can see more than we do. I get it! And maybe, maybe if you’d met him in person and shook his hand, I’d put more credence in what you’re saying. But you haven’t. You’re making things up and projecting onto me. You’ve lost your professionalism on the job, and now you’re interfering in my fucking marriage!”
“If you’d fessed up about him in the first place, your marriage would be fine. You didn’t! That means something.”
“It means I didn’t want Archer to throw a fit over nothing! Because, obviously, he’s not gonna be pleased that I’m chatting with someone I have a history with. I want to help with this case, and I don’t want to hurt my husband’s feelings in the process. That’s why I didn’t tell him.”
“You hid an important detail.”
“I was protecting him from an irrelevant detail! He lived here for sixteen slutty years before we met. Do you think I want him to point out every fucking broad he’s bedded, all for the sake of transparency?”
She opens her mouth to speak, but I snap out an ear-aching, “No! I don’t. I would melt into a puddle of depression if he told me about every single woman he’s seen naked, because I know the number is not small, and I know he had that life before me. I have no right to get mad at him for existing before I came along, and he has no right to be mad about the life I lived, either.”
“There’s a difference between not pointing at every chick in the street, since they no longer interact, and keeping a secret when the guy is blowing up your phone. He was encroaching on your private time.”
“To discuss a case! Dammit, Aubree. He hasn’t made a single pass at me! He’s not flirting. He’s not calling to reminisce about the past or asking me for an encore. It’s entirely professional, and until it’s not, I will take the damn calls and do my best to bring that baby girl home.”
“Until it’s not?”
“Until—” Stunned, I shake my head. “What?”
“You said until it’s not. You didn’t stop at it’s completely appropriate . You didn’t stop at he hasn’t made a pass. You kept going and ended up with until . So you expect he will?”
Rage burns hotter in my blood. “No! You’re twisting my words and making a mess where no mess needs to be. I have no issue rebuffing men when they need to be rebuffed. I have never, ever, since the moment we met, given Archer reason to think I wouldn’t be loyal to him.”
“But—”
“But now you’ve done that. You have interfered in my marriage in a way that was completely and wholly unnecessary. So if my husband comes at me in any way except pure trust and belief in who I am, then you have sprinkled doubt on my marriage. What the fuck is that, Aubree?”
“You should have told him yesterday! You had ample opportunity to diffuse this with a simple, ‘ Hey, this cop is calling me up for help on a case. Just FYI, he’s someone I was intimate with in the past, but I’m telling you now, so you don’t have to worry .’ That’s all it would have taken.”
“Bullshit! If I told him that, he would’ve wrapped me up in a burrito blanket and locked me in our apartment until Pax stopped calling.”
“No, he wouldn’t! He would have had a moment of jealousy and thought, fuck that guy . Then he would have fucked you to remind you where home is. Then he’d have gotten on with life, and none of this would be happening.”
“This is happening because you inserted yourself!” I want to hit her. I want to scream. I want to tear this van apart and release the rage furiously searing through my blood because my whole world ends the day Archer Malone says he’s done with us. My entire fucking soul dies the moment he accuses me of something I never did. “You created a fracture in what we have, and you had no right to do that.” Furious, I spin and shove the back doors open, only to skid to a stop when I find three sets of eyes pointed this way.
I focus only on one set. On the bright green glare of a man descended from the gods. Too selfless to be mortal, too perfect to be anything less than divine. But he watches me with doubt. For the first time since we’ve met, he stares like I’m the enemy.
That’s the expression my father used after he found out my mother’s secrets.
He, too, was too selfless to truly hate her and too perfect to split a functional family. He held on, instead, to an unfaithful woman, staying with us until he couldn’t, pretending until the truth was too heavy, and in the end, hung himself from a weight-bearing beam instead of facing the cold, harsh truth that his marriage was over.
Angry, I look back to Aubree. “You did this.” Then I turn back again and climb out of the van, snatching a shovel from the pile on the ground before stalking toward the hole. “Get off my scene!” I take Fletch’s shovel while he’s too stunned to hold on and toss it six feet from our perimeter so it lands amongst shrubs and weeds with a muffled thump. Finally, I circle and meet Archer’s glare. “You, too.”
“I’m digging,” he spits out. “This is my case.”
“Actually, as chief medical examiner, I outrank you. This is my case, and until I’m ready to release discovered remains to your department, you have no right to be here. Step outside the taped perimeter immediately, Detective, or I’ll have you written up and a note of insubordination added to your files. Your refusal to preserve a crime scene, as directed by someone with a rank higher than yours, is conduct punishable by the department and a memo IA would be interested in.” I hate myself. I hate this situation. In this moment, I hate Aubree Emeri, too, because she was the catalyst that put us here.
He stares at me like he caught me fucking his best friend .
Worst of all, I’m so broken inside that instead of taking ten minutes to talk things out, I double down and make it all so much worse.
So I step closer until our chests almost touch. “Now.”
“Arch.” Fletch grabs his shirt, gently tugging him back when it’s clear by his stance that he doesn’t intend to go anywhere. Fletch is smart enough to know my badge does, in fact, outrank theirs. “Come on,” he murmurs. “Other side of the tape.”
“I’m just digging,” he snarls, his stare boring into mine. “You still have five feet to go. You’re tired, wet, and the mud is like slinging concrete.”
“This is my job.” Stubborn, mulish bitch. I extend my hand and wait for him to relinquish his shovel. “It’s also my job to document a scene and report a detective’s poor conduct.” I gesture to the cameras that catch every angle of our spat. “Step back now, so this doesn’t become a thing.”
He tosses the shovel to the ground, metal pinging against rock and the heavy wooden handle landing in the wet mud. Then he stumbles back a step when Fletch pulls him. “Five feet, Mayet. You’ll wish you weren’t so fucking pig-headed when you’re home, sore, and sick. But what the fuck do I know?” He throws Fletch’s hand off and turns to lift a leg over the tape. “I’m just a footnote on your priority list, it seems.”
“Come on.” Fletch tries again, stepping between us and attempting, but failing, to take up enough space to break the stare between me and Archer. “Sometimes, we gotta know when to fold. Save your resources for the next round.”
I guess that makes me a deck of cards in this analogy. Or money, maybe.
Definitely not a penguin anymore.
Alone within the tape, I look down at my feet, my mud-covered boots, and the moisture climbing my legs on its way toward my knees. Then I lick my lips and stab the shovel into the ground.
A little manual labor to keep the tears at bay never hurt anybody.
So I dig.
And dig.
And dig.
For more than two hours, I stab the earth with a sharp shovel under the glare of an audience of four since I suppose Aubree’s too stubborn to help. Or perhaps, smart enough to stay away. I take care not to slam the shovel in too deep, for fear of hitting a vital piece of evidence, but caution makes my progress slower. The pile of mud growing on one side of the burial site, half of what it could be if not for my constraints.
My throat burns impossibly dry despite the rain pounding on the pop-up tent above, the runoff from the mountain funneling right to where I stand, but not before cutting through the dirt mound and creating more mud.
More mess.
More frustration while the other four stand back and witness my stubborn streak on full display. Archer’s muscles bulge, and his jaw flexes with a rage I rarely ever see, and never, ever pointed my way. His eyes burn my skin and leave behind a warmth I come to rely on, since the mud is so damned cold. My entire body shivers, my teeth chattering, my face aching, and my toes burning from what I know, scientifically, is likely the onset of frostbite.
But I keep digging, because I walked my ass into this hole—physically and metaphorically—and I’m too much of a bitch to allow anyone to help me out.
All I had to do was tell Archer I knew Detective Gilbert on a personal level.
It didn’t have to be a whole thing. It didn’t have to be a fight.
I did this to us, not Aubree.
Heartache brings tears to my eyes and a spasm to my lungs. What could almost be a sob, if only I allowed such weakness, wracks my chest and leaves me weak. My legs shake and my arms tremble from exhaustion.
And yet, Archer backs up and takes a seat on a fucking stump, like this is all a show, and his rage is the price of admission.
“That looks like five feet to me, Chief.” Fletch speaks with an odd formality I’m not accustomed to, not even when we’re on the record. Inching closer to the taped-off area—though he doesn’t cross it—he folds his arms and glances into the hole I’ve dug myself into. “Looks about right. You can’t see anything yet?”
The ground is almost frozen all the way down here. That’s what I want to say. The rain has created a puddle a foot deep, which means I can’t see the bottom. Nor can I feel my feet. But I don’t say that either. The inmate probably sold you bogus information in exchange for a break in monotony . But nope. I don’t voice those thoughts either. I merely stab the shovel into the earth and stomp on the top to buy myself another inch or two, then I angle the blade and leverage a chunk of dirt up with it.
My shoulders burn because I’m not just setting the load aside anymore. I’m lifting it to chest height, placing it on the steel grates we’ve set up for sifting, and then shaking it out to ensure diligence. So I twist, like I have a thousand times already, and dump the sticky, sludgy, wood-glue consistency, then I bring trembling hands up, shakily pushing the slosh through tiny steel holes.
Dirt goes down, rocks, sticks, and foreign matter stay on top.
“Wait!” Aubree bounds from Tim’s steely grip, breaking the silence with her shout and stepping over the tape with a bravery Fletch lacks. “Hold up. Chief.” She kneels by the fresh pile and pulls on a pair of gloves, her jacket dripping with rain and her hat long ago soaked through.
We’re all a bunch of drowned rats at this point, and the rain above is the universe punishing us for things I’m not entirely sure of.
Flirting with deliria, I hobble to the edge of the hole and set my arms on the lip, but I swallow and search for whatever she sees that I don’t.
“That’s a bone,” she murmurs, gently brushing mud chunks aside and revealing something that may belong to a human hand. “Metacarpal?” she wonders aloud, gently pinching the small fragment between her thumb and finger and turning to see it better under the spotlights. “Possibly.”
“Maybe.” My chest empties and my lungs ache, but I blink back the tears that force their way forward. I have a damn job to do, and relationship spats are not something I welcome. Not in the past, and certainly not in the future.
I stare past my second and meet Archer’s furious eyes. “We’ve discovered what may be a human bone. We need to pump the water out of here, then uncover the rest of the remains. We’re gonna be here awhile, so feel free to leave. Doctor Emeri and I will need to document, tag, and bag everything we unearth. You may as well call it a day and contact my office tomorrow for an update.”
He stares straight through me, rage burning in his perfect emerald eyes and dismissal worse than if he’d called me a nasty name. His jaw clicks with anger, and the muscles in his cheek clench and unclench. He has a lot to say but won’t allow a single sliver of vitriol to escape his lips.
Instead, he grits out a single, “No.”
“No?” Pretend like your heart isn’t on fire, Mayet. You’ve done it before. You can do it again . “No, what?”
“No, we’re not leaving.” Slowly, he pushes up to stand, extending his long, powerful legs and broadening his chest. My pillow, usually. My home. But today, it’s a battleground. “Detective Fletcher is welcome to clock out at five, considering he’s on light duties and has a daughter to attend to. But I have no such responsibilities at home. I choose to stay until the dig is complete and evidence is bagged.”
“Suit yourself.” Archer, I’m begging you. Stop staring at me like I shoved your heart through a blender. But I can’t say that out loud, so I look at Aubree instead. “Bring the cameras closer. Assemble the spotlights for better visibility. Then source a pump and have it brought out.”
“Sure.” Stiff, she sets our discovery down and straightens out with a groan she makes damn sure to swallow. “Want me to call for reinforcements? Doctor Kirk is young and fresh. He could help dig.”
“Yep.” Because if I don’t, I fear I’ll collapse from exhaustion long before I’m done. And if I do something stupid like that, then I don’t get to stand up here on my soapbox and finish a job I demanded I would. “Doctor Flynn, too. And you could probably request Doctor Campbell. He can swing a shovel for a couple of hours and bitch at me about it tomorrow.”
“Alright.” She turns on her boots, dragging her phone from her pocket, and dials just as soon as she lifts her legs over the tape. “Hi, Callen. It’s Doctor Emeri. Grab a pen and paper, because I have a few requests I need you to help me with.”