Chapter 22
MINKA
Iwake the next morning with a mild headache pounding in the back of my skull and a sharp, stabbing pain in my chest. Not the I’m having a heart attack kind of pain.
Not even the Archer and I are going through something kind.
But a different type, a familiar type that sends my pulse sprinting and my eyes wide open.
I release a gasp of surprise, maybe even a whimper of longing, as I’m met with a pair of icy blue eyes and a wild mane of snow-white fur.
“Chloe?” I swing my head to the left, across the expansive bedroom Archer and I claimed as our own at the house in the hills, then I look right, my heart thundering as I find a body lying out beside mine.
Long, lean, pale legs, a short skirt, and a bright pink top. I spy the glittering anklet wrapped around her ankle, and bringing my eyes up, I stop on Aubree’s sweet smile.
“Good morning.” She sits with her back to the headboard, her feet crossed at the ankles, and a steaming cup of coffee in her lap. “Don’t panic.”
“What the hell is happening?” I whip my gaze back to Chloe and stop barely short of sobbing as her claws dig into my flesh. Not because she’s hurting me, but because the sting of her nails is a million times better than the sting of not being wanted. “Aubs, I don’t understand—”
“You’re panicking.” She extends her hand, offering the mug. “A token of peace. Stay here with me a little while longer, drink your coffee, hear me out.” She flashes a wide smile in my peripherals. “Then you can spin out and murder everyone.”
“How is… Why…” I cast my gaze around the room and inspect every inch, every corner, for answers to the million questions flashing through my mind.
I count chairs in the sitting area, scan the television mounted to the wall, and scour the small kitchen space just ten feet from it.
I stop, surprise making my jaw tremble, and study the glittering coffee machine perched exactly where I planned to put one eventually.
My pulse sprints out of control, hammering inside my chest and annoying the cat until she digs her claws deeper in my skin in retaliation, but I don’t want her to go.
God, I don’t want her to reject me and run away, so I set my hands on the mattress and carefully push up to match Aubree’s pose.
I bring the sheets with me, and before she can run, I grab Chloe and settle her on my lap, dragging my palm along her soft fur and scratching behind her ears. “Aubs?”
“Let’s start with the most obvious. You’re at the house.”
“I fell asleep at the apartment.” Is Archer here, too? “Aubree, I know for a fact I fell asleep at the apartment. So what’s—”
She pushes the coffee further into my space, forcing me to take it. “Archer brought you here.”
“He…” My eyes burn. So easily, so instantly, I’m reduced to an emotional mess. I hate it. “W-why?”
“Because this is your home.” She fingers the frayed hem of her skirt, grinning all the way up into her eyes.
“Seems he knows you quite well, Chief, which means he knew the hours after infusion reduce you to a coma zombie. That knowledge came in handy this past week while he was desperate to spend time with his wife, but knew doing so while you were awake only made you cry more.”
“He…” My breath catches in my lungs, hitching and spasming. “Archer is—”
“Freaking out. He’s in pain. Scared. Exercising herculean levels of patience and willpower.” She brings smiling, laughing eyes across to mine. “He wanted to be here when you woke. It was a tense conversation. Fortunately, I convinced him that it would do more harm than good.”
I shoot a look toward the closed door. No moving shadows on the other side. No shuffling feet. “He’s here?”
“He’s wherever you are. Always.” She takes my hand and holds on when my first instinct is to pull away. She locks us together, because she knows me so well, too.
I moved to Copeland City two Decembers ago, and in less than thirty hours after stepping off the plane, I’d met two of the best friends I’ll ever call mine.
This has been the loneliest week I’ve ever spent in this city.
“There’s some stuff I need to tell you before you go out there guns blazing.” She tightens her grip and drops her eyes to my untouched coffee. “Drink. It’ll help.”
“You’re planning to talk his way out of this?” I glance down at my coffee, my breath shuddering. “It’s not your responsibility to smooth things over for us, Aubs. Archer and I—”
“Are working with fractured truths and half-pictures. You did something that, when he found out about it, scared the ever-loving shit out of him. Then you suggested taking a break.”
“But Aubree—”
“And then he accepted that break. He did exactly what you asked of him. You hurt your own feelings when he didn’t beg you to change your mind.”
“Hurt my own feelings?” I set my coffee on the bedside table and sit taller, scaring the damn cat so she skitters off the bed with a furious hiss. “Aubree, he told me not to come home! He told me—”
“That’s where the half-picture and fractured truths come into play.”
“He doesn’t want me!”
“Such a lie,” she scolds, her brows pinching close together. “Don’t do that, Chief. You know I know anyway.”
“He wants me,” I whimper. “He wants me most of the time. He wants the medical examiner. The neuro-weirdo who hates talking to outsiders. He wants my body and my personality and my mind, and he doesn’t even hate when I describe facets of my job in excruciating detail, even when hearing those things makes him sick to his stomach.
He wants my heart and my bad attitude, even when it creates more work for him.
Which, it does. Often. I know he wants most of me.
But that last little bit, the bit I can’t not be, he doesn’t want that. ”
“Minka—”
“I will always search for justice for the girls who had none. I will continue to stand up and right the wrongs these people commit. I cannot live in a world where men like that exist, Aubs, not when it’s within my power to make things better.
Archer doesn’t want that part of me. He doesn’t want the most important part. ”
“In the time it took for you to drive down the hill, speak to Soph, and change your mind about walking away, do you know what Archer was doing?”
I scoff. It’s watery and pathetic and comes with a humiliating side of booger running from my nose. “Hanging out with his family. Firing up the barbecue.”
She rolls her eyes. “He almost killed Felix, because Felix rarely knows when to shut up, and then he almost drowned Cato, because Cato loves you more than he loves his own brother. You, crying? Flipped a switch in that boy’s mind that nearly ended in bloodshed.”
“But—”
“And then Archer almost started a war, threatening to send Mr. Harrison six feet under, and I don’t know if you know, but it turns out Mr. Harrison has a much larger, much scarier big brother on Felix’s security team.”
“He…” I search her glowing, ocean-blue eyes. “What?”
“It was guards against guards, and when I say that, I mean twelve of Felix’s men had to hold Stovic down before he killed your husband and pissed off a don. All because Harrison gave you the set of keys that made it possible for you to leave.”
I drop my head back, thunking it against the headboard, and close my eyes. “I made such a mess.”
“And then,” relentless, she pushes on, “Archer took a phone call that made everything way messier. Estefan Cordoza, that sneaky rat bastard, wanted a word with our second favorite detective.”
Stunned, I whip my gaze back to hers. “Cordoza?”
“He was playing you,” she sighs. “Blaming Archer for Agosti, demanding an autopsy, having men inside the George Stanley. It was all a ruse, and if you were less focused on keeping me away—because you didn’t want me to spoil your secrets—then I could’ve been at that meeting the day Cordoza came to the house.
I could’ve told you it was all a game from the outset. ”
“What game?” I twist on the bed, tossing my sheet aside and revealing the shirt and shorts I remember falling asleep in last night. Thankfully. “What game are you talking about?”
“Cordoza knows what you did to Agosti.”
My heart seizes and stops, aching and swelling. “What?”
“I can’t know until I’m with him in person, but it’s something I’ve considered since the day you and Archer were shouting at each other in the yard. Archer confirmed my hunch when he called me this morning and had me come here. Soph agrees.”
“Soph agrees to what?” I shove off the bed and step onto aching, sensitive feet, wincing at the pain, even as I walk straight through it and stalk fifteen steps away. “What the hell is Cordoza playing at?”
“He knew.” She settles back against the headboard, entirely at ease as she extends her toes and shows off her sparkling anklet.
“He knew you bonked Agosti. He knew you and Soph had done it together. Soph argues Cordoza put Agosti here, knowing you would take care of it and his hands would remain clean.”
“He set it up?” I stride back toward the bed. “Estefan Cordoza manipulated me into becoming a fucking enforcer for the mafia?”
“He trusted your sense of justice would ensure the removal of a certain unwanted wedding guest.” She lowers her foot and shrugs.
“He put you in a position he knew you wouldn’t walk away from, partnered you and Soph together, and pulled the strings that would end another man’s life.
Once it was done, he played the part of an outraged city CEO demanding answers. ”
“But…” Frustration tears through my system as I throw my hands up. “Why?”
“I suspect it was for the same reason you wanted Anthony dead. He was a nasty stain on society who needed to be quashed, but if Cordoza did it himself, he’d have to answer to the city he ruled. Afterwards, he called Archer and told him he knew what you did.”