Chapter 15
Present Day
I finished my story and watched Bray for a reaction. He hadn’t expressed much as he listened. I’d been looking for cues he might have been forming an unfavorable opinion about me, but he hadn’t given anything away.
“The man who chased me today, it was the man from that night,” I said. “The man who held a gun to my head and who my father shot so I could get away. The man my father went to prison for murdering. That’s who that was.”
Saying it out loud even though I’d just relived the story sent shivers all over my body.
The ghost.
“How is that possible?” Bray asked.
“Excellent question. My guess is he wasn’t dead, and he escaped, but they wanted to pin my father with something on top of the counterfeit money, so they overlooked that minor detail and framed him for murder.”
“Wouldn’t they need a body for that?”
I arched a brow at him. “You work for the DSA. You think the FBI can’t get their hands on a spare corpse?”
He held up a hand like he couldn’t argue. “And how did he find out where you are?”
I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. “Hell if I know. I’ve been on the run for ten years with no contact from anyone from that night.”
“Not even your father?”
“Not even him.” I swallowed the complicated emotion that always rose at the rare mention of him.
Bray frowned. “And what about Olena? What happened to her?”
“Prison. Almost the same sentence as my father. The FBI was there for her that night; diamonds weren’t the only thing she trafficked in.
We just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they got a two-for-one deal when we all got caught.
As soon as my father handed over the counterfeit money for the diamond, they knew they had busted something bigger than just a trafficker.
I’ve only learned about this from Wallace over the years.
He’d feed me updates because I obviously couldn’t go around asking since I had disappeared. ”
“Disappeared?”
I pursed my lips and nodded. “This is the part that’s above your security clearance. I’m not only undercover to stay out of prison, Bray.”
I watched him to see if he would put the pieces together on his own. If he could reason out why I had willingly changed my identity over and over since that night in the hotel room.
“No one knows I’m alive.” I filled in the blank. “Not as the real me, anyway. Wallace made sure of that by redacting parts of my file and keeping me mobile every few months. He did that in exchange for helping him on cases, because he knew Olena would have killed me if she found me.”
Bray intently studied me. “Why?”
“Because of that night. Olena ended up in prison and, I thought, the other guy had died. My father obviously didn’t get away with anything, so that only left me.” I paused and held his eyes. “And the diamond. It was in my hand when everything happened.”
Realization dawned on his face, lighting his eyes. The pieces came together, and it all made sense. The reason I had no name and no home. The reason I had remained a puppet for my own safety.
When he finally spoke, it was the last thing I expected him to say. “Do you have it?”
I gaped at him. “Seriously? No! You think I’ve been running around for a decade with a five-million-dollar diamond in my pocket? You think I wouldn’t have cashed in on that the second I could have and really disappeared forever?”
Just the thought made my head spin with joy.
And relief. To be gone for real. To be free.
What a dream. I still had Javi’s contact info in Peru.
He’d been waiting for a call for ten years, and I’d been waiting to give him one.
The good thing about diamonds was they never went out of style.
All I’d have to do was get the diamond, get it to him, and vanish with my newly found wealth—which I had been trying to do for the past decade.
Too bad that rock was still missing, and freedom was an impossible pipe dream.
I sighed. “I have no idea what happened to it; that night was pure chaos. But you’re not the only one to think I have it.”
Bray looked up at me.
“Olena thinks I disappeared with it. She probably thinks I am off living my best life while she’s been in prison for ten years, plotting my death for having a hand in getting her sent there.
That’s why I’ve been looking over my shoulder.
Her network is wide. The DSA knows all this.
Part of our arrangement is basically witness protection.
Wallace classified the details about the diamond in my file to keep me safe.
It has worked until now.” I swallowed a hard lump in my throat.
The threat had finally come to fruition.
He studied me for a moment. “Wow. That’s … a lot.”
I snorted. “You’re telling me. Now do you see why I was so freaked out when Wallace wasn’t here? He’s been protecting me this whole time.”
“I can protect you,” he said without a beat of hesitation.
The offer filled my face with a warm rush. “Great. You can start by getting me off the Del Rio case and finding me a new place to live.”
“Well … I can’t exactly do that,” he half muttered, looking like his offer might have been more reflex than reality.
“Why not?”
“It’s … complicated.”
“Bray, these are the people who were going to kill me when I was a teenager, and they know where I live. I don’t see what’s complicated about that.”
“Yes, I get that, but I don’t have authority to pull you from the case.”
“Well, then call someone who does.”
“That’s … even more complicated.”
I growled in frustration and whacked my hands on my pillow nest.
Bray looked pained. He sighed a tight breath and stood.
“Just give me some time, okay? I’ll report what happened today and have a patrol unit put outside your apartment.
And anyway, Del Rio is probably the safest place you can be.
With all the helicopter parents in that neighborhood, someone will probably call the cops on my patrol unit. ”
“That’s reassuring,” I grumbled.
He squatted down so we were eye level. He spoke with a determined sincerity. “Erin, I won’t let anything happen to you.” The earnestness in his voice, the promise in his eyes—even when he’d been irritating me moments before—put a lump in my throat. He held my gaze, waiting for me to acknowledge.
I considered it, wondering how much he could do against the people who were after me.
Not much, I thought. But at the same time, no one had ever really offered to protect me.
Wallace hadn’t even gone this far. No one had ever treated me like I was a person and not an expendable object.
Even if he was bossing me around and reminding me how short my leash was, he was doing it with a level of humanity I’d never been afforded.
And he called me by my real name.
“Fine. I’ll stay, but I want a gun.”
He gave his head one firm shake. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” he said with a commanding authority. It stirred something inside me.
“Bray, I have nothing to defend myself with, unless you count the umbrella. And besides, I’m injured now. I can’t even run away if I have to.”
He looked at my ankle buried under the bag of ice. “I somehow doubt a sprained ankle would slow you down.”
“Then you are overestimating your skills as a nurse.”
He shook his head with a quiet laugh. “I have some bandages you can use to wrap your ankle for support. I’ll show you how and then call you a ride home.
” He stood and left me stewing in worry about going home, and wondering how I was supposed to keep up with my cover, and with two kids, with only one foot.
“Speaking of Del Rio, I got some intel out of Brittany today,” I called down the hall where he’d disappeared.
“Oh?” he called back.
“Yeah. Apparently, she overheard Melanie on the phone one day saying the word Montrose. When Brittany asked Melanie what it meant, she fired her.”
“Yikes,” Bray said when he returned with a beige spool of stretchy fabric. “That’s a red flag reaction.”
“Definitely. Brittany said she had no idea what it meant, but I would guess it has to do with their operation, maybe their supplier or a location. I got the sense she was worried. Whatever trouble they are in must be serious.” Which I can relate to, I thought but didn’t say.
Bray wanted me to crack their case but part of me wanted to … help them.
“I’ll look into it,” he said. “May I?” he asked, and pointed at my feet.
I nodded and scooted up the couch to make room for him. I wasn’t sure what he planned to do, but it certainly wasn’t that he’d gently lift my legs and sit with my feet in his lap.
A warmth filled my face at the feel of my calves pressed into his firm thigh. It grew hotter when he rested one hand on my shin. He tossed the bag of ice onto the coffee table and gently pulled off my dirty sock.
“Oof,” he said at the blotchy combo of purple from the bruises and pink from the ice having chilled my skin.
I winced at it myself. It was not pretty. “And you’re going to make me go to work in this condition.”
He gently cupped my heel in his hand and began wrapping the bandage. “Hopefully it’s just for a day.”
I watched him gingerly wrap my ankle a few times. He pulled the bandage taut but did so gently enough not to hurt.
“How am I supposed to go to work? I don’t even have a shoe, Bray,” I said when I remembered the ghost had pulled it off in the alley.
“I’ll get you a new pair.”
“How do you know what size I wear?”
“It’s in your file.”
My face warmed again just as he looped the bandage under the sole of my foot. I squirmed and tried to keep still.
“Are you ticklish?” he asked. I did not miss the hint of levity in his voice.
“What, that’s not in my file alongside my favorite color and list of known allergies?” I fought to keep a smile out of my voice and off my face.
“Do you have allergies?”
“Cats, actually. My mom brought one home when I was six, and I broke out in hives. We had to take it back to the shelter.” The memory rolled off my tongue before I even knew I’d released it from my keep.
I never talked about my mother. And instead of feeling like I’d exposed some sacred, protected truth to someone unworthy, I felt a warmth at the sympathetic look on Bray’s face.
“No cats. Noted. That must have been tough as a kid, to get a pet and have it taken away.”
In truth, I didn’t remember it as being sad. I just remembered cuddling the kitten and becoming incredibly itchy and struggling to breathe. My mother had hugged me and kissed me and apologized for things I hadn’t understood at the time. The whole ordeal had upset her much more than anyone else.
“It worked out,” I told Bray. “We went back and got a dog the next day.”
He laughed. “You seem like much more of a dog person.”
“I would love to have a dog,” I said with a smile, which quickly fell.
The reason for my being unable to own a pet settled between us like a cold front.
Bray cleared his throat and finished wrapping my ankle. The end of the spool was Velcro, which he tightly fastened to hold it in place. “There,” he said. “Take it off when you shower, obviously, but otherwise, wearing it should help support it.”
I examined his handiwork and decided not to tell him I already knew how to wrap an ankle and was perfectly capable of doing it myself, because doing that would have denied me the opportunity to feel his hands touching me, something I enjoyed more than I wanted to admit.
“Thanks.”
“You bet.”
We sat there, me lounged back with my feet in his lap, and I briefly imagined we were the couple we’d pretended to be in the coffeeshop, enjoying our Sunday afternoon at home together. Perhaps we were watching a football game or a movie or simply basking in each other’s company.
The fantasy snapped when he lifted my feet and stood. “Okay. Time to get you home.”
He left me sitting there, sadly wondering if I would ever have a life with that kind of Sunday in it.