Chapter 18 #2
“Yes, okay? The director is my mother, and she’s a little overprotective.
See this?” He spoke through tight lips and pointed at the scar on his jaw, the only imperfection on his otherwise handsome face, which was inches from mine.
“Well, it has a pair of siblings that didn’t miss,” he said.
He yanked his T-shirt’s collar aside and exposed the star-shaped scars I’d seen the night before while he slept.
His eyes searched mine for understanding, and I was too shocked to do anything but stare back.
“I spent eighteen hours in surgery, ten weeks in physical rehab, and then six months at a desk. Ever since I’ve been back in the field, she’s got me working mommy crimes over in Del Rio.
I’m doing the best with what I’ve got, and I would appreciate it if you would cut me some fucking slack. ”
The air between us crackled. I was holding my breath.
Bray exhaled and let go of me. He hung his head and leaned a hand against the wall. “I’m sorry.”
I was at a loss, reeling, and wanting to take back everything bad I’d said about him.
The scar on his jaw was from a third bullet, which had nearly hit him in the face.
My knees went weak at the thought. “I saw your scars last night,” I managed, unsure why I chose that as my response.
“When you were sleeping. What happened?” My words came out in fragments as I tried to recover.
Bray let go of a long breath. He spoke to the stairs beside us instead of facing me. I watched the scar on his jaw move with every word. “Child abduction case. The abductors didn’t want to hand him over. The kid lived. I almost didn’t.”
He’d saved a kid? God, I felt terrible for every quip.
“I’ve been so unfair to you. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head and met my gaze. “No, you’re right.
I’ve made mistakes. This is just my first case since then and it’s taking me a while to get back in the swing of things.
And my mom—” He cut himself off and closed his eyes to take a breath.
“The director seems to have lost a little faith in my abilities too, so it’s been a rough ride.
” He sighed and sat down on the top step of the nearest flight.
I was tempted to reach out and touch him. To somehow encourage him and apologize for how I’d treated him when he was doing his best. But I thought it best to keep my hands to myself.
I crossed the small landing and sat beside him. “Is that why your security clearance was revoked?”
He snorted. “Yeah. She used agency bureaucracy to keep me safe in her eyes.” He made air quotes around the word with his fingers. “I guess she thought me knowing anything about your past would have been too stressful. ‘Low stress cases only, Cal,’” he said, mimicking her voice.
“Damn. She pulled your clearance because she thought information might give you an ulcer?”
“Something like that. Little did she know you’d be the most stressful thing I’ve encountered in months.”
I scoffed in offense, but it melted into a smile. “I won’t apologize. But I do have a question. Why didn’t you tell her my cover is blown with the moms? I can’t go back to Del Rio anyway.”
“Because I don’t want her to know I blew it. She’ll never trust me with another case again.” The defeated ache in his voice stopped me from questioning if that was a wise decision.
“So, then, what are we going to do? I can’t go back there with Melanie and the ghost out to get me.”
He sighed. “I’ll think of something, don’t worry.”
I honestly didn’t know what the options were, given our restraints. “Thanks for trying with your mom—I mean, the director, at least,” I offered.
He tugged at his pant leg and huffed. “Sure. Unfortunately, she can tell me what to do both because she’s my mom and my superior officer.”
I snorted. “I get that. I’ve been told what to do for the past ten years.
‘Go here, be this person, say this, do that,’” I said, mimicking Wallace.
“I think Wallace got off on it, honestly. Being bossed around is all I’ve ever known.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I could just … take matters into my own hands.”
Bray looked at me with a knowing honesty in his eyes. “Probably as many times as I have,” he said with a soft smile.
We gazed at each other, connected in our desire to have control over our own lives but also treading water in the depths of being unable to.
“At least you’ve seen some action,” he said, breaking the spell. “Well, before Del Rio, I mean. My mom put me on this case because it’s minimal risk.”
“Ha. Tell that to the terrified look on Melanie’s face when I said Montrose earlier.”
He half shrugged, like it was something to consider. “After what happened,” Bray went on, “she just wants me to be safe.”
I thought about how Del Rio stacked up against other cases I’d been on.
Despite what I now knew about the moms, I had to agree with its smiling neighbors, playdates, and snack times, it was, by far, the friendliest case I’d ever worked.
Even though I wasn’t one myself, I couldn’t blame a mother for wanting to protect her child, even if he was a grown man.
I had so few people protecting me in my life, I wondered what it might feel like—
“Oh, my God,” I said aloud as a thought suddenly struck me.
“What?” Bray asked.
I stared at my feet and blinked a few times while I fit the pieces together in my mind. I hadn’t thought of it until that moment, but what Bray had said about his mother keeping him safe suddenly took root in a way that made a new kind of sense.
I looked up at him. “Bray, do you think he did the same thing to me?”
“What thing? And who?”
I stood so the thoughts in my head would fall into place with the help of gravity. “Wallace. Do you think he sent me here, to Del Rio, because he was thinking just like your mom, that it would be safe?”
Bray pushed himself to stand on the step where his feet had been planted. He stood two below me and met me at eye level. The gray of his eyes narrowed into focus. “Where were you before here?”
“New York, and the move was really sudden. He called me in the middle of the night and said I had to catch a plane to California.” I sucked in a gasp and slapped a hand over my mouth, thinking back to the sounds I heard through the phone that night.
“It was that night! He died that night! I heard weird sounds through the phone, and he wouldn’t tell me where he was.
He just told me to finish the job I was on and get to the airport.
Bray, he’d planned it.” I looked at him with wild, searching eyes.
“He’s known for the past decade Olena is after me.
He must have known she was close to finding me, so he relocated me. ”
I thought back to more details about that night: the wind, the car door, the fact Wallace had told me the data drive would be collected, not that he’d collect it. The sound I was pretty sure had been a gunshot in the distance. How he’d called me by my real name.
“Shit,” I said out loud, understanding there was much more to the story than I’d thought. “Where was he when he died?”
A spark danced in Bray’s eyes as he too put pieces together.
He climbed up to the landing where I was, resuming his standard stature of a head taller than me.
“I don’t know. That’s what I was looking into right when I found out Olena was being released from prison today and there’s a threat on your life. I got a little distracted.”
I didn’t have time to fawn over him dropping everything to tend to my safety. I needed answers.
“Well, please, let’s continue looking into it.”