Chapter 21 #2
He held up a hand and half smiled. “It was in defense of a friend who was being bullied, but yes.”
“Hmm. So, the hero mentality started young, I see.”
“Hero?”
“Yes, Ramesh said he thinks you’re a hero.”
Color spotted his cheeks. “What else did he say?”
I shifted to tuck my legs up underneath me and pulled his sweater tighter. “Let’s see …” I trailed off like the list was long and watched his face grow redder. “He said you play the cello.”
A laugh bubbled out of him. “Ah, yes. That was my dad’s attempt at turning me into something more refined than a kid throwing punches on the playground.”
“Did it work?”
He stroked his jaw, and then leaned back with his arm draped over the sofa’s back. “I’d say so.”
The wine had gone to my head, and I so desperately wanted to crawl to him and tuck myself under his arm. Instead, I did something even more reckless. “Can I get a refill?” I held up my glass before sipping the last drops.
He eyed the dregs of red clinging to the glass like he was considering the right answer. “Sure, but then we have to talk about serious things.” He stood from the sofa and reached for my glass.
“I think your musical talents and history with playground violence are very serious things.”
He snorted a laugh and headed for the door. “Be right back.”
I snuck a peek over my shoulder while he was gone.
The prison had never left my mind. It perched like a hawk on a high branch, waiting to strike.
I somehow knew, deep in my gut, when Wallace sent me here, my path would cross with my father.
And here we were. Closer in physical proximity than we’d been in years, and the case that had sent him to prison, and my life into an endless spiral of alternating identities, was stalking me like a hungry wolf.
I closed my eyes and saw his face from that night in the hotel. The last time I’d seen him. The fear. The failure. The realization we’d finally been caught. The pain.
“Here you go.” Bray’s voice cut into my memory and made me jump. “Sorry,” he said when he noticed.
I shook myself and took the wineglass with both hands. “Thank you.” I gulped half of it in one go. I noted he had not refilled his glass, but he did sit closer to me when he returned to the couch. He landed where the angled cushions met, close enough his knee almost touched mine.
“It’s a shame such a beautiful piece of waterfront property is a prison,” he said and nodded in the direction I’d been looking.
“Big shame,” I echoed and downed another gulp, wanting to move from the subject, though I knew we were headed toward another unpleasant one. I considered going and getting the wine bottle in preparation.
“So,” Bray said, getting to business by his tone.
“We’ve probably only got a few days before someone at the DSA notices we’re not in Del Rio.
I can buy us some time, but we’re going to have to move quick if we’re going to do this on our own.
In my eyes, solving this case proves to my mom—the director—I’m capable, and sets you free from Olena. It’s a win-win.”
I figured he’d been thinking something of the sort. “Easier said than done,” I said with a frown. “You realize solving this case means finding that diamond, right?”
“Yes.” He said it so simply. As if I hadn’t been unsuccessfully looking for it in back channels during every spare second I had for the past ten years. “We need to find it and officially lock it up in evidence, and then Olena has no choice but to trust you don’t have it.”
Lock it up, what a shame, a sinister little voice said in the back of my mind. I tried to quiet it by keeping my eyes on Bray’s determined face.
“Right. Do you happen to know where it is?” I asked.
“No, but do you?”
I gaped at him. “Are you still on this? No, Bray. I don’t know where it is. If I did—”
Suddenly, he shifted and removed my glass so he could set it aside.
He took both my hands in his. His large palms burned warm against my skin.
“Erin, you were the last one to see it that night. Maybe if you try, you can remember what happened.” The fire danced in his pleading eyes, setting the gray off into shimmering silver. He looked almost otherworldly.
“I—” My voice caught in my throat. A cocktail of emotion swelled in my chest: shock he was touching me, desire for him to put his hands other places, but most of all, fear at what he was asking me to do.
I swallowed against my dry mouth and found my voice.
“Bray, you’re asking me to remember the worst night of my life. ”
His hands tightened around mine. “I know, and I’m sorry. But I’ve been there too. I know what it’s like to have shock blank out parts of your memory, believe me.” He paused and another emotion swelled in my chest. This one warm and aching at the same time.
Of course he knew. He’d almost died in a traumatic situation. I’d almost been shot that night, and he had been shot.
“Calvin …” His first name slipped from my trembling lips by accident.
The jolt of intimacy made him curl his fingers around my hands so he was holding each in one of his. His fingertips pressed into my palms. A tiny smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “Please,” he whispered. “Just try. I’m right here with you.”
My heart had picked up its pace, nearing an uncomfortable rate. But knowing he was close helped soothe my fear. I nodded with a pained wince, afraid of the memory I was about to dive into, and closed my eyes.
I saw my father again. The hotel room. Olena’s furious face. I felt the gun’s cold barrel pressed to my temple like the kiss of death. The ghost’s fingers curled around my throat.
The diamond. Where is the diamond?
It had been in my hand, frozen like a translucent chunk of ice.
I’d had it. I’d had it. I needed it now, and I could see it in my teenaged palm, sitting there like the answer to everything.
Where did it go? Had I dropped it? Had Olena snatched it back when the money burned the wrong color?
Had my father taken it? I looked as hard as I could, but it was all a blur.
The smoke, the gun, my father telling me to run.
I jerked my hands out of Bray’s and stood.
“I’m sorry,” I said and threw a palm over my wetting eyes.
I turned away from the fire and walked to the railing.
The hillside tumbled away from the balcony with nothing but shrubbery and dirt below before the next home clung to the earth a good thirty feet away.
I sensed Bray’s warmth behind me before he placed a hand on my shoulder. It was greedy, and maybe selfish, but in that moment, I wanted a hug—a real hug. I couldn’t even remember the last one I’d had, and I knew he’d give me one.
I turned so his arm wrapped around my shoulders and buried my face in his chest. He threw his other arm around me without hesitation, and I nearly sagged against him.
I breathed him in, that minty soap smell like a balm so close, and let him hold me.
I could feel his heart under my palm, having sped up like mine but still steady and strong.
His breath moved in and out of his lungs and spilled down the gap where his too-large sweater curved against my neck.
He felt like a living shield, and despite his mistakes, I knew on a bone-deep level he wasn’t going to let anything happen to me.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly into the evening air. “I’m just trying to help.”
“I know.” I sniffled against his chest, not yet ready to leave his embrace, however inappropriate it might have been. “But I really don’t remember.”
He leaned back to look down at me, his eyes now liquid gray in the fading light and full of understanding. The flames dancing behind him backlit his face into dramatic shadows. The scar on his chin stood out in stark relief.
I moved my hand up to smooth my thumb over the scar. His breath stuttered. “I’m sorry this happened to you. You must have been terrified.”
His arms remained wrapped around my back. He slowly nodded. “I was.”
I tried to make something smooth come out of my mouth. Something one of my alter egos would know to say in this situation, but this was too real, and my body was humming too hard with forbidden possibility to focus. “I’m glad you survived.”
Bray’s mouth twitched at the corner again. “Me too.”
We continued staring at each other, and I saw honesty rise to the surface in his eyes.
“What you asked me earlier, about liking my job, the truth is, my heart hasn’t really been in it since I got shot.
I’ve just been doing it out of a sense of duty.
But with you … Well, let’s just say my heart feels a little different about things now. ”
My heart hit my ribs hard at the same time it swelled bigger than the moon. “What are you saying?”
He softly laughed as color filled his face. “I don’t know. Things I probably shouldn’t be. But I guess the point is, you’ve made me care.”
If not for his arms around me, I might have collapsed. He cared. About me. And his job, but because of me. I let the feeling fill up the empty chambers of my heart, and then sealed them off to keep it close. I wasn’t sure I was allowed to possess something so special.
“Well, I’m glad to be the one to make your Grinch heart grow, Agent Bray,” I said with a half smile.
Saying his name seemed to snap the spell. He released his grip and took a step back. He combed a nervous hand through his hair. “Sorry about that. I shouldn’t have—” He gestured toward me, and I filled in the awkward silence with hugged you.
“It’s okay. I needed a hug.”
“Well, I’ve got more if you ever need another.” He clumsily chuckled and looked away in embarrassment.
“Noted,” I said, thrilled at the prospect he might hold me again.
A sudden wind whipped through, sending the flames dancing, and reminding me we had a problem to solve. I wrapped the sweater tighter and leaned back on the railing. “So, the diamond. I still have no idea where it is.”
“Is there anyone else who might?”