Chapter 20
He was worried about the kid. And Tony. And about what was going to happen when the two of them ended up in a room together, even though things had gone okay at the asylum.
That fucking asylum.
He’d tried so hard to avoid having to drag the poor kid back to that fucking hellhole, it just hadn’t worked out that way.
More’s the fucking pity.
I jerked myself back out of Hart’s thoughts, his hand strong on my elbow.
“You okay, kid?” he asked me, a frown pulling at his brow.
I nodded. “Yeah, just lost my balance for a second.” I forced a smile I didn’t feel, nerves and anxiety making my stomach churn, and not because of Hart’s thoughts or hand on my arm.
Raj was hovering behind him, his expression serious and a little shadowed.
I hadn’t expected Raj to ever come back to Beyond the Veil again, even though he’d been kind when we’d been at Tranquil Brook. But he’d been the one I’d seen first, coming back down the hall from the kitchen and crashing into Hart, who’d been coming out of Ward’s office.
It didn’t take me more than a few moments to extricate myself from Hart’s head—but it annoyed me that it still happened. That I could still be ambushed by others’ thoughts, even though I was getting better at deliberately blocking them.
The expression Hart had on his face as he studied me told me that he wasn’t certain whether or not I was telling him the truth. I liked to think I was—there were just a couple different ways you could take the phrase ‘lost my balance.’
I guess that meant I was getting better at not taking things so literally—something Ward had been encouraging me to try to do.
People are very bad at saying what they really mean, and not just because they’re prone to lying.
While I’m not very good at telling when people are lying, I understand that.
I have a much harder time with saying things that don’t mean what they seem.
But apparently I was getting better at that right along with blocking my psychic ability and being a little bit more of a contributing member of society.
Growing up at twenty-four, I guess.
A little.
“You got a minute, kid?”
I nodded. That was one of those non-literal phrases that I understood. When someone asked if you ‘had a minute,’ it almost never meant an actual minute. It usually meant several minutes up to possibly an hour.
I had plenty of time, so it didn’t matter that he almost certainly didn’t mean a minute.
“Can we use my office?” Hart asked.
It wasn’t anymore, of course, but I knew what he meant. I nodded again.
Hart waved for Raj to go in first, and the big tiger shifter did, his movements smooth. Hart followed, and I came in after them, hesitating in the doorway.
“So, thanks to you,” Hart said, gesturing for me to sit, “we’ve managed to put together enough to get a search warrant for Barclay Jennings’s home.”
They both looked at me.
“That’s good, right?” I asked, glancing between them, although Raj seemed to be looking slightly over my shoulder, so—flushing—I went back to looking at Hart.
“Yeees,” Hart replied, drawing out the word.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “But?”
Raj let out a sigh. “What my colleague is failing to do is ask you to come with us,” he said, his voice mostly flat with just a hint of annoyance.
I blinked. Oh.
“Jesus fuck, Tony,” Hart muttered, tugging on the end of his braid. “And you say I’m insensitive.”
I drew in a long breath, then let it out slowly. “Okay,” I agreed, although my voice shook a bit more than I’d expected and definitely more than I’d wanted it to.
“You are allowed to refuse,” Raj told me.
I decided that I hated this cold, professional version of him even more than I’d hated it when he was angry with me.
I nodded. “I understand,” I replied. “I am not refusing.”
Hart blew out his breath. “Then let’s fucking do this before any of us get cold feet.”
Raj drove, with Hart in the passenger seat and me in the back, deliberately stopping myself from sensing anything in the car.
I didn’t know if a lot of people tended to ride in Raj’s back seat or not, and I didn’t particularly want to find out the way I normally did.
So I held myself together, trying not to notice the way the car smelled a little like Raj’s cologne, hoping that this wasn’t going to be as awful as Tranquil Brook.
Hoping that I’d be able to show them—show Raj—how dedicated I was to solving the case. To earn back some small amount of the respect I’d lost.
We pulled up to a house that looked surprisingly ordinary.
A small two-story painted pale blue, although the paint was stained and sun-bleached and starting to peel off in places.
The white trim was dingy, the darker blue paint on the stairs all but worn off.
The bushes were growing a little wild, but had clearly been deliberately chosen once.
It was a house that could have been cute if it had been taken care of. As it was, it was just a little sad and neglected.
I reminded myself that the man who lived inside was a murderer. That he’d stripped the magic from Yvonne Gates-Adams and then beat her to death.
On second examination, the house was less sad and more dingy. Tarnished. Sinister. I knew the effect was psychosomatic, but it felt no less real for that.
Raj and Hart both got out of the Subaru at the same time, coordinated in their movements by months of working together. Maybe longer, actually, given that Hart had known Raj back when he was still with the Richmond police.
Their synchrony served to remind me that I didn’t belong. Not just here, with them. Not just on the case. Not just at Beyond the Veil, even, although all those were true.
I didn’t belong anywhere.
Maybe I could have, if I’d had a different childhood or been born to a different kind of family—but then I wouldn’t be me, would I?
“Here, kid,” Hart said, standing by the open trunk.
I walked over, then nervously looked down at the vest he was holding out.
“What’s that for?” I asked him. Raj was already pulling on one of his own, the black material bulky, with gold letters reading FBI screen-printed on the breast. The back of the one Hart was holding out had larger FBI letters on the back.
“It’s policy,” Raj informed me. “As a precaution, even when we’re pretty sure they won’t be needed.”
“Bulletproof vest,” Hart said. I took it and swallowed. “It’d be a fucking PR nightmare if a civilian consultant got shot.”
“Don’t be an ass, Hart,” Raj snapped. “Nobody’s getting shot. It’s SOP, that’s all.”
I pulled on the vest, struggling a little with the straps. Hart put his on, then fixed mine before he and Raj turned, Raj slamming the trunk shut. I sighed, then followed them toward the front door of the house.
As we walked, I noticed other agents climbing out of other cars within a few houses of this one.
It wasn’t until that moment that I wondered what would happen if Jennings were actually at home, and the thought sent my pulse skyrocketing.
Raj turned to look back at me. “What is it?” he asked me.
I looked up. “What is what?” I asked, hearing my voice quaver a little.
“You’re afraid,” he said flatly. “Why?”
I felt my face flush.
“Jesus fuck, Raj, why wouldn’t he be?” Hart hissed.
“He wasn’t until just now,” the tiger shifter argued. “Something changed.”
Hart rolled his eyes. “Fuck’s sake, Tony,” he muttered.
But Raj was still looking at me, pinning me with those gold-brown eyes.
“I just—realized he might be here,” I half-whispered.
“He’s not,” Hart interrupted. “We know he happens to be out of town today, and our warrant allows us to enter and search in his absence.” He grinned at me. “We wouldn’t hang you out to dry like that, kid.”
I nodded, relief flooding through me.
Raj let out a soft grunt, but he stopped staring at me, so he must have been satisfied that I was no longer terrified.
“I’m going to knock on the door as though he might be, though,” he said, and I realized he was talking to me, even though he was no longer looking at me.
He was letting me know that I shouldn’t worry just because he was about to knock as though he didn’t know whether or not Jennings was home.
I couldn’t decide if that made me feel better—because he was thinking about me—or worse—because he thought I was an overly-sensitive coward.
His big fist knocked on the door, the boom echoing through the wood. “Mr. Jennings. FBI. Please open the door.”
He and Hart both looked bored as they waited a minute or so, then Raj repeated the pounding and calling.
When the house remained quiet, Hart and Raj both pulled guns.
“Okay, people,” Raj said to the other agents who had driven in other cars, their unmarked sedans—and one van—parked up and down the street. Like Raj and Hart, they were wearing bullet-proof vests and carried weapons.
“Stay out here, kid,” Hart said to me. “Until one of us comes to get you.”
I nodded. I had no interest in following two armed men into an uncertain situation without them checking to make sure it was safe, first.
“Ready?” Raj asked, looking at Hart. The elf nodded, and then Raj leaned back a little, then delivered an explosive kick to the door that ripped out the bolt and half-knocked it off its hinges. Even though I’d known it was coming, I still jumped at the crash, sucking in a hard breath.
My heart pounded, adrenaline running through my system as I listened to them move through the house, voices of the agents calling “Clear!” as they moved through empty rooms and hallways.
After a long silence in which I felt my anxiety growing, Hart stuck his head back out the now-broken door. “It’s clear,” he said, beckoning me to come into the house.
I swallowed, then followed him inside.
I had to blink a couple of times after I walked into the relative darkness of the interior in order for my eyes to adjust. Like the outside of the house, the inside ostensibly looked normal. Laminate fake-wood flooring, rugs, furniture. The occasional knick-knack.