Chapter 2 #2
Unknown number: That’s a fact. Pops here. You best not be on your phone. You’ve got our next sweetheart to protect.
Shaking my head, I return my gaze to Clover’s window, refusing to enter any of their numbers into my phone. They’ll simply be a passing memory as soon as we solve this case, anyway.
Exasperation hits like a kick to the ribs. It’s three in the morning, and this town has already scouted me, judged me, and decided I’m worth feeding.
Before I can even ponder that ridiculousness, I spot my cousin two blocks away.
Does no one sleep anymore?
Roman tries his best to stay hidden, but working in the field is not his specialty.
After my father passed away, Roman’s mom, my aunt Vivi, fought tooth and nail to gain primary custody of me. Apparently, my mother agreed—for a fee—so I grew up with cousins who were more like brothers—and I remember none of it.
A few moments later, my passenger door opens, and he leans down, wearing a sad excuse for a grin.
Good, he should feel guilty for the shit he pulled today.
I move the stinky casserole to the back seat. My car smells like tuna now.
“I didn’t even startle you?” he jokes while sliding into the seat.
“Not even close, man. I saw you round the corner at the stop sign. You’re the least stealthy operative we have.” It’s not true, but he deserves to take some shit right now.
He chuckles and shuts the door of the nondescript Honda I’ve parked outside of Honeybee’s home.
I’ve memorized every word of her file over the last hour. No matter how much I want to, I can’t deny that Clover Danforth is someone… She’s probably the little girl assaulting my mind with smiles and bumblebees since she grew up at Roots of Salvation too.
I refuse to look at Roman, even though I can feel his gaze boring holes into the side of my face.
“You should have told me,” I say in warning. It’s late, I’m irritated, and my focus is on the woman who keeps sticking her nose to her windows.
“Why does Clover have bulletproof glass?” I ask. “Something’s chasing this woman, but there are no clues in her file.”
Roman’s usually more thorough than that.
“Best I can tell,” he says, “she’s paranoid. Something from her past spooked her bad enough to carry over into adulthood. Seems she’s always been this way. Well, as long as anyone around here has known her.”
I hold up the file that Rip gave me when I arrived.
“Something like Roots of Salvation?”
Roman nods, and I finally turn drawing my glare his way.
“You should have told me,” I say again.
“It’s taken us a long time to find her, Valen.” He sighs, and I feel the pain he holds in his chest—it’s a sadness they all hold for me. “Clover disappeared the same night Mom found you being beaten at ROS.”
He grips the back of his neck. “Then your doctor kept telling us that introducing traumatizing information could hurt you more, but I don’t know.
It didn’t feel right. After Mom died, we found a Clover clue and decided to act by reaching out to Greyson.
We thought if we got close to him professionally, we could get a better read on Clover, you know?
Find out if she’s the one we’ve been looking for.
But that fucker turned us down every chance he got until his circumstances changed and he needed our services. ”
Roman turns his attention to Clover’s home. “Every year, we’ve gone back to your specialist, and every year it’s the same thing. Your memories are there. They’re locked away. I was hoping—”
“You were hoping what?” I bark. “That one look at this mystery woman would bring all my memories flooding back? Did you even think about what that would do to me? To her?”
“Yes. No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.” He side-eyes me. “Did it work?”
Frustration burns the acid in my gut. “I got flashes of a child—of her, I think. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“According to her sealed adoption files, she ran away from the cult the same night Mom rescued you.”
I grip the steering wheel so tightly that the cheap vinyl cracks. I still have guilt over my aunt being the one to find me—battered, broken, and on the brink of death.
It must have been traumatizing for her too.
I suck in air through my nose.
Count the scars on my knuckle—seven. The files on my dash—four. Focus on what’s real, not what’s lost.
“Do you think she was involved?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
Roman lets out a huff of air. “Have you seen her, Val?”
Of course I’ve seen her. I may have forgotten the first seventeen years of my life, but I’ll never forget the haunted look in her eyes when she saw me tonight.
Or the way my body responded to her.
Like it knew her.
Like it craved her.
“I don’t know what she was like as a child, V, but she’s barely a hundred pounds soaking wet.
The injuries you sustained—I doubt they came from her.
Even if she had a baseball bat, a golf club—hell, she could’ve had a hatchet—she couldn’t have done the damage you sustained.
The force of those blows? Those came from full-grown men.
Mom saw at least two of them attacking you. ”
My gut twists.
I hate thinking about the recovery from that night. I hate even more that I can’t recall anything about it. Who did that to me, and why?
“Fuck.”
“Everything we know about her matches what’s in your journal, Valen.”
It’s suddenly too fucking hot in this car.
Apparently, once Aunt Vivi had custody of me, she hated sending me to my mom at Roots of Salvation in the summers and school breaks, but it was court-ordered.
According to my cousins, something changed that last summer.
Before she dropped me off, she gave me a tiny notebook that I kept hidden.
I was supposed to use it to record anything and everything Vivi could take to the court to get me out of there.
I was only supposed to be there for a few weeks, a month tops.
At least that’s what Roman’s older brother Grant has told me. I don’t remember any of it, but I’ve memorized every word I wrote in that journal. I was told there were others, but no one knows where they are.
“You called her Honeybee,” Roman reminds me.
Heat blooms in my chest and spreads outward—like a gunshot wound, but this feeling is different. It’s not a painful heat. It’s gentle, almost…soothing.
“I know,” I choke out.
“You don’t use nicknames, Valen. Not anymore. Code names on missions, yes. Not nicknames. Not since your incident.” I can feel him scrutinizing me. “You called the girl in your notebooks Honeybee too. And I…I remember how you used to talk about her. You loved her then, you protected her.”
“I know,” I say again.
“Like it or not, V, I think she’s the key to unlocking all your secrets.”
I look up at her house again. A sliver of light streams out of the upstairs window, showcasing her silhouette that hasn’t moved.
“She doesn’t sleep,” I say.
“Neither do you.”
I can’t tell him what haunts me—the fucked-up pieces that stab at me in the dark.
No one should have that shit in their head.
Especially when I don’t even know if it’s real.
My doctors are convinced I’ve made it all up in my head.
They don’t believe they’re memories. But fuck, I think they might be.
“If she’s the key to unlocking my secrets, where’s that going to leave any of us when they all come out?”
“Here,” he says, as though it explains everything.
“We’ll be here for you.” He looks up to the window.
“And for her, if that’s what you want. Whatever happened that summer, Valen, it’s left scars—deep, ugly, brutal scars—on more people than we can begin to even imagine.
The weight of it may sit on your shoulders.
” He turns to give me his full attention. “But it’s probably on hers as well.”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Now—”
We both glance up as light floods from her upstairs window. She’s pulled back the curtain and is swaying side to side.
Even from here, I can see her arms shaking from the weight of holding herself together.
“Now, you get to know her,” he says.
I lean down to stare at her through the passenger window. “To know her,” I mumble. “And what if she’s not the angel she appears to be?”
Roman turns in his seat to face me. “If she ends up being the villain in your story?”
I nod.
“Then we ruin her.”
I swallow hard as Clover waves at us with both hands. She puts her whole body behind it as though we might not see her, and a hint of a smile tugs at my lips.
Ruining her would never sit right with me, and we both know it.
I can’t deny it though. If she’s the reason for my scars, there’s only one thing to do with her, because in this game we’re about to play, I have to be the winner.
I’ve already lost too much.