Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
VALEN
All I see is her face.
The way the color drained from her skin when I told her I’d been beaten. The way her entire body seemed to collapse inward when I said August fifteenth. The way she whispered we were friends as though the words were glass shards cutting her throat on the way out.
Roman sits in silence. He knows better than to speak when I’m like this—locked in my own head, trying to solve a puzzle when half my pieces were destroyed.
“She thought I abandoned her,” I finally say.
“Seems like it.” His shoulders slump on a heavy exhale. “She wears her trauma while you use yours as a shield. Whatever you guys were running from that night…” He shivers.
“But she knew. She’s known this whole time.
And I—” I press the heels of my palms into my eyes.
“My mind is a locked door, but my body knows her. I have this…this feeling, deep in my chest. I…ache when I look at her. It’s as though she’s a piece of me, and it’s so fucking weird.
It’s messing me up inside. Something terrible happened to her. Something I was involved in.”
“You don’t know that.”
Don’t I though? The two things I’ve always known to be true about my life are the unyielding knowledge that I had let someone down and a determination to never do it again.
“Do you think she searched for me?” More guilt settles like Tetris pieces.
“It wouldn’t have mattered if she did, V. Mom was clear that you shouldn’t tell anyone at the cult that you were a Harrington. And you always swore that you only gave Clover our first names. After…the accident, mom paid a lot of money to have your online presence completely erased.”
“She did?” I guess I hadn’t asked. I couldn’t be on screens for a long time during my recovery, and once I got home, I wanted nothing to do with social media.
“Yes, and we all thought it was a good idea for you to stay offline. When we opened Styx and Stone and you wanted to be in the field, keeping you out of the public eye served that purpose too. So even if Clover could’ve found a connection to us, all she would have turned up is one of Grant’s many fundraisers or Chase’s latest date. ”
“That must have hurt her even more. Never knowing.”
“You’ve both been through a lot,” he says like a fucking diplomat, never allowing me to sit in the guilt the way I should.
I grunt in response.
He shakes his head. “You staying out here the rest of the night?”
I look three houses down, to the windows glowing at the edges where she’s peering through the glass, as if she’s searching for the ghost who haunts her.
What if it’s me?
Rip says she does this every night. As if she’s trying to block the darkness from her sanctuary, blasting it away with sheer wattage.
“Yeah.” I tug on my neck. Spending the night hunched over in a sedan will be killer on my back, but I can’t bring myself to leave either.
The scared little Honeybee draws me to her in a magnetic way I’m not strong enough to avoid.
“Rip’s working in shifts with Cody tonight,” Roman says, resigned to my decision. “They’ll be right out front. You don’t have to be the one who stays.”
“I do though.” I wasn’t there for her… “Fuck me.”
“What?” He scans our surroundings, searching for a new threat. Unfortunately, it’s only happening in my mind.
Acid burns the back of my throat. “Roman. I—I was beaten.” My stomach hollows out as suffocation sets in. “If that happened to me…” On instinct, my gaze drifts back to her home. “Then what the fuck happened to her?”
He sucks in a ragged breath. “V, what we saw tonight—”
“She’s terrified.”
“She’s traumatized,” he says, and I force myself to look him in the eye. “That house. The lights. The sensory furniture. The way she moves along the walls, anticipating an attack.” He pauses as the pulse in my neck fights against my skin. “That’s not just past trauma—she’s actively living in it.”
I know. I saw it too.
“Whatever happened to her at Roots of Salvation, it’s still happening. In her head. Every day.”
“My mother did this to her,” I say flatly.
“We don’t know that—”
“We do though.”
I see it in his eyes—he knows I’m right.
“Valen, don’t stay out here all night,” he pleads. “Tomorrow we’ll dig deeper, see what we can find out about…that night. She might have information we can’t get anywhere else.” He glances up at the duplex Clover shares with her friend, Savvy—the woman we were hired to protect.
I nod as he climbs out of the car and walks away, presumably to wherever he parked his own.
And then I sit there and stare at Clover’s house.
Every. Single. Light.
What the hell happened to you, Honeybee?
It’s still well before sunrise when an old man approaches the car on the driver’s side. I’ve seen him before, in the file Rip gave me on Clover, but now he’s being dragged by a beast of a dog in one hand and holding a bag of shit in the other.
Beep. “That’s just Chief. He’s harmless,” Rip says through our comms system. “Real protective of Clover and a pain in the ass in the field, but harmless.”
Great. Just what I need—a professional pain in the ass.
Beep. “Clover loves the old guy.”
My irritation subsides a fraction.
Chief knocks on my window without preamble. “You gonna stare at her house all day, or you gonna come inside and tell me what happened?”
I frown as a growl escapes me and the beast at his side.
“How do you know something happened?” As tired as I am, all my senses are firing on high alert.
“Boy, I was the chief of police around here for thirty years. I know when something’s happened in my town.” He pushes his thumb into the waistband of his trousers and rocks back on his heels. “Come on. I gotta drop this mutt off with her anyway.”
“It’s barely six in the morning,” I say. Plus, I don’t think she’s even gone to bed yet.
“And? You think she’s sleeping over there in a house full of artificial sun?”
I look from him to Clover’s house.
“Fine, Valen,” he huffs. “Come on then. I live in the yellow one down here. I’ll get you some coffee first. I’m Chief, by the way.”
I don’t know why I exit my car, but I do.
Pressing the button on our comms unit, I check in with Rip. “I’ll be back.”
Beep. “Copy.”
I follow the self-proclaimed Chief to a tiny Tudor-style house with a front porch that leans slightly to the left. The giant brown Bernese mountain dog at his side runs in circles but never pulls so much that the old man trips—almost as though he knows how far his chaos can roam.
“This here’s Wrecks. Belonged to Clover’s pal, Elle, but Elle’s husband’s been trying to get rid of him for a while. And since Clover’s needin’ something to take care of so she remembers to take care of herself, figured now was as good a time as any for her to have an attack dog.”
I glance down at the pup. He could be terrifying if not for the copious amounts of drool all over his face or the way he trips over his enormous paws with every third step.
“This way. Watch yer step, son.” The endearment gives me pause. I don’t recall ever being called son, and it hits me strangely in the chest as we step inside.
The house smells like old wood polish, coffee, and something that might be potpourri, but is also faintly reminiscent of the senior center Aunt Vivi made me volunteer at before I began training with ex-special forces—fish oil vitamins left in the drawer too long with a lingering scent of peppermint.
It’s a combination you’re not quick to forget.
Chief’s kitchen is small with yellow linoleum floors that were probably installed in 1975. Floral curtains hang like dust bunnies over the sink. A table and two chairs that don’t match are pressed against the far wall.
It’s nothing like the sterile perfection of my condo in Charlotte, and yet it has the homey feeling of the Harrington estate.
“Sit,” Chief orders.
I do, though I haven’t followed orders in years.
He pours two mugs of coffee that look as though they could strip paint, then slides one across to me while he settles into the other chair with a sigh that says his joints hurt but he’s too stubborn to admit it.
“So,” he says. “You saw your Honeybee.”
Heat rips across my ribs. “Don’t call her that.”
“Why not?” He smirks. “You did.” There’s a sparkle, mischief in his gaze I don’t understand.
“That was— I didn’t mean to—” I run a hand through my hair. “It just came out.”
“Uh-huh.” Chief sips his coffee. “And what else came out?”
Lifting my coffee to my lips, I study this guy. Clover loves him. That one statement makes me want to trust him too—even if it makes no sense whatsoever.
“I told her what I remembered—” His eyes smile at me, full of warmth, and I continue. “She thought I abandoned her.”
He doesn’t look surprised.
“Well, she’s been writing to ya for fourteen years, and ya never responded until that weird-ass poem you sent.” He squints his eyes and leans forward. “Poetry ain’t dead, son, but it’s not a popular way to court the ladies anymore either.”
The room narrows in around us as everything inside my head becomes hyper-focused on the man before me.
“What poem?” I’m still. Controlled. Ready for the next threat. I’ve trained for years—hypervigilant in my quest to protect—to anticipate the next move from wherever it may come.
This is something I didn’t see coming. Then I’m blinded—a flash, sharp as a knife.
A small hand pressing a folded piece of paper into mine. A whisper. “Promise you’ll write back.” Brown hair. A bumblebee sitting on a flower.
Then it’s gone, the memory invading my senses like a sneak attack.
Chief leans back in his chair, a loud whistle echoing through the air. “You didn’t send the letters, did ya, son?”
Thump. Thump. Whoosh.
Thump. Thump. Whoosh.
The sound infiltrates my ears. It’s my heart syncing to the rhythm, while my fists flex to the beat.
“What letters?” I say, the words hitting with deadly precision—a threat on their own.
“Well, shit. That’s a question Clover should answer. I’ll make you some breakfast, then we can head next door and start the process.”
Thump. Thump. Whoosh.
“What process?”