Chapter Ten
The federal database was lying.
Maeve scoured the report for the hundredth time, but the information printed on the single sheet of paper hadn’t changed. She’d gotten two clean fingerprints off the Taser’s casing, with a few more partials that’d been smudged or eroded by weather, wildlife or location. A one hundred percent match.
It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. But no matter how many times she blinked, the data didn’t lie.
A knock sounded at the room’s only door, racketing her heart rate higher. She’d hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle, and the housekeepers had already been through when they’d gotten the room ready. Who else knew she was here?
Maeve slipped the fingerprint results under her laptop.
She’d lucked out when she stopped by the motel last night after processing the fingerprints in the medical examiner’s office: One room available.
She’d snatched it up without even asking the nightly rate, not ready to face Callen after what had happened last night.
That kiss. She’d thought about it all damn day when her brain wasn’t trying to convince Dr. Yarrow she wasn’t some random stranger off the street trying to get access to his morgue.
Her credentials helped, but there’d still been a few suspicious looks thrown her way as she’d dusted the Taser on the small space of countertop he’d granted her.
Ugh. Why did Callen have to kiss her? She’d gone an entire year without remembering what his mouth had felt like on hers, and he’d blown it up in one single night.
Furnished with a queen-size bed, a dresser, two nightstands, a desk and a bathroom, the room provided space for her to work and get her head on straight. Two-for-one special. All the floral prints on the curtains, wallpaper and bedding were beginning to give her a headache, though.
Another knock sounded, and she crossed the small distance from the desk. Maeve wrenched open the heavy door. “What about Do Not Disturb do you not under—”
Crap.
Her brain short-circuited at the sight of the man staring down at her. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“We need to talk.” Callen crossed the threshold, and maybe a part of her had let him. While he was definitely not an opponent she’d want to face in the ring or the field, between his foundational training and the FBI’s close-quarters combat instruction, she could hold her own.
Maeve closed the door behind him, and the space she’d appreciated a few minutes ago suddenly seemed so much smaller with him taking up a big portion of it. “All right. Start by answering my question. How did you know I was here?”
“Where else would you have gone?” Callen surveyed the room, most likely memorizing the layout like he’d taught her when she was a seventeen-year-old, paranoid her father’s killer would come back for her.
He took a step toward her open laptop. “Would’ve appreciated a heads-up, though.
I wouldn’t have felt so bad about eating your sweet and sour pork from last night. ”
Darting to head him off, Maeve slammed her computer closed.
She had other notes—handwritten and piled together—he could riffle through, but she got the impression he wasn’t here about her investigation.
She crossed her arms over her breasts, wishing she hadn’t changed into her tank top and sweats.
“We both knew me staying with you was temporary. As for the pork, I left it for you.”
“Liar. You’re more territorial about food than a pack of wolves.” He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself: take a seat at the desk or on the edge of the bed. “And I’m sure you’re already thinking of ways to make me pay for eating it.”
She’d already thought of three, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. They would be a surprise. “Is there an actual reason you’re here, or did you come all this way to experience my sparkling personality?”
“You’ve been staying in touch with my parents.
” Settling dark eyes on her, Callen took a step toward her.
All muscle and spice and dark hair curling at the nape of his neck.
“My mom told me you and them have been talking every couple of weeks since we broke up. That you have been checking in on them and helping them get through their grief. Making appointments for them with a therapist you knew and sending them Christmas presents and birthday cards and flowers for their anniversary. Why?”
That…was not what she’d expected out of his mouth. Her throat dried up, but she wouldn’t let him corner her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean why would you do that?” His hair stuck up at the front as though he’d run his hands through it over and over.
He probably had. It was one of the things she’d liked to tease him about when he was stressed at work.
Usually, that teasing had turned his attention on her, and they’d distract each other for a while.
Not anymore. “Why would you do that for my parents after everything that happened?”
Was he serious? Helen and Tommy Russell weren’t just his parents.
They’d had a hand in making sure she was fed, that she had a roof over her head when the bank had taken the house because she didn’t know how to pay the mortgage, made sure she didn’t have to sit alone at the funeral and tried to help her track down her mother.
That last one had been in vain, but they’d been there when her father couldn’t be, and she owed them.
More than they knew. He knew that. He knew all that, and he was standing there asking why she’d tried to step in to make sure they didn’t unravel into depression or worse?
“I thought you knew. That we were in contact.”
“You…” His shoulder rose on a deep inhale, and she couldn’t help but appreciate the work he’d put into the muscle stretching his uniform despite her desperate need to avoid him altogether.
“You didn’t have to do that. They’re my parents.
It was my job to get them through losing Lauren, and I…
I obviously failed, if they couldn’t even tell me they were going to therapy at your insistence. ”
Emotion she didn’t want to name clogged her throat.
“You didn’t fail. You’re right. Helen and Tommy are your parents, and I’m sorry if I crossed the line and that you’re only learning about this now, but I owe them a lot.
They took me in after my dad died. I couldn’t just turn my back on them after you and I broke up. ”
“Thank you.” Callen stepped closer, eliciting a shiver and pimpling goose bumps along her arms. “For helping them.”
He was too close again. Too warm and big and inviting.
Her head spun with a thousand different outcomes of this single interaction, none of which would end well.
He’d ended things between them. He hated her for the mistake she’d made.
He’d given up on them, and what? Now he had no problem kissing her?
Touching her? Maeve stepped out of his reach, maneuvering around him back toward the desk.
She stacked her notes in a hurry, earning a paper cut in the process. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“But I am. They told me how big of an influence you’ve been in getting them through this.
” His voice seemed to follow her, skimming along her exposed skin and settling low in her belly.
Callen dragged a hand across her low back, and every nerve she owned fired in response, urged her to lean back just enough to plaster herself to his body.
“They also said they’ve forgiven you for what happened during Lauren’s investigation. ”
Her spine stiffened, and Maeve forgot what she was doing with her hands. She didn’t know what to say to that, what to think. Because while she was grateful his parents had come so far, it wasn’t their forgiveness she needed. “But do you?”
Pressure built beneath her sternum as she waited for his answer.
And waited. The silence took physical form as Callen stepped back, dragging his fingers along her hips, and put some much-needed distance between them.
She already knew the answer, and for some reason, that hurt more than him ending their engagement.
She pulled the fingerprint results from beneath her laptop, still at a loss in identifying the last person to touch that Taser.
And off-balance from the loss of warmth of his hands tunneling through her tank top.
She wouldn’t think about that. How much she’d missed touching him, breathing in that infuriating scent of his.
How she’d missed his habit of reaching out whenever they were in the same room together.
It didn’t matter where they were, who they were with, his impulse to tangle his fingers in her hair or press his arm against hers, to slide his hand along her lower back or knock his knee into hers beneath a table had always triggered a feeling of being wanted. Needed.
And she hadn’t felt that in a long time.
Wanted by him. By anyone. The case. That was all that mattered.
Because there were two women out there who needed her help.
Turning into him, she clutched the fingerprint results as she settled back against the edge of the desk.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about. ”
Callen slid his thumb along his bottom lip. “I already know you’ve been working Lauren’s case all this time.”
Her lips parted, but it didn’t take long for her to put the pieces together.
She nodded, folding her arms across her midsection.
It didn’t do a damn bit of good to relieve the tension in the air, but it offered her a minuscule amount of protection.
“Your mom told you I came here a couple weeks ago. Not yesterday, like I led you to believe.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” He sank back onto the edge of her bed where she’d tossed her overnight bag and pretty much everything she owned at this point in her life.
“I’ve been searching for a lead for over a year with nothing to show for it.
You should’ve involved me the moment you set foot in Zion. I deserved to know.”
“You can’t seriously be asking that question.
” Her defenses were shuttering into place, hiking her voice higher, pumping her blood harder.
There wasn’t any physical threat, but her brain couldn’t tell the difference, screaming for her to get the hell as far from Callen as she could manage.
“What about when you said you didn’t ever want to see or hear from me again after I admitted to mishandling evidence in the investigation? Does that ring a bell?”
He set his elbows on his knees, that gaze drilling through her. “That doesn’t have anything to do with you working the case now.”
“Doesn’t it?” She nearly crumpled the paper in her hand as her emotions got the better of her.
This wasn’t about the case. This wasn’t about his parents or the fact that she’d misled him.
This was a complete desolation of the wall under which she’d buried her hurt and rejection.
“You threw me out of your life like I was nothing to you—like everything we shared and promised each other was nothing—and now you’re asking why I didn’t tell you I was in town or that I’ve been working your sister’s investigation?
Do you understand how confusing it was when you kissed me last night?
How it feels to wake up to you in my bed or with your hands on me with those words still in my head? ”
The color drained from his face, and Callen leaned back, as though welcoming the reality check. “You weren’t nothing, Maeve.”
She wished she believed that, but his actions had shown her different.
“You know what? It doesn’t matter. Like I said before, I’m not here for you.
I’m here to find the connection between two missing women and do whatever it takes to bring them home.
” Closing the distance between them, she shoved the fingerprint results into his chest. “Now, tell me how the hell your fingerprints ended up on that Taser we recovered from the scene.”