Chapter 4
Chapter Four
“Did I grow up intending to be an FBI agent? Uh, no. No, the plan was much different. What was it? Trust me on this. You don’t want to know.”
– Gray Stone
She stared up at his face. The strong angles.
The stubble that covered his square jaw.
Shadows lined his eyes, and the golden brown of his irises seemed to shift and swirl as he gazed down at her.
She thought of how gentle he’d been with Misty.
How he had knelt to be on a closer level with Timothy as he signed to the boy.
Emerson slowly shook her head. “I don’t believe you’re a nightmare. ” Quite the opposite.
“That’s just because you don’t know me that well.” He turned away. “I’m sure you’re ready to crash.”
Beyond ready. But she had things she wanted to say to Gray. Questions she needed to ask.
“We’ll have to pay a visit to Jake Waller later.
Tie up loose ends. Then we’ll be getting the hell out of Briar.
” He glanced down at his wrist, at the gleaming watch there.
“But we can spare at least five hours of rest. I’ll talk to the clerk at the motel’s front desk and arrange a late checkout for us. ”
She touched his wrist. Right near that gleaming watch.
He tensed. “You don’t want to do that.”
“I think we need to talk, Gray.”
His head turned toward her. “Not right now, we don’t.” A low warning filled his words. “You need to rest. I need to rest. We’ll regroup. Talk later.” He swallowed. “You don’t want to be touching me right now. Trust me on this.”
“Why would you think that you’re a nightmare?”
He pulled away. Backed away. “Don’t try to profile me, Emerson. It’s a bad idea.”
She held her ground. She would not be intimidated by him. “You know a victim, don’t you? Someone close to you. Very close.”
He marched for the motel’s small office. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Oh, but he did know.
So she waited. Right outside of the small office. He went in, talked with the female clerk, got them the late checkout, and when he came out of that door, Emerson made sure she was standing in his path.
He growled. A sound that should not have been sexy, but, oddly, it was.
Deep and dark and it pulled at something equally deep and dark inside of her.
Something she’d worked extremely hard to keep hidden.
“It was the way you reacted to Misty and her son. There was a crack in your mask. I saw it. For just a moment, she was personal to you. She reminded you of something—someone—from your own past.”
“Misty wasn’t personal. I’d never met the woman in my life, not until our fun-filled stay here at the Motel from Hell. Late checkout is one p.m., by the way.” He advanced.
Again, she did not retreat.
“Who was it?” Emerson asked him. “A friend? A lover?”
His eyes flashed. “Are you asking me if I hurt someone, Emerson?”
“No.” Immediate. Then, “Yes.”
His teeth snapped together. “You think I would?—”
“Not the victim. No, I don’t think you’d ever hurt a victim.”
Some of the tension eased from his shoulders.
“But I think you’d hurt the perpetrator.”
He smiled, and the smile did not reach his eyes. “I’m not the judge and jury. Punishment isn’t my department.” That was a shark’s smile. Terrifying in its beauty.
And sharpness.
She exhaled. “We should take this conversation inside.” Not that anyone was out there to hear them, but?—
He took her hand.
The move surprised her so much that she jerked. Jumped.
He quirked one brow. “Emerson, are you afraid of little old me?”
No, she wasn’t. In fact, he was one of the few people she didn’t think she would ever fear. “You wouldn’t hurt me. I’m not a predator.”
His fingers twined with hers. His touch scorched her, but she didn’t say a word as he led her back to her room. Room twelve. He stopped at the door. “Get some sleep.”
He let go of her hand.
“Was it your mother?” Emerson pushed.
Hit. She saw it on his face. The flash of pure savagery. His mother had been a victim in the past.
But he shook his head. “Don’t go down this road with me, Emerson.”
“You’re a protector, straight to your core.
” She understood so much now. “Some protectors are born. Some are made. The instinct to help the victims—that’s what drives you.
I wondered how you were such a good profiler.
Now I get it. You’re so good because you’re working extra hard to understand the victims and to help them. ”
“No.” He leaned toward her. Put one hand on the frame of the door near her head. “I don’t understand the victims. I understand the perps. I know how they think. I know what they want. I know what they need. I understand them completely, and that’s how I become their nightmares.”
She almost forgot to breathe. “Gray?” A squeak.
“You are right about one thing, though. I know a victim.” His lips thinned.
“My mother left the sonofabitch who hurt her when I was five years old. He tracked us to a motel much like this one.” A shake of his head.
“When he came banging at the door, everyone looked away. The lights went out in the nearby rooms, just like they did tonight. People pretended not to hear his yells. Not to see him breaking down the door. Everyone needed it to be someone else’s problem. It was my problem.”
She wanted to grab onto him. Hold him tightly. “Come in so we can talk.”
“No.” Another flat denial. “You don’t…” His hand fell as Gray backed up a step. “I’m too raw. I can’t be near you right now. You don’t want me close the way I am.”
She did want him close. “What happened when he broke down the door?” He… Gray’s father?
“That’s a story I don’t share.” His gaze cut around the area, then came back to her.
“You know sign language.” It was how he’d communicated with Timothy.
“I know sign language.” A roll of one shoulder.
She stared at him.
A sigh slid from his lips. “Not a big deal, Emerson. My aunt was deaf. My mom made sure I could communicate with her. I also speak French, some Russian, and a little bit of Chinese. Anything else you want to know?”
Just a million things.
“How about you save the rest of your questions for another time?” He edged toward the nearby door. Room thirteen. “Get some sleep, partner. I’ll see you soon.”
“Gray!”
He stood in front of the door to his room. Didn’t open it. Not yet.
Partner. She blinked. “Am I still your partner?” Emerson turned her body toward his.
The tension between them seemed to thicken. She could practically see what they’d done before flash between them. The kiss. The lust. The tumble onto the bed.
Is that why he won’t come into the room with me? Because he doesn’t want us to pick up where we left off?
“You’re my partner.” His stilted reply. “That’s what you’ll continue to be.”
Ouch. Okay, that hurt. But then again, she’d been the one just picking hard at his painful past. She got that he didn’t like to be vulnerable.
She more than understood. And it wasn’t fair to parade his past out for her to see.
At least, it wasn’t fair unless she intended to reveal her own pain.
“My father was schizophrenic.” The words just came from her.
Flat. Unemotional. “Delusions drove him to take his own life when I was seven years old.”
“Emerson. ”
“For years, I was terrified that the same fate would happen to me. Schizophrenia is supposed to have a strong hereditary component.” She’d pretty much made the study of schizophrenia her life’s focus.
In order to be a psychiatrist, she’d had to get her MD.
So many years of study. Of research. Of fear.
“I grew up with a ticking time bomb inside of me. Always afraid, just waiting for warning signs to appear. Disorganized thinking and speech. I feared when my mind would become scattered and the words I wanted to say wouldn’t emerge.
” Should she confess that a ticking, time bomb terror sometimes still came to her in the dark…
and in the light? “I worried about hallucinations.” I still worry.
“Most people don’t fear that they’ll see things that aren’t there.
I spent years trying to make sure that everything I saw was real.
” And living in fear that one day, it wouldn’t be real.
That she wouldn’t even realize when she was hallucinating.
But her fear didn’t stop there. “And then there is the trifecta. The delusions. My father suffered from so many delusions at the end. Delusions that he was being hunted…that he was being tracked and persecuted by those closest to him. Those delusions led my father to run blindly and leap straight off the cliff near my mother’s home in Maine. ”
Sympathy burned in his eyes. And, oh, horror of horrors, was that pity, too?
Gray was looking at her with pity now when he’d stared at her with fierce desire hours before?
Pity was the absolute last thing that she wanted from him or from anyone.
“ Don’t. ” A sharp snap as Emerson realized that she’d just made a serious miscalculation in her relationship with him.
I shouldn’t have told him. Why, oh, why did I tell him? I don’t tell anyone. Her father’s condition was a closely guarded family secret. Or it had been, until she’d blurted out the truth because she was going on twenty-four hours of no sleep, shaking with adrenaline, and fueled by too much fear.
She didn’t normally make mistakes like this one. But it was too late to pull the words back.
Gray was stepping toward her. Reaching for her.
She had to minimize the disaster, immediately. “You were right.” Brisk. “We need to sleep. We’ll regroup later and talk about our partnership after we’ve rested.” When she was less likely to spill more deep, dark secrets.
“Emerson—” His hand almost touched her.