20. Alex
Alex
Idrive without a destination for almost an hour, streets blurring past.
I keep seeing her face.
Not the anger, though there was plenty of that, but underneath it, the half-second before she managed to bury it, the fear and her hurt sitting right there in the open where I put it.
I saw it happen.
I watched myself do it, watched the words leave my mouth and land exactly where I aimed them, and I kept going anyway, because some part of me wanted her to hurt as much as I did.
I got what I wanted.
It doesn’t feel like winning anything.
Housekeeper.
Future wife.
Mistress.
I watched disbelief turn into humiliation. Watched the hurt rise in those golden-hazel eyes and fear follow it, and I kept going because I had spent an entire flight building myself into someone who could.
Someone who would.
The image that returns most often isn’t Belle screaming at me.
It’s what happened when I mentioned Liam.
The way she looked at me as though she was seeing someone she genuinely needed to fear.
I threatened her brother. The child she raised from infancy. The one person she had built her entire life around protecting.
I knew exactly what I was doing when I used him. My hands tighten around the wheel.
Danny calls twice while I’m driving. I let both go to voicemail, because I don’t have the first idea how to have that conversation right now, the one where I tell him the seat isn’t his after all, that I panicked and made an arrangement I never should have let Edward talk me into, that the light I saw come back into his eyes over coffee two days ago is about to go right back out because of a decision I made drunk and furious on a private jet.
One more thing to add to the ledger.
I’m not sure there’s room left on it.
If Danny really wanted the company, I would have managed to hurt him too.
Yesterday I told him I was done. Told him he would make a better CEO than I ever did.
I meant it.
Now what?
I go back and explain that I changed my mind because I decided marrying Shaw while keeping Belle hidden somewhere on the side seemed easier than trusting the woman I supposedly love?
Jesus Christ.
Even thinking it makes me sound exactly like the man I spent my life promising myself I would never become.
The phone rings again.
This time it is Polanski.
I’m still parked on the side of some road I don’t recognize when I answer.
“I’ve got something new. Not sure where it fits yet, but you said call the minute I find anything, so.”
“Spit it out.”
“The woman from the CCTV pull. We’ve got a name. Mel Torres.” Paper shuffles on his end. “Took some digging. She’s out of Pinehaven originally.”
Every muscle in my body goes still at once. The woman I saw with Belle. First in Riverside, then Pinehaven. Mel. “She’s the connection to Pinehaven.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too.” A pause. “There’s more, boss. She’s law enforcement. I’ve sent everything over, but I’m still hitting walls. Half of what I’m finding is sealed. I’ll call the second I’ve got more.”
“What kind of law enforcement?”
“Federal.” The word sinks in.
“I sent you what I’ve got. It’s not much. Her records are a black hole in places.”
I end the call and sit there with the engine running, thumbing through what he’s sent until I find it.
A photograph.
Employment fragments.
Assignments that disappear into black bars and sealed references.
Then the line that matters.
Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I stare at it.
FBI
The pieces don’t so much click into place as slam into each other. The FBI took control of Mark’s murder. The sheriff pushed me to stop asking questions about Dad, called his death an accident, and wanted the whole thing left alone.
Polanski keeps finding federal seals buried in Mark Mitchell’s past. Now there is an FBI agent in Belle’s life. A woman from Pinehaven whose own history is difficult enough to access that Polanski, with everything I’ve given him, keeps finding closed doors.
This is not an accident. Mel Torres is the connection.
Maybe not the answer.
But she is standing close enough to it to know what the question should have been all along. I call the number Polanski sent before I’ve fully thought through what I’m going to say.
“Who is this?”
“This is Alex.”
A pause, sharp enough that I can hear it. “How did you get this number? " Did Emma give it to you?”
“I think you and I both know her name is Belle.”
“Her name is Emma.” Flat. Absolute. “You’ll do well to remember that. Put her on the phone.”
“She’s not here.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“What’s your connection to her?”
“We’ve been over this. You don’t get to ask questions about me. Emma was very clear on that point.”
“I know you’re FBI.”
Silence, longer this time, heavy enough that I can practically feel her recalculating on the other end. There it is. More confirmation than anything she could have said.
“Right now I’ve got one man tracking down a single lead on you.
” My voice comes out colder than I mean it to, though I don’t take it back.
“If you don’t tell me exactly what’s going on, you’re going to find out how difficult I can make your life.
Maybe your superiors would enjoy finding out too what exactly their agent’s been doing off the books for a decade. ”
“Hartley, don’t create a mess where there doesn’t need to be one.”
“Then tell me what the hell is going on.”
“You have no idea what you’re interfering with.”
“That’s exactly my problem.”
I stare at Mel’s photograph on the screen. “I’ve spent months pulling at Belle’s life, and every thread eventually disappears behind federal paperwork. Now I find an FBI agent sitting in the middle of it.”
“I’m not sitting in the middle of anything.”
“Then explain where you’re sitting.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
I lean my head against the seat.
“What I do after I hang up this phone depends entirely on what you say to me right now.”
A long exhale on her end, tired enough that it has nothing to do with the hour.
“You’re an asshole, and you don’t deserve her. I genuinely cannot understand why Emma loves you.”
She loves me.
That’s the only part of the sentence that actually lands; the insult sailing past me entirely while those three words drop straight through my chest and settles.
It hurts worse than anger ever has, a clean, precise ache right behind my sternum, and I have to press my palm flat against the steering wheel for a second before I trust my voice again.
“She loves me?”
“Do not make this about your ego.”
“This isn’t about my fucking ego.”
Belle standing in front of me with wet hair.
I am trying to protect you.
Belle asleep across my chest. Belle asking for time, promising she would explain. And me looking her in the face and telling her she was only good for sex.
My stomach twists.
“Did she tell you that?”
“Hartley.”
“Start talking.”
“Fine.” She sounds like a woman conceding a fight she’s known for weeks she was going to lose, eventually.
“I’m at the head office in New York. I was going to bring you in properly in a few days, regardless.
You’ve just sped up my timeline considerably, and I could lose my job over this, but at this point I’m fairly certain I’m losing it either way. ”
“What do you mean, bring me in?”
“It means Emma has been requesting permission to tell you the truth. And we’ve been waiting on clearance.”
My grip on the steering wheel tightens.
“What?” My chest goes cold.
“Why the hell does she need your permission to tell me anything?”
“Because this isn’t a private family secret, Hartley.” Her irritation disappears beneath something much more serious. “You’re dealing with classified federal material tied to an active matter. Emma doesn’t get to decide she wants to unload it over breakfast because the man she loves is impatient.”
Every word lands.
I will tell you.
I promise.
Just not now.
My eyes close.
Jesus Christ.
“She’s been asking for weeks?”
“Yes.”
“And you kept telling her no.”
“I kept telling her I needed clearance to bring you in safely. There are procedures for a reason.”
I think of that call.
The one I overheard.
I can’t keep this up.
I can’t pretend anymore.
You said days, and it’s been weeks.
I want out.
Not out of me.
Out of the lie.
Out of whatever cage the FBI had built around the truth.
The realization makes me physically sick.
“How soon can you get to the New York office?” she asks.
“Couple of hours.”
“I’ll leave a pass for you at the front desk. I’ll text you the details.”
“You’re going to tell me?”
“No.”
“Mel.”
“I’m going to let the file tell you.”
I say nothing.
“Emma wanted to be the one to do it,” she adds.
That hurts more.
“She wanted you to hear it from her.”
I stare through the windshield. For one terrible second, I cannot remember the last kind thing I said to Belle.
“I’ll be there.”
Polanski flies out with me, though the receptionist only has one visitor’s pass with my name on it when we get there.
“It’s fine, boss. I’ll wait.”
He drops into one of the lobby chairs as if he’s settling in for the long haul, and I don’t argue with him, because there’s nothing left in me to spend on an argument that small.
The building is exactly what I expect: security, ID checks, bare walls. I hand over what they ask for and follow the directions inside.
Mel meets me at the door herself.
She looks exactly as I remember her from that alley. Dark hair pulled back tight enough to look like a decision rather than a style, eyes that measure me head to foot in under two seconds and clearly find the sum wanting.
She turns.
I follow her through a secured door and down another corridor.
No small talk.
No attempt to soften what is about to happen.
She stops outside a room with a narrow reinforced window and a camera mounted in one corner.
“Mr. Hartley.” She hands over a folder thick enough to require both hands. “Everything you’ve spent ten years wanting to know about Emma Clarke. Also known as Belle Mitchell.”
I reach for it.
She doesn’t let go yet.