Chapter 38
It felt like an eternity of Jack pacing back and forth outside the office door, before Todd exited the room, handing the phone back to Jack, his face unreadable.
“Well?” I walked my hands up the wall until I was standing.
Todd cupped the back of his neck and rubbed as he made to walk past. “Nothing I wasn’t ready for.”
Arms out, I stepped into his path. “I’m not letting you past until you tell us what’s going on.”
“I could move you.”
“No one’s moving anyone.” Jack joined me in blocking Todd. “What do we need to know, Galt?”
Todd lowered his shoulders. “Rochan is deciding on a course of action.” He focused on a spot of great interest on the floor. “She’ll avoid putting it on the radar for a couple weeks, but then she’ll have to take corrective action.”
My arms faltered, lowering slightly. “You’ll be out of the FBI?”
Todd shrugged.
“What were you thinking, Galt?” Jack sounded hurt, with a kind of pain I couldn’t place.
“What was I thinking?” Something dark and fiery flared within Todd.
“What was I thinking? I’m not the one who—” His fists clenched pulsing with the rage rising inside him, a rage not so different from my own.
“You messed up. Royally. You put her at risk. I was getting the target off both your backs.”
“And instead, you made yourself the scapegoat.” I took a tentative step forward. “You didn’t need to do that for me.”
“Or me,” Jack chimed in. “We would have found a loophole. We will. I’ll make this right.”
“This is the loophole.” Todd swung his attention from Jack to me. “You are not going back to prison.” He said it with such certainty, I felt it in my core. “It’s not an option.”
Todd had potentially given up his career. For me. To cover for his friends who had made some questionable decisions. I pressed a hand to his chest feeling the thundering creature rattling his ribcage, wanting to be unleashed. “Do you want me to yell at you or thank you?”
My question caught him off-guard. A curl of raven-black hair fell into his eyeline, as he curled his fingers over mine. The thunderous beating slowed. “Neither.”
“Right answer.” I pulled my hand from his grip, a sly smile spreading on my face as I promptly slugged him in the arm.
“Oh my god,” Jack groaned. “People don’t normally go hitting each other as a form of affection, you know that right?”
“Not sure you want to be opening that can of worms. Because newsflash,” I circled my stomach, then the three of us, “not exactly normal either.”
A rumble started in Jack’s chest, then slowly expanded outwards until his shoulders shook. A complete contrast from the boy in Hessinger family portrait, Jack was laughing as he said, “We are so messed up.”
I couldn’t disagree. Neither could Todd. Everything we’d been through, all that was yet to come, I couldn’t help but join in. “Something is wrong with us.”
“Very.”
When the laughter began to fade, Jack stepped back, turning his gaze to his phone. “I’ll be sure to smooth things over with Rochan, see if there is something we can do.”
A second passed before—
“Delilah, why do I have a series of messages from Fawzy about updates you requested on the vamp case?”
?
Fawzy’s updates included the identification of a nurse, Henry Day, who treated a familiar undergoing anaphylactic shock with epinephrine nearly five years ago. Coincidentally, Henry was fired a couple months later and the trail, along with his employment record, went cold.
Nothing about the information Fawzy shared, changed the agents’ approach to the fang ceremony. It was still going to be a sting operation that hinged on catching the culprits in the act.
It took ample convincing on my behalf, before Jack relented, allowing me to participate on the vamp case, albeit in a reduced capacity.
When it was time, Jack, Todd, and I drove to Tarrytown for the fang ceremony. The drive in any other circumstances would have been a little over half an hour, but since it was two days away from Halloween, in a known Halloween hotspot, it had taken us two hours and just as many restroom breaks.
“Because Tarrytown is practically Sleepy Hollow!” I shouted at Jack from behind the paneled dressing screen, as I squeezed into my dress. “You basically said let’s go to Sleepy Hollow on Halloween.”
“I still don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
“Our job is going to be ten times harder with all the tourists,” I continued. “If I’d have known where Tarrytown was, I would have suggested anywhere but here.”
“Where, like Salem?” Jack was teasing me now. I could hear the playfulness in his voice.
“You’re not going to be laughing when the tourists royally mess up the op or come sprawling across a crime scene.”
“If tourists decide to travel to a random mansion off the beaten path, get past Lenore’s security, and the checkpoints we’ve put in place, then they deserve to make our lives difficult.” There was a moment, where I pulled unsuccessfully at a zipper, then, “Do you need a hand with the dress?”
Before we left the Hessinger estate, I made sure to borrow—steal—appropriate attire for the fang ceremony.
Jack had guided me to a bunch of designer dresses, all of which still had their tags on.
Apparently, the dresses were kept for makeshift formal occasions with guests who summered alongside the Hessingers.
I made sure none of the dresses on offer had been worn by Jack’s mother, because one: ew, two: gross, and three: I was still in my late twenties.
The dress I chose molded to me like a second skin and flared out below the knees.
Though it was off-the-shoulder, it had long sleeves matching the sheer mesh of the skirt and bodice, growing opaque over all of the pieces of me I’d rather not have on display.
Crystals embroidered the material, painting my skin with stars.
What I liked most of all, was that it was light.
I could move in it freely and not feel weighed down or constricted, or worry about pieces of me popping out if I needed to run.
But I couldn’t for the life of me zip it up.
I tried three more times before I conceded, clutching the bodice and rounding the dressing screen. “I need some help.”
“Wow.” Jack, dressed in his own version of vamp-approved attire, sucked in a breath as he approached, taking up residence behind me. He drew a languid finger up the slope of my neck.
Heat pooled below my navel. “Jack.”
His lips traced the line his finger drew, as he pulled the zipper up along my spine. “Mhm?”
“We need to behave.” His fingers ran down my side and clutched my hip. “And I’m still mad at you for trying to keep me off the case.” And for not telling me about the condom breaking. And for letting Todd take the fall and potentially ending his career.
“How mad?” He hummed.
It would have been so easy to give in to what Jack was offering. My response was a breathy, “Very.”
“Surely, even mad you must need some sort of… relief.” His breath feathered over my neck. “I’d be happy to be of service.”
But I knew from experience what the fog of desire could do to Jack, and how things could escalate. And with what was already at risk, the rumors spreading, I couldn’t let us get tangled up in one another, not after Todd’s sacrifice.
“We can’t Jack, not here.” I took a half-step away, fighting the heady lure of his siren song. “Not with what’s at stake. Todd is risking everything for us, to do this, here, now, would disrespect him and everything he is shielding us from. Besides, I look like a whale.”
“You look ravishing.” Jack closed the distance and spun us to face the floor-length mirror. “Look in the mirror and tell me, what do you see?”
“A whale.”
His hands firmed their grip on my shoulders. “What do you really see?”
Taking in my scars, new shape, and Jack’s split lip and fading black-eye, I chuckled, “A rag-tag team stuffed into expensive clothes.” Coupled with Todd’s new head of hair, the three of us would be barely recognizable from ourselves a few months ago.
“And a shiner that is going to get a lot of vamp attention.”
“Well, I see strength. I see a stubborn, tenacious, survivor who, much to my detriment, will turn every head in the room.” Jack smiled at our reflection, then brought himself to stand before me.
“I see a woman granting me the greatest honor of my life.” Oh.
A small kindling of hope flared in my chest. “And if you’re fishing for answers about my black-eye, you might as well ask the question. ”
He had me there. Because even though I tossed the shiner comment in passing, I had been fishing. “Todd punched you.”
“Not a question.”
“In the face.”
“Still not a question.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“Oh my god.” I made to leave. “If you’re just going to play games—"
He caught my hand and gently tugged me back. “You are aware I’m in the habit of getting what I want. That I’ve made a name for myself in the FBI?”
“The Jack Hess Monster?”
Jack almost rolled his eyes, almost. “Among others. But very rarely, on occasion, I can let my success get to my head. There are times where I feel like I can do it all, that nothing can go wrong. That I’m indestructible.
And when that happens, I’m liable to make mistakes. And I’ve made them. Plenty of them.”
There could be hundreds of mistakes, lives on the line, but given the revelations shared by Jerome, I sensed these mistakes were namely around Todd, and his missing tongue.
Or mistakes that led to Jack getting poisoned, which I still hadn’t spoken to him about, but now in preparation for the fang ceremony wasn’t the right time.
Right now, I only needed to know why someone as calm, grumpy, and collected as Todd, punched his superior. In the face. Thrice.
Shaking his head as if to ward off bad memories, Jack continued, “The punches were given to Todd to keep me on the straight and narrow. If I ever went down the wrong path, or made a mistake grievous enough, he had free license to punch me in the face.”
“To… punish you?”
“To help me course-correct. Hold me accountable.”
Whatever Todd had punched Jack for must’ve been serious enough to warrant the action. It was a strange arrangement, but one I understood. “How many punches was he given?”
Jack Hessinger skated a thumb over his bruised brow, down his cheek, and feathered it over his split lip. “Three.”
Three. Eye. Cheek. Lip.
He’d used them all.