Chapter Seventeen
The apartment above Honor’s Edge Investigations Office
Cal woke up in a cold sweat. Everything was dark. His heartbeat thudded in his ears and against his ribcage.
He could hear Glenda, singing that damn lullaby.
He smelled blood.
“Shit,” he muttered out loud, grabbing his head with his hands.
Nightmare. Bad one. But he was alive and whole, and there was no blood. No Glenda.
Just fucking terror.
He blew out a breath, breathed like his therapist was forever telling him to do. He even talked himself through it—out loud, much to his own embarrassment—because damn he wanted that gone.
“It was just a dream,” he told himself.
Except … it very well could have been a memory, couldn’t it have? He didn’t tend to dream like this. Usually, he was awake when little snippets of horrible memory haunted him. But asleep or awake … it was all possible it was real. That was the lesson of the past year.
His brain wasn’t strong enough to handle everything it had encountered, so it went dark. Then decided to fill him in a million years later. Maybe now it was adding dreams to the mix.
He threw the covers off and got out of bed. He didn’t want to consider that. Wouldn’t, in fact. He stalked out of the room, not sure what he was going to do with all this roiling shit inside of him.
A gym would be nice. Maybe a run. What was the worst thing that could happen to him running on icy sidewalks in the dark? A broken ankle? Might be an improvement. He moved to the windows in the living room, looked down at the street below.
It was still dark, but there was a faint hint of light off to the east. Must be getting close-ish to morning. He rubbed at the spot where he’d been shot this summer. It didn’t hurt exactly, but something there just kind of ached.
Hell, everything ached. He wondered what the hell he was doing here in Marietta, planning on passing the bar here, planning on … building a new life here when there were so many gaping wounds.
Then, for some reason—maybe because Glenda had been in his nightmare—he thought about Jill’s book.
She hadn’t stolen anything from his life. Her fictional characters were both in law enforcement, and their pasts and futures weren’t anything like his.
But the traumatic amnesia plaguing her main male character—a fascinating FBI Agent with a past at least as complicated as Cal’s, if not more so—felt real and … validating was the only word he could think of.
When he thought about himself, thought about not remembering, it felt like shame and weakness, but on someone else?
He shook his head. Stupid that he’d let himself off the hook just because she was a good writer who could create a sympathetic character out of some very unsympathetic shit. Hers was fiction.
His was real fucking life, and what the hell was sympathetic about not remembering important things?
Something flashed behind him, and Cal searched the room. He spotted the new source of light—his phone screen lit up. Someone was calling him. At four o’clock in the morning. That couldn’t be good.
He glanced at the name on the screen. Nate. Yeah, really not good.
“Hello,” Cal greeted warily.
“Security alarms went off at Honor’s Edge,” Nate said, his voice terse, a military-like command. “Cops are on their way. I need you to stay put until they get there and sweep the building. Sam and I will be over in a few.”
Cal didn’t bother to say he would stay put, because like hell. He shoved the phone into the pocket of his sweats, shoved his feet into the boots by the door, then headed down the stairs into the back room of the office and building.
The door was still firmly closed, so he walked out to the main office area. That door was closed too. So whatever had set off the alarms wasn’t a full-fledged break-in.
When he heard knocking at the back door, he retraced his steps, and since he could see the blue and red flashing lights from the window, he opened it.
He recognized the cop on the other side of the door and figured it was just his luck. Officer Brian Mathews was a prick—and had been his whole miserable life. But the kicker had been fucking with Cal last year when the threats against Aly had been going on. Of course, Hayes had been in on that too.
“Got an alarm call,” Mathews greeted, somehow making it sound like that was all Cal’s fault. But then Mathews held out an envelope. “It was in the door. Got your name on it.”
Cal didn’t say anything. Just took the envelope. Yeah, it had his name and it looked just like the last one. He didn’t wait around for anyone to tell him not to. He opened it.
This time, the drawing of him was a little more graphic. Instead of numbers exed out on his forehead, there was a nice red dot.
And Xs over his eyes. With little red squiggly lines coming out of his mouth.
“Got a lot of fans I take it.”
Cal smiled sharply at the police officer, but he didn’t say anything. Sure, he could be an ass right back, and be ten times better at it, but where would that get him?
Personal satisfaction? And he wasn’t a lawyer anymore—not until he passed the Montana bar—so…
But he pushed that very tempting thought away. Getting into it with a cop wasn’t going to help Sam and Nate—and even if it was about him, this was Sam’s building.
“This is the second threat I’ve gotten like this in the past month.” He noted in this one he was wearing a Marietta High School sweatshirt. He frowned over that detail. Because that spoke to his life here. It spoke to phases of his life from lawyer to … high school student?
“Did you report the first one to the police?”
“No, I reported it to …” He trailed off as a truck pulled into the lot.
Nate’s truck. Sam and Nate got out. It might have been humorous—Sam in thick flannel sweats and her hair a mess. Nate with a weird lock of hair sticking up at an odd angle—but it just spoke of a happily domestic couple being pulled from their bed by…
Well, who knew what.
“Honor’s Edge is looking into it,” Cal told the officer.
Mathews made a derisive sort of huff. “Your funeral.”
Cal considered the drawing. Well, it might be.
Sam and Nate approached.
“Since you two are chit-chatting, I assume no one got inside?” Sam said by way of greeting.
“Doors were both still locked when I came down,” Cal told her. “You see anything, Mathews?”
The cop sneered. “No. Seems like a false alarm, Sam, but if you see anything on your security footage, you let me know.” He gestured at the drawing in Cal’s hand. “If you want real cops to investigate, you’re going to want to share the details of the first threat with us.”
“Of course, Brian,” Sam said, laying on the saccharine way too thick. “I’ll be sure to share everything with Detective Hayes when he starts his investigation.”
This clearly pissed Mathews off, because he simply turned on a heel and stalked back to his cruiser without another word.
“I hate that guy,” Cal muttered.
“You hid it really well,” Sam told him, laying on the sarcasm extraordinarily thick.
Cal looked down at her. “What’s your excuse for not hiding it?”
Sam shrugged. “He deserves it. Come on. It’s freezing out here.” She pushed inside, and Nate followed, so Cal did too.
“I’ll see about beefing up my security,” Sam said in her usual brusque way.
Nate was inspecting the door while Sam headed into the main office room.
Cal followed her. “Send me the bill.”
“It’s my building,” she replied, sitting down at her desk.
Cal hadn’t realized she was carrying her laptop. She set it on the desk and opened it.
Cal held up the drawing between her gaze and the computer screen. “It’s my threat.”
She waved the drawing away like it was nothing, typing a few things into her computer. Clearly pulling up the security footage.
“If you didn’t find anything the first time, you’re not going to find anything this time,” Cal told her.
“It set off the alarms this time.” But as they both watched—and Nate came in from the back room—nothing showed up at the back door to determine who left the envelope. A few potential shadows, but nothing they could even confirm was human.
“They must be keeping out of the camera view by moving in against the wall, then just stretching out and sticking the envelope like this.” She demonstrated the contortions she thought the threatener was going through.
“I think you can just see the edge of the sleeve right here,” she said, pausing her video footage and pointing at something that was a smudge at best.
“Speaks to knowing our security system,” Nate added.
Sam nodded but Cal shook his head.
“Or just someone who knows how camera angles work,” he pointed out.
“Let me see it,” Nate said briskly.
Cal wanted to crumple the drawing up and throw it away out of spite, but he still hadn’t fully worked around how he felt about another threat.
One could be a prank … one was easy enough to pretend didn’t matter and not worry overmuch if someone enacted it.
Technically, everyone’s days were numbered to some extent.
Maybe there was a little death wish in all that, but he could ignore it. When it came to two threats, if he held onto the possibility it didn’t matter, it was like admitting to everyone around him he didn’t care about his life.
Which was a day-to-day, moment-to-moment carousel he’d rather not let anyone else in on.
He was reminded of Jill’s book again, because somehow those first few chapters had captured that perfectly … and he didn’t like his own unhealthy thinking reflected back at him in this moment.
So, he handed over the damn illustration. Nate studied it, then handed it to Sam.
“Well, this guy is some kind of artist, huh?” She glanced up at Cal. “Know anyone who likes art, doodling, or the like who might hate you?”
Cal shook his head. “I’m still looking through all my old cases, but nothing stands out on that score.” Because as silly as the drawings were, they did speak to some talent. But also an understanding of him. His life.
Sam nodded. “Well, I’ve got to talk with Jake about this whole thing with his dad’s remains anyway. I’ve got a meeting with him tomorrow morning. I’ll bring this up too. Presumably, he’ll be the one to look into it if you take a formal report to the police.”
“I thought you were handling it.”
“I am. Doesn’t hurt to have the police handling it too. Especially if we end up finding this guy. You know better than anyone that police reports will work in your favor legally.”
She wasn’t wrong, much as he hated to admit it. “Yeah, okay.”
“Maybe you should come stay with us,” Nate said.
Cal looked from Nate to Sam, then laughed. “Yeah, no.”
“You shouldn’t be alone,” Sam agreed. “The security system here doesn’t seem to be doing its job. We’re armed—and licensed to be armed. The couch is comfy. You’ll be fine.”
“Spend a lot of time on the couch, Sam?”
“Don’t be a baby, Cal. I’ll promise to keep our lovey-dovey act to a minimum.”
Nate snorted out a laugh—quite the feat.
Cal wanted to argue more. What was someone going to do? Break in and doodle on him?
But the little squiggles of red drawn dripping from his mouth spoke to something a little more dangerous than doodling, he supposed. And Nate and Sam were looking at him expectantly, like his answer mattered.
Like this all mattered, whether he wanted it to or not. He’d moved home for this, even if his brain was a little bit one step forward, two steps back on accepting that he was home because he wanted to be—he wanted family and community and a life.
Deep down, under all the other shit, that was what he wanted.
“Fine,” he muttered. “But just until you beef up the system. Wouldn’t want Aly and Landon to be jealous I’m spreading my sunshiny presence around.”