Chapter 14 #2
Silence fell heavy between them, and his heart thudded slow and resonant through his body. He believed her. He recognized the trauma in her eyes, in her voice. In her words.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
A wan smile touched her lips. “Did you ever notice that we never talked about our families? It was like some unwritten pact between us. Of all the subjects we talked about, that was never one of them.”
He thought back to those years and to his dismay, he realized she was right.
He never talked about his family, period, so it hadn’t seemed unusual to him.
That she’d never said a word about hers either seemed normal back then.
But in hindsight, he recognized how unnatural that was—what teenagers didn’t at least complain about their parents on occasion?
“Maybe we needed that, though,” she said. He looked at her in question. “Maybe I needed to believe that you were free and unafraid and that one day, I could be like that, too.”
Slowly, he nodded. “And I needed to believe that good families existed. That maybe one day, I could have one, build one, myself.”
Another sad smile touched her eyes more than her lips. “And you’ve done that. It may be a bit unorthodox, but you have a family, Gabriel. A good one.”
He did. “I know. But what about you? Have you found what you needed? Or do you still live in your parents’ shadow?”
The walls around his heart had cracked as she spoke, and when she answered, they crumbled altogether.
“It’s still a work in progress,” she said, another tear tracking down her cheek as she shrugged.
They stared at each other for a good long while.
He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to try.
Not while his brain, and heart, processed what she’d revealed.
The reality that her life had not been what he’d thought gutted him.
Not because he’d been wrong, but because she’d grown up in fear, and he’d had no idea.
He’d been her best friend, and still, he’d known nothing of the horror she lived.
Emotions too powerful for him to deal with in that moment overwhelmed him, and he took several deep breaths to soothe the rawness scraping at his soul.
Looking closely at Callie, for the first time in years, he could see her ravaged, unguarded emotions written on her face.
The conversation had been a long time coming, but they both needed time to process.
“Tell me why it’s so important to talk with Laura Nolan,” he said.
She didn’t seem surprised by the change of subject. Using the sleeve of her sweater, she wiped the dampness from her cheeks as she looked around. “Mind if I sit?”
He shook his head, and she sank onto an upholstered chair. “Want anything to drink? Water? Orange juice? Whiskey?” he offered, only half joking.
She let out a soft chuckle. When she shook her head, he took a seat on the sofa.
“Four years ago, Elizabeth Lightfoot was killed in the bombing of the Paris bar. Do you remember that?”
He nodded. Leo had told him this much, but he wanted her to talk.
“She was my best friend. My only real friend other than you and my sister. We went to the academy together, became roommates when we graduated, and were assigned to the same office. She was like a sister to me.
“I knew she was working on something. She told me she had a few leads she was following about US companies potentially influencing foreign government contracts. She asked for permission to follow one specific lead in Paris, but the Bureau turned her down. She took personal time and flew over. She told me she was meeting an informant but nothing else. The next thing I know, she’s dead.
One of the many victims from that night. ”
“You think the informant lured Elizabeth there?”
She nodded. “Liza was onto something, and I believe she was killed for it. I do think her informant lured her there. But whether that informant knew what she was doing, I haven’t figured out.
It’s possible she intentionally led Liza to her death, that she knew about the bomb.
But it’s also possible she was a pawn in a move made by the ON.
Either way, the Bureau doesn’t believe me.
I have files, though. Ones Liza left me.
It took me months to identify two names: Quayle and Nolan.
It wasn’t until recently that I was able to decode the rest.
“Based on that and what little she’d told me, I narrowed the search down to Michael Quayle?—”
“The arms dealer?”
She nodded. “And the Nolan family. Both had contracts in negotiations with the French government when the bombing happened. When Liza was killed.”
“And you think Laura might know something about the Nolans’ business?”
She started to nod, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly, when I read that she’d gone missing, I assumed she was dead somewhere. Maybe killed by someone close to her. Her husband, most likely.”
“But then you saw her with me.”
Again, she nodded. “I was investigating another case when you two cropped up on the CCTV footage. Seeing her alive months after she’d ‘disappeared’ raised a lot of questions.
And I started to wonder if she’d heard or seen something.
Something that would send her into hiding.
Something that might help me unravel this puzzle and find out what really happened to Liza. ”
“And that’s why you want to talk with her.”
It wasn’t a question, but she nodded.
He got it now. He understood why she’d pushed him.
And he understood why she didn’t push him now.
Tonight wasn’t one for answers. Maybe it had started that way for her.
Most likely, she’d come with the intention of demanding information.
But now, with both of them reeling from their conversation, neither asked or offered any more from each other.
A few minutes of silence passed, then she rose. He followed suit. “I, um…”
He’d never seen Callie unsure, and while he didn’t like it, he also didn’t have it in him to fix it.
“I think it might be better for me to leave. Maybe we can talk again…”
“In a few days?”
She hesitated, then nodded. He walked over and took her jacket from the hook, her gaze darting away from his when he handed it to her. Without a word, she pulled it on, and he followed her to the door. She paused on his porch and met his eye.
“I meant what I said, Gabriel. I wish I’d never said the things I said, but I’ve never been so terrified in my life.
For you. I wouldn’t change the rest because of that.
My parents would have destroyed you, and I couldn’t have that.
You deserved so much more, and my sixteen-year-old self did what I could to make sure you had that chance.
But I’m sorry, so sorry for the way it happened. ”
And with that, she turned and walked away.
He was still standing in the door long after her taillights disappeared down the road.