“Enough.” Judd had stayed mostly out of our way, observing, but unobtrusive. Now, he reached for the remote control and turned the television off. “Your brains need time to process,” he said gruffly. “And your stomachs need food.”
We objected. That didn’t go well for us.
After we pried ourselves away from the evidence, Lia “suggested” Sloane and I change for dinner, which I took as a threat that she would pick out an outfit for me if I didn’t comply. Unwilling to tempt fate—and Lia’s fashion sense—I put on a dress. When I went to fold my jeans, the USB drive Agent Sterling had given me fell out of the pocket. I bent to pick it up, half expecting Sloane to come out of the bathroom and catch me in the act.
She didn’t.
I forced myself to open my hand and stared at the drive. No amount of throwing myself into the Vegas case could make this matter less. I’d wanted to see the files—needed to see them—but now that I held the answers in my hand, I was paralyzed.
When people ask me why I do what I do, Locke’s voice whispered in my memory, I tell them that I went into the FBI because a loved one was murdered.
Sensory detail broadsided me: the light reflecting off the knife, the glint in Agent Locke’s eyes. There wasn’t always a rhyme or reason to what triggered my flashbacks—and there was nothing I could do except ride it out.
I was supposed to kill her, Locke continued in my memory, manic with the desire to have been the one to end my mother’s life. I was supposed to be the one.
I shuddered. When I came back to the present, my palms sticky with sweat, I couldn’t keep from slipping into Locke’s mind. If you were here, if you had access to new information on my mom’s case, I thought, you’d find the person who killed her. You’d kill him, for killing her.
I swallowed back the emotion rising up inside of me, grabbed my computer, and made my way out into the suite. Judd had forbidden me from looking at my mother’s file alone. I’m not alone, I told myself. I was never really alone.
Part of me would always be in that blood-spattered dressing room with my mother. Part of me would always be at the safe house with Locke.
I made it to the door to the suite and began to open it, planning to slip out into the hallway. I just need a few minutes to look at—My thought cut off abruptly as I realized the hallway outside our suite was already occupied.
Lia was leaning against one wall, four-inch heels on her feet, one leg crossed over the other at the ankles. “We both know that when you told Cassie you were in one piece, you were lying.”
From where I was standing, with the door only partially ajar, I couldn’t see Michael, but I could imagine his facial expression exactly as he replied, “Do I look like I’m in multiple pieces to you?”
Still leaning against the wall, Lia uncrossed her ankles. “Take off your shirt.”
“I’m flattered,” Michael replied. “Really.”
“Take off the damn shirt, Michael.”
There was silence then. I heard a light rustling, then Lia stepped out of my view.
“Well,” Lia said, her voice light enough to send chills down my spine. “That’s…”
“Leverage,” Michael filled in.
Lia had a habit of sounding like things weren’t important when they mattered the most. I eased the door open just far enough to see Michael, rebuttoning his shirt.
Underneath, his chest and stomach were mottled with bruises.
“Leverage,” Lia repeated softly. “You don’t tell Briggs, and in exchange, your father—”
“He’s very generous.”
Michael’s words cut into me. The car he’d been driving, this hotel—that was the price Michael was exacting for the damage his father had inflicted?
You make him pay because you can. You make him pay because at least then you’re worth something.
I swallowed down the ball of sorrow and anger rising in my throat and backed away from the door. I hadn’t consciously thought of myself as eavesdropping until I’d heard something I had no right to hear.
“I’m sorry,” I heard Lia say.
“Don’t be,” Michael told her. “It doesn’t suit you.”
The door clicked into place. I stood there, staring at it, until someone came up behind me. Without turning around, I knew it was Dean.
I always knew when it was Dean.
“Flashback?” he asked quietly. Dean knew the signs, the same way I could tell when he’d become absorbed in red-tinged memories of his own.
“A few minutes ago,” I admitted.
Dean didn’t touch me, but I could feel the warmth of his body. I wanted to turn toward him, toward that warmth. Michael’s secret wasn’t mine to share. But I could tell Dean my own—if only I could make myself turn around. If only I could make my mouth form the words.
I had a flashback because I was thinking about my mother. I was thinking about my mother because the police found a body.
“You’re good at being there for people,” Dean murmured behind me. “But you don’t have much practice at letting people be there for you.”
He was profiling me. I let him.
“When you were a kid,” he continued, his voice even and low, “your mother taught you to observe people. She also taught you not to get attached.”
I hadn’t told him that—not in words. Finally, I turned toward him. Brown eyes held mine.
“She was your whole world, your alpha and your omega, and then she was gone.” His thumb gently traced the line of my jaw. “Letting your father and his family be there for you would have been the worst kind of betrayal. Letting anyone be there for you would have been a betrayal.”