Deeper Than the Grave (26 page)

Chapter Fifty-five

The next ten minutes were a blur—darkness and noise and grunts and orders. Even when Garrity slapped the handcuffs on Rose and dragged her out the door, I didn't put my gun down. One of Garrity's men had to peel my fingers off the grip. Patiently. Carefully.

They stabilized Richard and loaded him on a stretcher. He grabbed my hand as he passed, his lips moving but no words coming. I lowered my ear to his mouth.

“Catherine,” he wheezed.

“I'll do my best,” I said.

The men hurried him inside the copter, and Garrity shot the pilot a thumbs up. The silence vanished, drowned out by the crystalline whine of the engine, gathering for the upmount.

Garrity raised his voice to a shout. “We'll get to Grady, and I'll be back here in—” He put a hand to his earpiece, cursed. “Never mind. Massive pile-up on 285. Go back inside and stay there.”

Trey stared in astonishment. “What?”

“I'm serious. This is triage. I got room in the copter for two extra people—that's Rose and Richard.”

“But procedurally—”

“You want procedure, fine. I'm deputizing you.” He jerked a thumb at me. “Her too.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Cool.”

But Trey was having none of this. “You can't do that. Only the sheriff—”

“Lalalala, my friend. I don't wanna hear it. Go into Tai's apartment and stay put until I get somebody here. Collect the evidence. Get warm. We'll deal with this later, once hell stops freezing over.”

He held a hand to his ear in the universal gesture of “call me” and loped to the helicopter. The door closed, and the copter rose into the air. Trey watched it rise, then followed it with his eyes all the way over the horizon. It left only descending quiet in its wake, and yet he continued to watch its vanishing point, squinting against the wind.

I stood next to him. “You called Garrity.”

“I did. As soon as I found the jammer and dismantled it.”

“It was in Rose's truck?”

He nodded. “I called 911 too, but I knew they couldn't get a unit here in time. But Garrity…” He cocked his head, his eyes still riveted on the empty sky. “Garrity has his own tac team and access to a Sikorsky Black Hawk.”

I took his hand, squeezed it. “You miss it, don't you? Being a cop?”

“I do.” He looked at me, and the fierce desire in his face was almost too much to bear. “But missing is as complicated as wanting now.”

I moved closer to him, huddled under his wet coat. I remembered his finger on the trigger, the violent trembling anger fueling him. He'd been a timebomb. And he'd cut the right wire, defused and emptied himself before ignition. And now he was my boyfriend again.

I chose my words carefully. “That thing that happened back there, with Rose? That was close.”

“It was. I'm sorry.”

“No need to apologize. But we do have to deal with it. All of it.”

“All of what?”

I looked into his face, took both his hands in mine. “I know you've worked hard to create a life that makes you feel safe and protected and in control. The job, the apartment, the rules. God knows you've needed what calm you could scrape together. But you need this too. You need to be in the action again. You've got a fire heart, boyfriend, and I don't even know what that means, but I know it's true.”

He looked down at me, so serious, so vibrant, so practically pulsing with vitality I was surprised the snow didn't melt around him in a wet submissive circle.

“I know something else too,” I said. “This is the first February ninth you've spent out of your apartment in three years.”

He looked surprised. “It is, isn't it?”

“It is.” I managed a smile. “So what are we going to do? Because keeping things locked down is not working for you.”

“It's not working for you either. No matter what I do or say, you still…you know.”

“I know. I have a fire heart too.”

He nodded. “Then we need to deal with that as well.”

We. The two of us. My heart thumped harder, and I grew light-headed, my whole body strumming with the post-adrenalin crash. I started walking toward the shop, pulling Trey after me. He followed, our footsteps making squeaking sounds in the snow. And his hand was cold, but it was in mine, and he was holding it so tightly my fingers ached, but it was a good ache. I savored it, reveled in it, let it rush up my arm to meet the ache in my heart, which was also good.

He kept his eyes on the gun shop. “Tai?”

“Yes?”

“Promise me you won't ever let me hurt you. That you'll do whatever it takes to keep that from happening.”

“Trey—”

He stopped walking, but didn't let go of my hand. “Promise.”

I turned to face him, and he met my eyes straight on. The night behind us was as silent as the grave, the ground before us shadowy and treacherous.

“I promise,” I said.

***

Back in the shop, we climbed the stairs through the freezing, kerosene-riddled shop to my apartment and shut the door on the whole mess. We dried off with the pristine white towels I'd pilfered from his place, then changed in the dark, the bathroom shades pulled against nothing but flurries and flat darkness. I listened to the small human sounds—the slide of fabric against skin, the rustle of hangers—as we undressed and dressed, trading wet freezing clothes for sweatshirts and pajama bottoms and thick dry socks. I could hear his teeth chattering as he folded the fabric—evidence now—and put each item into a separate plastic bag.

He finished his task and motioned toward the bed. “Sit.”

“I'm fine, I—”

“Please.”

I sat. Trey watched to make sure I was staying put, then went into the closet and got one of his washcloths. He ran water until it was warm, then filled the sink and dipped the washcloth. He moved to stand in front of me and lifted my chin with one hand, dabbing lightly at my face.

I closed my eyes. “I have something to tell you.”

“I know.”

He concentrated on my forehead. Even when the tears started—slow, like first thaw—he didn't stop. With every gentle stroke, he removed another layer of blood and sweat and grime.

I opened my eyes. “You know what I'm going to say, don't you?”

“I think so, yes.”

He went back to the sink and dipped the cloth in the water again and wrung it out. I watched him, so precise and efficient and tender. I lost him in the watery blur of the tears, which I could not blink away. But I knew he was there. I got light-headed, and I knew I had to do it quick, without looking down, like flinging myself off the high dive.

I licked my lips. “Okay. Here goes. God help us both, Trey Seaver, but…I love you.”

He didn't move, didn't blink. He simply nodded as he folded the washcloth into a tidy square. I had no idea why his brain seized up at such times—an EEG of the moment would no doubt have captured the frantic swirls and dissonant flashes and neuronal firing. But he was trying, despite the hiccups, despite the grit in those gears.

“Trey?”

He held up a finger. “Ten more seconds, please.”

Exactly ten seconds passed. Then he turned to face me. And then he took one deliberate step toward me. Then another. And then he was striding across the room right to me, no hesitation, none whatsoever, running his fingers into my hair and tipping my face back to kiss me, totally without asking, and I stopped thinking about anything but that singular moment, his mouth on mine—sure, untethered, devastating. I let him pull me upright into his arms, where he held me too tightly, and I didn't mind, not one iota. I opened my eyes, feeling the thump-thump-thump of his heart against mine.

I smiled up at him. “Wow. That was a whole lotta steps.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled me down next to him, brushing my hair from my face so that he could look me right in the eye. “Of course I love you. You know that.”

And he kissed me again, and I surrendered utterly, took down the armor, opened all the way. And I expected to feel terror, but it was only relief, a sweet wrecking ball surge of it, and exhaustion, a delicious tiredness.

I tilted my head back to look him in the eye. “This isn't how it normally ends, you know. No EMTs, no CSI teams. No interrogations, no fingerprints, no being dragged downtown.”

“We have to do that in the morning.”

“I know, but that's the morning. It'll be better in the morning.”

Outside, clouds lay over the city like tired ghosts, ready to sleep, even as the rain continued its relentless work. According to hope and faith and meteorology, the dawn would be gracious, and in a few hours, the sun would send shards of clean morning light straight down from a clear blue sky. Already I could hear ice crashing to the ground, falling from power lines and pine boughs, the swan song of the frozen world.

He shook his head. “It's going to get worse before it gets better.”

“I know. But then it will get better.”

I leaned against him. The midnight hush would vanish, yes, but for the moment, it was as comforting as the folds of a weathered quilt. Trey put his arm around me without my having to tell him to do so, and we watched the white expanse through my bedroom window. And it was so familiar, almost pre-ordained, to be where we were, together, the world outside.

“Do I need to get a blanket?” I said.

“No. I'm not cold anymore.”

He wasn't, not at all. I lay my head on his shoulder. “Trey?”

“Hmmm?”

“Admit it. I had you at ‘I know you're watching me.'”

He made a soft noise in the back of this throat, almost like a laugh. “You had me the entire time.”

Epilogue

One Month Later

I resolved to sip the second glass of wine more slowly. The first already buzzed in my head, loosening my balance. My new red heels perfectly matched my new skirt and jacket, but they had me feeling off-kilter, and the wine wasn't helping. Receptions weren't my kind of party, especially not this one, which was chock full of photographers and news crews mingling with forensic anthropologists and a slew of fascinated gossip junkies.

Trey stood at my side. “I'm surprised Evie allowed reporters.”

“She said she wanted to tell the whole truth of the Amberdecker story, and heaven help her, that's what she's doing. To every news outlet in Atlanta.”

Across the exhibit hall, Evie shared the spotlight with her newfound cousin, Dr. Geoffrey Walker. The two made an attractive pair, even if Evie's composed smile seemed tight. I sympathized. Her mother was in jail, charged with both first-degree and attempted murder. Her sister was conspicuously absent as well, as she was still lounging in the Seychelles on a conveniently extended honeymoon. Even Evie's colleagues in the archaeologist's office kept a wide berth. She was mildly disgraced, tainted and tarnished, and now she stood in the middle of the crowd utterly alone except for the blood kin stranger at her elbow. But her exhibit had gone on, closing and then re-opening as the debated, threatened, and utterly revamped show that it was.

Now another portrait hung in the hall—Josephina Luckie's. Her remains were leaving Atlanta, however, going home with Dr. Walker to be interred in the North Carolina cemetery where her empty grave waited. Eventually, Braxton's bones would accompany her, and the war-crossed lovers would rest eternally side by side, less intimately than when they'd lain tangled in the Kennesaw clay, but perhaps more peacefully. It must have killed Evie to let them go, those marvelously storied, red-marbled bones. But let them go she had.

I stared up at Josephina's image, her dark skin and bold gaze in stark contrast to the heartbreaking softness of Braxton's features. Could true love really have flourished in such hard ground? Or had theirs been a tale of mutual desperation and inevitable reckoning?

The crimson bones kept their secrets, kept them tight.

The present-day story was still telling itself. Richard had his own reckoning on the horizon, charges ranging from improper disposal of a body to evidence tampering. Detective Perez had thrown the book, and she'd had an impressively hefty book to throw. But he'd had a visitor at his bail hearing, a sunglassed and unapproachable Cat. She'd left without speaking, but she'd shown up. Which—as I knew very well—was an enormous deal.

Garrity and his new FBI buddies had taken a scythe to Atlanta's street drug business. I'd seen him at the press conference afterward, so tickled he could barely hide the grin. He'd sent a shout-out Trey's way, for the work he'd done back with the Sinaloa cartel and for lending his current expertise to the case. Trey had taken the praise smoothly, but I'd seen the corner of his mouth twitch in a suppressed smile. They were coming after the big dogs next, Garrity told me afterward, the White Wolfs of the world. He said it with an expression very like a wolf's himself.

And then there was me. With a brand new Federal Firearms License framed on the wall. And ballistic-proof Plexiglass windows in the safe room.

I took another sip of wine. “Uh oh. I'm getting looks.”

“Of course you are. You're in the news. Again.”

“Yes, but not one reporter has used the word ‘reckless.'”

“Yet.”

He managed to draw the word into two syllables, with a pronounced emphasis on the final consonant. I heard the buzzing of my phone, but I didn't look down.

Trey raised an eyebrow. “Aren't you going to get that?”

“It's just Kenny again.”

“I thought he finished your computer last week.”

“Yes, but he keeps thinking of new-fangled awesomeness to install, and since I told him money was no object…”

Trey didn't complain. His AmEx Titanium was doing penance for him. I was doing my own penance, most of which involved swearing off the Darknet and always looking him in the face when I spoke.

“Thanks, by the way, for getting your professor friend to put in a good word. Kenny's going to keep his scholarship.”

“You're welcome. I was glad to help.”

Trey had pulled an old contact out of the woodwork, a Georgia Tech computer science professor he'd once worked with on asymmetrical sniper prediction models. Good words were powerful currency, but they carried their own price. Markers and favors, tokens and boons. They all returned home eventually, empty-handed and needy as prodigals.

I put the wineglass to my lips, dismayed to see that it was empty. Across the room, I saw Geoffrey Walker step closer to Evie, put a hand on her shoulder. Her face softened, and she sent a genuine smile his way. She would be fine, Dr. Evie Amberdecker. She was tough enough for the truth, even a landslide of it.

“I think I'm ready to go,” I said.

Trey didn't argue. He'd been ready to go for a while. He'd come because I'd asked him, but he was keen to get us back to his apartment. I knew why. My new outfit covered equally new La Perla undergarments in a matching flame red, and we still had unexplored sections on the flowchart.

“I'll get the car,” he said, already headed for the exit.

***

I waited for him out front, pulling my coat around me, winter nipping at my knees. Milder now, with wet spring on its breath. I couldn't see the Ferrari, but I heard it growling from around the corner.

“Excuse me, miss?”

I turned. “Yes?”

A woman stood there—black fitted coat, black bobbed hair, porcelain skin, red-lipped smile. She handed me a notecard, heavy ivory stock, with my first name written on the envelope in a swirling cursive.

“You dropped this,” she said.

“No, I didn't.”

She smiled wider. “I'm sure you did.”

And then she walked away, heels clicking on the sidewalk. She walked so quickly she was out of sight before I could open the envelope. I pulled out the card just as the Ferrari swung to a stop in front of me.

There was only one line inside the card, written in the same flowing script as my name on the front—
And I will give you all the kingdoms of the world and their glory
—but there was a photograph, taken at the summit of Kennesaw Mountain, black bare branches reaching into a winter-blue sky. In the image, a woman stood next to an iron cannon, gazing out over the landscape, Atlanta a distant shimmer of steel on the horizon. She had her back to the camera, but I recognized her riotous hair. I put my hand to the same hair, tidied now, no longer tossing in the high mountain wind.

Trey came around to open the car door for me, stopping short when he saw my expression. “Tai? What's wrong? What's happened?”

I looked up at him. “I don't know, boyfriend. But something has. And I suspect I'm going to find out what it is, real soon.”