The Imaginary (The Imago Trilogy Book 2)

by J. J. Stone

  Ada felt like she had been punched in the gut. Beside her, Janice hissed, “Ouch.”

  James shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and Ada couldn’t wait to hear the lashing he was undoubtedly about to unleash on the reporter. In the past 24 hours, she and James had reached an odd understanding. To no longer feel like she had to defend herself every time she occupied a room with the man was like a breath of fresh air. She was still closer to Brenda and Dade, but she felt like she and James had begun to mend whatever was broken between them. She knew he would defend her to this room of reporter roaches.

  “Our analyst during this investigation was our resident BAU analyst Janice Otto. She was instrumental in our involvement with this investigation, and I’d like to take this time to acknowledge and thank her for her contributions to this case.” James glanced around the room for the next question. “We have time for one more.”

  Ada didn’t hear the last question. She barely comprehended Janice asking her what was wrong. Ada’s entire body was buzzing. She felt like she’d been tossed in front of a bus. All the progress she’d made with James, all the friendly exchanges and congratulations, everything evaporated as James’s statement sank in. Her mind reeled as she thought back through everything she had done. She could not pinpoint one single instance where she’d done something less than satisfactory. Definitely nothing to warrant James verbally backhanding her in front of a room full of press.

  Janice placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a rough shake. Ada forced her head to tilt toward the analyst. “I guess I should have said something before,” Janice said in a low rasp, keeping an eye on James as she continued. “James has been getting a lot of grief from the higher-ups back in DC for using you as an analyst, especially when they’re paying me to be here.” She looked down at Ada and shrugged, fake regret plastered all over her features. “He figured this was the best way to make sure he didn’t get more flak from his bosses.”

  Ada’s blurring vision cleared long enough for her to see James approaching her, Dade and Brenda hot on his heels. Ada saw James’s mouth moving but she didn’t try to hear what he was saying to her. She forced her legs to move and raced down the backstage stairs, her hands shoving the metal door open. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to get on that plane to Seattle.

  As she fled down the hallway, her only thought was to get to her room, get her bag, and get a taxi to the airport. A maid flattened herself against the wall as Ada raced by her into the lobby, dodging hotel newcomers as they waited to be served by the front desk.

  She thought she heard someone call after her, but her legs had taken full control. Nothing was going to halt her progress to her room. She pushed past the last huddle of arriving hotel guests and broke into an all-out sprint down the hallway to her room.

  As she came to a breathless halt in front of her hotel room door, Ada dug feverishly through her pockets for her key card. Now that she had stopped, her peripheral revealed James fast-walking toward her. He had just started down the hallway. She had no more than five seconds to get the door open.

  Her fingers closed around the card in her back pocket, and she whipped it out and jammed it into the lock slot. Miraculously, it beeped and went green on the first try. She slammed the door handle down and stumbled into the room. She pushed her body back into the slow-moving door to force it shut and seal her into the safety of her dark room. Then she heard James’s hand slap against the exterior, and the door came back toward her a few inches.

  “Dammit, Ada, will you stop?” James said in as low a tone as he could manage. Ada heard a group of hotel guests chatting loudly as they passed by her door.

  Ada’s eyes burned and she inwardly cursed her spineless emotions. She put all her weight against the door and gave it a solid shove. “I’m leaving, Deacon,” she grunted as she dug her heels in.

  “Ada, move.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.“

  “Ada, I’m not asking again.”

  Hot anger burned up her throat. Now he was going to threaten her? She placed her face in the sliver of space between the door and door jamb. “Leave or I’m calling security.”

  James straightened but kept his pressure against the door. His face finally cracked into a chuckle. “You’re calling security?”

  Ada wanted to punch his face. “I’ll get Dade down here if I have to. I’m getting my stuff and I’m going home.” Her hands, which had been shaking since she fled the conference room, rebelled and slipped off the door, quivering uselessly at her side. It was all James needed to carefully push the door open wide enough for him to enter the room and shut the door behind him.

  “Get out!” Ada shouted at him as she backed away from him. Her hand slid along the wall until she found a light switch. As the lights clicked on, she dove toward the room phone and picked it up. Her finger went for the 0 button.

  “Ada, stop. Seriously.” James held up his hands in surrender, staying his ground two steps from the door.

  Ada’s finger froze directly above the button and a new wave of fury filled her. She glared daggers at James while he looked back at her with an annoyingly calm expression. They both waited for the other to make a move. Given their mutual stubbornness, Ada steeled herself to wait.

  To her shock, it only took a few seconds before James spread his arms out and asked, “What the hell happened?”

  “Sarcasm is the last thing you should be using right now.” Ada kept her tone as even as she could. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing how truly hurt she was.

  James’s eyes widened as his shoulders lifted toward the ceiling in a clueless shrug. “Fill me in, Brandt. One second you were standing there, the next you were taking off like someone was pointing a gun at you.”

  The confusion in his voice sounded genuine, but Ada knew better. “If you didn’t need my help anymore, all you had to do was tell me.” Ada watched his face for the first tell of honesty. When his confusion deepened, frustration started to replace the anger in her gut. “I’m here because I felt like you truly wanted my help. I’ve been risking everything to come to your aid whenever that phone rings.” She smashed the phone down into its cradle. “And this is the thanks I get.”

  “What am I missing here?” James asked as he took a giant step toward her.

  Ada’s pointer finger shot out toward him, halting him in his tracks like a ton of bricks. “Do … not.” The warning hissed through her clenched teeth. “I honestly thought we were becoming friends. But I guess you were just setting me up to fall right into this.” She swallowed hard, studying his face. “I’m leaving. You won.” She waited a second more to make sure he wasn’t moving closer. When he remained frozen in place, she turned away from him long enough to grab the handle on her suitcase. She yanked it toward her so hard she feared it might snap off.

  She tossed her key card onto the bed and took two strides toward the door. Just as she was about to pass James, his right arm shot out and his hand connected with the wall. She stopped just before her forehead smashed into the crook of his arm. Without looking at him, she said, “Move,” in a low growl.

  “Is this because of my comment to the press?”

  “You’re quick,” Ada sneered.

  James’s other hand gently but firmly nudged Ada’s right shoulder, leaving her no choice but to turn and face him. “You’re honestly flying out of here in a fit of rage because of what I said.” His eyes narrowed as he waited for her to respond.

  Ada felt a small tightness sprout at the base of her throat.

  “I didn’t discredit you. I didn’t say one ill word toward you. I simply named Janice as our analyst, which is true.” James lowered his arm from the wall. “I told Janice to talk to you about it.”

  “Why, because you didn’t want to do the dirty work yourself?” Ada snapped back. A quiver threatened to assume command of
her vocal chords.

  “I didn’t have time to tell you before the press conference.”

  Ada lowered her head as her stomach painfully clenched. She almost let the tears come, almost gave James the satisfaction of seeing what he’d done to her. Then her hands balled into fists. Her shoulders tensed and her head cleared from its haze of humiliation. In one fluid move, she raised her head and bored directly into his eyes with her own. “So this ‘friend act’ was just a distraction to keep me here long enough to get the job done.” She surprised herself with how clean and poised her delivery was, despite the maelstrom of emotions boiling inside her.

  James locked his arms across his chest. Cold anger filled his green eyes, giving them a dark tint. Tiny streams of wrinkles creased the outer corners of his eyes as they narrowed. “What did she tell you?” he asked in a low voice dripping with contempt.

  “Who, Janice?” Ada let out a small, horrible chuckle. “What you didn’t have the balls to, apparently.”

  His eyes closed and he sucked a slow breath through his nostrils. “What did she tell you?” he asked again, quieter this time.

  “That your bosses have been giving you grief for keeping me on the investigation. So I guess you thought the only way out of the situation was to bully me out of the picture.”

  James’s face scrunched up in confused anger as his eyes snapped open and his mouth opened to respond.

  Ada pointed her finger at him again. “I can’t listen to another lie. You’re the same cold and conniving human being who strong-armed me into helping back in Seattle.” She stopped as her voice was taken prisoner by the monster knot in her throat. She swallowed past it as best she could. “I’ve put my job in jeopardy. I’ve uprooted my life at a moment’s notice. I’ve been in situations that have probably reverted my psychological healing a good decade. And for what? To have my help shoved aside like trash. Like I was never an asset, never someone that you,” her finger jammed against his chest, “wanted help from. All but begged for insight from.”

  James looked at her, not saying a word, and Ada watched his jaw tighten. Watched regret wash over his face. Watched not a single word of defense or explanation leave his lips. Her hands replaced her finger, heaving against his chest with all her might. He stumbled back a few steps, caught off-guard by her unexpected force.

  “Why do you think you can do this to people?” Ada shouted, letting the raw sadness cascade over her. She shoved him again, growing harsher with each step toward him. “Draw them in, suck them dry, then toss them aside and move on to the next one?” One of her hands balled into a fist and as it hit his chest, she felt two of her knuckles pop. She welcomed the flare of pain. “You’re not going to do to me what you did to your other analysts.”

  As she recoiled to fling another set of punches at him, he deflected her swings with his hands. “Stop,” he said in a tone that was annoyingly calm.

  Ada ignored him and swung at him again, not realizing that he was herding her back toward the wall. He swatted her hands away again and held his own in front of him, trying to placate her. “Stop,” he insisted, throwing some firmness into his voice.

  When her back hit the wall, a defensive reflex sprung to action and she cemented her palms against his chest, locking her elbows to hold him at bay. “Those women might have gone along with your misogynistic mind games,” Ada struggled for a breath as tears poured from her eyes, “but I’m not.” Her voice went out and refused to go on.

  “I need you to stop talking and just listen.” James’s voice was low and deathly quiet. “What I said back there wasn’t meant to hurt you.” He swallowed hard. “I was trying to protect you.”

  “Go to hell, Deacon,” Ada snarled, hatred giving her vocal chords a surge of energy. “This was your way of getting me out of the picture, just like you did with the analyst before Janice—”

  “Shut up!” James growled and the short distance between them made his outburst all the more terrifying. “I didn’t credit you out there because I didn’t want to give this psycho leaving you letters more reason to terrorize you.” His eyes roved back and forth across her face, silently pleading with her to understand.

  Ada rolled her eyes as a sinister sneer curled her lips. “Admit that you got what you needed from me. And now you’re done.”

  She wanted him to yell at her, wanted him to finally be honest with her so that she could justify the tortuous betrayal drowning her. She watched his shoulders bunch toward his neck as he inhaled sharply and she braced herself for the first truthful reply of the whole conversation to pour out of him.

  Instead, two calloused hands framed her face. Ada froze at his unexpected move, her mind completely numb. James’s emerald eyes shone as he stared directly into her eyes, and all Ada could read from him was desperate grief. And that confused her even more than the fact that he was now inches from her face.

  When he finally gasped a small inhale, all signs of defense bled out of his features, replaced with weary surrender. His fingers tightened ever so slightly in her hair as his tongue moistened his dry lips. Ada felt her stomach clench, but oddly, not in fear. “You’re not like them,” James rasped, his voice confirming that the unshed tears in his eyes were real.

  Then his hands left her face and he left the room. The door shut behind him like a clap of thunder, and the silence of the room turned into a brilliant ringing in Ada’s ears. She released the gush of air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and crumpled to the floor as baffled sobs shook her to her core.

  CHAPTER 8

  “I thought you weren’t getting in until tonight.” Mike took Ada’s suitcase from her as he led her to the car. He unlocked his car then hit the trunk release button on his key fob. The red sedan’s trunk lid slowly rose to greet them.

  Ada pulled her hoodie closer against the biting Washington chill. “We wrapped earlier than we thought,” she lied as she put her hand on her door handle. She grinned as Tiny’s giant head squeezed between the head rest of the passenger seat and the window.

  Mike placed her suitcase in the trunk and gently slammed the lid back down. He watched her for a moment and Ada knew that he was reading her. She braced herself for a conversation she did not have the strength to have. Maybe someone from the team had called him and told him what had happened. “I’m just glad I got to get back here early. This case was exhausting.”

  She watched her uncle nod and step to his door. “I know the feeling. Sometimes being away from home on a case is more tiring than the case itself.” He opened his door and Ada followed suit, the two of them ducking into the car in unison. “I always tried to get the early flight home.”

  As Mike brought the car engine to life, Tiny half-climbed between Mike and Ada’s seats and slopped a giant lick onto Ada’s cheek. She shrieked and gently nudged the Dane back, scratching his ear as she swiped the spit from her face. “This one’s been especially homesick,” Mike chuckled as he backed out of his parking spot and headed for the parking garage exit.

  “You and me both, buddy,” Ada whispered to Tiny.

  ——

  Brenda tossed the last of her clothes into her bag and zipped it up. She glanced down at her phone. It was still sitting silent on the bed where she had placed it moments before. She reached down and pressed a button, bringing it out of its slumber. Still no messages, no calls. Nothing.

  She couldn’t believe Ada had just bolted. She usually gave Ada a ride to the airport after a case wrapped. It was a time Brenda had come to look forward to, an opportunity to just talk with someone she didn’t have to censor herself around.

  After Brenda had arrived back at her room following last-minute tasks at the police station, she was shocked to find a maid cleaning Ada’s suddenly unoccupied room directly across the hall. All five of her immediate calls to Ada went unanswered. It was like she had vanished into thin air, and James, who had followed
Ada out of the room after she’d suddenly gone mental, was nowhere to be found either.

  Someone knocked lightly on her door. Brenda opened it slightly. Dade looked back at her with a confused expression mirroring her own. “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked softly, glancing down both ends of the hallway.

  Brenda shook her head. “She’s gone. I guess she’s already on a flight home.”

  Dade scratched his head, and his face screwed up into a puzzled frown. “Was she sick? Is that why she ran out of there?”

  Brenda shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s just … gone.”

  “Would you two get a room already?” Janice said in an uncomfortably loud sneer as she sauntered behind Dade. “Or I guess … get in a room.” She laughed at her own joke and continued down the hall to James’s door.

  Dade pulled in a long breath and slowly released it through puckered lips. “Can I slap her? Just one time?”

  Brenda chuckled as quietly as she could. “Get in line behind me.” She cautiously leaned out of the doorway, and she and Dade watched Janice slide her key into James’s door lock then slip into his room. “I’ll bet you my paycheck that whatever’s going on,” Brenda jabbed her finger in the direction of James’s now shut door, “she’s got her claws in it.”

  ——

  James twitched when he heard his door unlock, his laptop jostling as he stiffened. Reflexively, his hand moved to hover over his gun on the bedside table. Then he heard the jangle of Janice’s bracelets and his hand returned to the keyboard of his laptop. He took a deep breath and forced himself to read the report on the screen.

  Janice entered the room and unceremoniously kicked off her heels. “There you are.” She removed her badge and tossed it onto the small table in the corner of the room. It clattered against the wood, causing James’s jaw to clench at the jarring sound.

  As she ran her fingers through the tight braid she’d secured her hair in that day, Janice slowly approached the bed.