“He stays where he is,” I warned him. “Miller will be back on his feet within the next twenty-four hours.” I had overheard Thom tell Cole that much. “He’s healing well. There’s no reason to think he’s going to explode into… whatever it is that scares the pants off everyone.”
“He hasn’t told you?” Wu wiped all expression from his features. “You haven’t seen him?”
I opened my mouth, and then shut it. “We all have our secrets. I’m not going to twist his arm to get at his.”
“I can understand why he would want you to look at him and see the face he’s chosen instead of the one he was born wearing.” Wu ruffled his thumb over the top corner of the papers he held. “Your human mentality is as much of an asset as it is a hindrance. Your mind would bend if you beheld his true face in your current state.”
“Enough.” I slashed my hand through the air. “Just enough, okay?”
Wu ducked his head. “I am sorry for what you had to do tonight.”
“That makes two of us.” I shoved him out of my way. “I’m going home.”
Standing under the shower wouldn’t make me feel any cleaner, but at least it would camouflage my tears.
Back at the farmhouse, no one spoke to me on the way upstairs to my room. The ability to smell emotions must have told them what was doing, and they let me handle the fallout on my own terms. I scrubbed until my skin turned raw before giving my hair the same callous treatment.
The brutal events of the past few weeks slipped from my eyes and down the drain until I was spent.
Dressing in pajama shorts and a baggy tee, I braided my hair back then headed down to check on Miller. I made it halfway before pounding started on the front door. The patient craned his neck to see who had come calling, but Thom shook his head once, and Miller reclined. Santiago was less circumspect. He took up position behind the door and nodded, clearing me to open it, which I did.
“Rixton.” Cold sweat broke across my spine in a chilling wave. “What’s up?”
“We need to talk.” His gaze slid past my shoulder to Miller. “Alone.”
“Let’s go out back.” I led him onto the porch and around the house to where the old oak tree overshadowed the picnic bench. Too wound up to sit, I braced against the trunk and opened myself up for what came next. “What’s on your mind?”
He wasted no time. “Where are the photos?”
“Rixton —”
“You took the spares out of the trunk.” He bulldozed over me. “I was too busy losing my shit over where you were and why you weren’t answering your phone to pass them out during the shift meeting, so I put it off until tonight. Except when I went to get them out of the trunk, I came up empty.”
“Rixton —”
“I checked on the prints before I left the station, so I know they were there when I arrived at your house. This was the only stop I made that wasn’t drive-through. You were the only person who got near that trunk other than me.” He slapped his open palm against the tabletop. “The worst part is, I told myself it didn’t matter, that I had one last set squirreled away someplace safe. I could run off more copies and let that be the end of it. Except, when I got home, those had vanished too.”
Aware of what came next, my chin hit my chest.
“That’s when I remembered what Sherry told me when I called to ask if she needed anything before I got home. She told me that you had spent the afternoon with her. That gives you the means and the opportunity, but what was the motive?” Fury crackled in the air between us. “Tell me what’s going on. Explain this to me in a way I can understand.”
“I can’t.”
“You tampered with evidence. You better have a damn good reason, or I will report this. I won’t have a choice. I have a family to support, and I can’t lose my job, not even to protect you.”
There was nothing I could say without digging my hole deeper. Summers would contact him when she realized her copies were missing. Of that I had no doubt. And together they would realize that all digital traces of those photos, as well as anything else Wu felt the need to scrub, had vanished too.
I was the only common thread, and Rixton would yank on me until the whole story unraveled.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” The fight drained out of him. “Until you can present an argument that changes my mind, I’m going to have to ask you to stay out of my home and away from my family. You violated my trust tonight, and you abused Sherry’s hospitality. You’re giving me nothing to help me put your betrayal into perspective.” He took a breath and tried reasoning with me again. “I want to trust your reasons for doing this. I want to believe you did what you did for a purpose I can understand. But you’ve got to meet me halfway.”
That last bit was an olive branch extended, and I batted it away one last time. “I understand.”
“Chief Jones read your letter,” he said in a quiet voice. “She ordered me to talk you out of leaving for the department’s sake. The mess with Timmons stirred up enough bad publicity, but your leaving before he’s sentenced makes it look like you’re getting forced out.”
My arm was being twisted, all right, just not by the department. “I don’t have a choice.”
“Seems to me you had plenty of them. You could have told me you’d decided to accept the offer from the FBI. You could have told me you had written your letter of resignation. You could have kept your sticky fingers off the evidence.” The chill in his expression stung. “You’ve been sinking since Maggie, and this latest stunt will force me to watch you drown.”
“I wasn’t ready to turn in the letter,” I protested weakly. “I wrote it but…”
“No, Luce, you don’t get to blame that on me. I might have played messenger before you were ready, but you wrote it, signed it, and addressed it to the chief. You made your choice. You just hadn’t screwed up the courage to go through with your decision.”
I couldn’t look at him, not his feet, not the ground beneath his feet. I was so much lower than that. “What will you do now?”
“I’m going to sleep on how to handle this.” His sigh whistled out in a long note, like the stab of my betrayal had punctured a lung. “You want my advice?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Let the resignation stand and use your comp time to ride out the notice.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m going to request for the Hensarling and Culberson cases to be reassigned before your association taints what evidence we do have. The only chance we’ve got at a conviction is pinning down Ivashov, if we can find him, and I won’t risk losing him on a technicality.”
Ivashov was a literal dead end, but that was yet another detail I couldn’t share with him. “Do what you have to do.”
Without another word, Rixton left me standing there alone in the dark.
I sat on the tabletop and stared off into the distance until the sun rose.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In order to avoid any and all discussion about the fallout with Rixton, I left the coterie at my house after dawn and sneaked into the sewing room at the Trudeaus’ to crash for a few hours. Word traveled fast in law enforcement communities, and ours was smaller than most. I was on borrowed time if I wanted Dad to hear my side of the story before Uncle Harold overheard any gossip about me making the rounds, and I had to scrape them both off the ceiling using one of Aunt Nancy’s spatulas.
“Afternoon, baby girl.” Dad glanced up from the crossword puzzle he was working at the table. “You got in late.”
“We need to talk.” I joined him, grateful I had hit the sweet spot between breakfast and lunch so we could sit alone. “There are some things I need to tell you.”
“All right.” He set down his pen and linked his fingers on the table. “Shoot.”
“I resigned from the force.” Palms braced on the table, I waited for him to go nuclear. When his eyes failed to round, and his mouth remained shut instead of gaping like a carp, I feared he might have zoned out again, but I pushed on bef
ore I lost my nerve. “The FBI expressed interest in me after the Claremont case, and I’ve decided to accept their offer.”
“I see.” His shrewd eyes narrowed. “Will joining the FBI make you happy?”
Happy was so far away I couldn’t see its tail lights to chase after the glow.
One more lie spilled over my lips without consulting my brain. I was training myself to cover my ass first and ask pesky moral questions later. Wu would be so proud. “Yes.”
This must be the road I’d heard so much about, the one paved with good intentions that landed you in hell. Or, in this case, a special taskforce full of charun.
“It’s about damn time.” A wide grin split his lips, and his eyes twinkled. “You were always meant for bigger and better things. I’m surprised it took you this long to figure out this town is too small for you.”
A wave of dizziness swirled through me. “This town is home.”
“Yes, it is, and it always will be,” he agreed, “but you’ll never grow into your full potential here.”
“You don’t sound…” upset your only daughter is flying the nest “… surprised.”
“You’ve been searching for answers your whole life, and there are none here or you would have already found them.” He sipped tea from his glass. “You’re restless; you have been for years.” He wiped his upper lip dry with his thumb. “You might have settled if not for Jane Doe. She’s the proof you’ve waited on, the mystery solved, and I like to think I know my daughter well enough to understand she won’t know peace until she’s dealt with her past.”
How prophetic his words were for reasons he would never understand. “You’re right.”
“I’m your father,” he said, “of course I’m right.”
“I planned on making this my life, on retiring from the force.” It felt important he understand that. “The idea of leaving home, leaving you, is so new.”
“You’ve been through hell the past few weeks.” Absently, he rolled the pen across the page. “A fresh start, a clean break, might be what you need to heal from it all.”
“What about you?” Recognizing the nervous habit, I reached over and stilled his hand by covering it with mine. “I’ve been working on the house. It’s almost as good as new. You can move back in once the doctor gives you the all-clear.”
The second I hire a part-time nurse to keep an eye on you.
“Well, here’s the thing. I had already made up my mind to sell the place before you moved back home last year. I don’t want to spend my golden years riding my lawnmower across all that acreage, and I can’t afford to bring Flavie on to tend it full-time. I don’t want to knock around that big house alone either.”
Sweat gathered in my palms, and my fingers went limp in his grasp. “Where will you live if you sell the house?”
“Elm Place,” he said with satisfaction. “I went on the tour last year after Dr. Brenner expressed concerns about me living on my own.”
“Elm Place,” I repeated. “That’s the assisted living community behind Edgewater Baptist Church.”
“Yes and no. There are several levels of care available. I qualify for what they call independent living. I would have my own apartment, one bedroom and one bathroom. A cleaning service comes in twice a week. Laundry facilities are on-site. Continental breakfasts are served each morning in the lounge, and they offer room service options for lunch and dinner if you’re not up to cooking. The restaurant around the corner caters to the facility.” He winked. “Residents get a discount.”
“Why didn’t you mention this sooner?” I reclaimed my hands so he wouldn’t notice them trembling. “I thought you wanted to stay at the house. I gave up my apartment so I could help with the upkeep. I thought that was what you wanted.”
“You cancelled your lease and showed up on my doorstep. How was I supposed to say no to that?” His expression softened. “With you there, I didn’t mind staying put. You were a huge help, and you took good care of me, but you’re young. You’ve got dreams of your own to pursue. I don’t mind being left behind, that’s how it’s supposed to go, but I do want to remain on my own terms.”
Woozy, I braced my forearms on the tabletop to hold me upright. “This all seems so sudden.”
“Not at all like my daughter announcing out of the blue that she’s resigned from a job she loves to pursue a new career without once hinting she might level up?”
Okay, so I had no handy comeback for that one. “The farmhouse has been in our family for generations. Your parents died there. You were born there.” I couldn’t imagine a world where that country lane no longer led us home. “Are you okay letting all that history go?”
“You’re my only child, and Harry and Nancy are all the family I’ve got to speak of.” He scraped his thumbnail over the etched design on his glass. “Letting the old girl go will be hard, but this second stroke was a wakeup call for me. I’m not getting any younger, and neither are you.” He sucked on his front teeth. “There’s something else I ought to tell you while we’re being honest.”
“Hit me.” I locked my muscles in anticipation. “I can take it.”
“Looks like CPD will be losing not one but two Boudreaus.” His shoulders squared. “I’ve decided to retire.”
The floor disappeared from under my chair. “What about Uncle Harold?”
“Harry saw the writing on the wall months ago.” Dad let his gaze travel across the room as though expecting words to materialize on the floral wallpaper. “Nancy is hinting at wanting to buy an RV and do some traveling. Both of their boys live out of state, so there’s that too.” He swirled the contents of his glass. “I did my adventuring when I was younger. I’m ready to spend my days on the lake and my nights in a recliner.”
A fillet knife slid between my ribs would have hurt less than this. Losing our home, the only one I had ever known, gutted me.
Focus on the upsides.
Never in a million years would I have considered placing Dad in any type of assisted living facility, but that meant he wouldn’t need the nurse I had been considering for him. The staff there could handle his medications and be warned about his dietary restrictions. Plus, having neighbors meant someone would come running if he called. The fact those neighbors were also human insulated him even more from War and her coterie. While there wasn’t much a few dozen geriatric humans could do against immortal charun, their presence would still act as a deterrent.
Aware Dad was watching me, waiting for a reaction, I forced my lips to move. “I think I’ve gone into shock.” I sat back in my chair. “This is not how I expected this conversation to go.”
“I’m right there with you.” His lips pursed in a shrill whistle. “My baby girl is going federal. Hot damn.”
And my dad was checking himself into a retirement home. Woo-freaking-hoo. “We’re two crazy kids, all right.”
The flatness in my tone sent him ferreting out the cause. “How is Rixton handling the news?”
“We talked it out. He thinks it’s best if I go.” And never look back. “I’m going to miss him. Sherry and Nettie too.”
“He’s still your friend even if he’s not your partner,” Dad soothed. “You can call him up whenever you want, and you’ll be able to visit. Plus, you can do that video chat thing with your phone. That works over the Internet too, right?”
“Yeah, it does.” Desperate to redirect the conversation, I pointed out, “That means you’ll have to learn how to video chat too. We might have to upgrade your tablet.”
“Let’s save that as a last resort.” The corner of his eye twitched, and I almost laughed at his technophobia. “It took me six months to figure out how to turn on this one.”
Back on solid ground, we passed the rest of the afternoon together in blessed lucidity. His keen mind was once again blade-sharp, and he cut more answers out of me than I had intended to give, but I healed a little more each time he lanced those wounds.
Noticing the time, I excused myself and headed down to the
station. The Bronco sat lower under the weight of all my gear, or so I imagined. Bags of uniforms, boxes of ammo, my bulletproof vest, my firearm in its plastic case, my badge tucked in its leather wallet with the CPD crest stamped on the front, boots, and a dozen other tiny items tossed into a plastic bin along with my active case files.
An entire career condensed into three trips from the trunk to the shift office.
Thanks to my careful timing, the station was as empty as it ever got when I arrived. None of the officers on duty stopped me to ask what was doing or offered me help with my burdens. Odds were high they figured I was schlepping for another Boudreau and had no words of condolences prepared for the ending of an era. Add to it the fact I wasn’t much on hugging it out, and pretending I was invisible was more comfortable for us all.
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