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And who was this man?
Blue Harbor
SCU beach house
Thursday, September 6
9:12 p.m.
Bexley paced the deck outside the room she’d been staying in since she’d come to Ty and his team about the killer’s threats. All day she’d been contemplating if that was the wrong decision and if the killer would call her to tell her Ahnah was dead.
God help her, she needed guidance, divine help. As it turned out, it had been a team member, a friend, Ty lost. And she hadn’t seen him all day, hadn’t been able to talk with him. Nerves had her on edge. What if he’d slipped up and mentioned her and Ahnah? Could Rand talk Ty into returning? Had he seen Garrick or any of the other men who’d given Ahnah a hard time?
Thunder startled her and she backed up, sitting in the Adirondack chair, listening to rain pummel the house. It’d been nonstop all day. Josiah had been sullen and irritated he was stuck here, but he’d played some video games and they’d ordered pizzas for dinner. The entire team had shown them kindness and compassion and had moved their murder board to a room in the ground level apartment so Josiah and she didn’t have to see it every time they entered the kitchen.
A soft knock on her bedroom door drew her from the deck. She opened the door and Tiberius stood there, hair wet and curling around his temples, his scruff a full day’s beard. “How you doing?” he asked as he rubbed the nape of his neck.
“I was about to ask you the same. Tiberius, I’m so sorry about your friend Cami.”
He nodded once, and she welcomed him inside. “I was sitting outside thinking. Praying. Hoping. Wondering.”
Tiberius followed her onto the screened-in private deck and sat on the swing. She sat next to him. “Wondering what?”
“How Ahnah is holding up. What the consequences will be of my choice to not push you away like the killer demanded I do. How it went at the Family.”
“I wish I had an answer. You did the right thing by coming to us with the phone call. And things went about as I expected in Asheville. Dalen is next in line when Rand dies—but I don’t know if that old man is ever going to die. I saw Garrick.”
Bexley tensed. “And?”
“He hasn’t changed. It’s in the eyes.”
Shifting, she scooted closer, facing him. “How are you feeling?” She couldn’t begin to imagine the feelings banging around inside him.
“Don’t analyze me, Bex.”
“I’m not. I want to know.”
“You want to know how I feel? Okay,” he said, through an expelled breath. “I feel left out of my kid’s life. Someone has it in for me and literally plotted out a plan to derail me better than in some kind of spy novel. My dad hates me and barely acknowledged my existence but would be willing for me to return because it benefits him—me being an agent. I probably have nine hundred half-siblings and the only person who actually feels like family to me is Owen. I’m hanging on by a thread, and I don’t have it in me to find this guy. Which means Ahnah might die like Cami and those other victims and their blood is staining my hands. No matter how hard I try to wash it off, it’s there. All their blood on my hands.”
She took his hands in hers. Big, warm, a few calluses on his palms. “No one’s blood is on your hands, Tiberius. That’s what he wants you to believe. He wants to make you suffer—and he is. He’s messing with your head.”
“He’s messing with my head. My life. People I care about. How will I ever look Cami’s family in the eye?”
He held his palms open and she continued to gently caress them. Lightning lit up the room and she caught his eyes, boring into hers and searching. For what?
He laced his fingers between hers. “I had a flood of memories there today. Many of them were about you. The time you threw dirt in my eyes before a race so you’d win. Or the time you jumped out of a tree and terrified me. I squeaked like a mouse and you made fun of me for weeks.”
She laughed. “It was too easy to give you a hard time.”
He inched closer. “I remember the first time I picked you flowers.”
“Out of Mother Mae’s garden.”
Her body instinctively moved with his, bringing them together; she smelled mint on his breath, and goose bumps broke out on her skin. “I fell out of puppy love with you that day and into real love.” He pulled her to him, sliding his hands into her hair as the rain fell in sheets. His nose bumped hers and his lips brushed against her mouth, feather-soft. “I remembered what you tasted like...” He let the thought linger, giving her the power to decide.
“I may have forgotten,” she murmured and peered up from her lashes with a permissive smile.
Recognition dilated his pupils, and he deliberately explored her lips as they recaptured one another’s taste. Encircling his neck, her fingers toyed with the hair curling above his collar. Memories washed over her like afternoon sunshine and sweet tea. Their breath mingled and his hands got lost in her mess of curls.
