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“Yeah,” Sean said. “You know what I mean. Once a crook, always a crook. He did good last night, but in the long run, can you really trust someone like that?”
Like a switch had been flipped, Bailey’s temper was instant. How dare Sean pass judgment on someone he knew nothing about? Especially someone who had just helped him close the biggest case of his career.
With his fists clenched, Bailey took a step toward his brother, ready to give him a piece of his mind. But Xander got in between them.
“Why don’t you give it a rest, Sean?”
Sean’s eyes shifted to Xander. “And if I don’t, you gonna make me? That didn’t work out so well that one time you tried in high school.”
Xander’s spine stiffened at the reminder of his fistfight with Sean back in the day. But then he tilted his head up in his I’m so much classier and sophisticated than you will ever be look that he’d perfected over the years. “Unlike you, I use my hands for much more pleasurable things than fighting. And the way I argue requires you have a brain. So how about you just back the fuck off, detective?”
Sean’s jaw twitched as he held an epic stare-down with Xander. But when it became clear Xander wasn’t about to back down, Sean let out a breath and looked to Bailey. “Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”
With his anger now having fizzled out, Bailey shook his head. “That’s not all you’re saying, and honestly, I really don’t want to hear anything you do have to say.”
Bailey stepped around Xander and looked between them both. “I wasn’t in the mood to do this before you both got here but thought, why not, it might make me feel better. It didn’t, sorry. I think I’m going to call a rain check. If one of you could text Kieran and let him know not to bother—if he was even going to—I think I’d rather be alone.”
Xander reached for Bailey’s hand. “Are you sure? I can—”
“I’m sure,” Bailey said, and squeezed his friend’s hand. “I just want to be alone.”
“Okay.”
Xander glared at Sean, who said, “What? It’s not just my fault. He’s kickin’ you out, too.”
Xander mumbled, “Ignorant idiot,” as he walked out of the kitchen, and Sean followed.
As the front door opened and closed, Bailey let out the breath that he didn’t even realize he’d been holding.
Silence… He had never appreciated it more, but as he looked around the kitchen and to the breakfast nook, he was reminded of the last time he’d been in it with Henri.
The last look, the last touch, the promise he’d made to climb the walls and to burn the bridges down. But now that he had, could he live with what he’d found in amongst all the ashes?
Chapter Twenty-Five
CONFESSION
Hitting people has never really been my style,
but this morning I was tempted…
IT WAS FREEZING in his garage as Bailey opened the door and stepped into it. It was Monday morning and exactly ten days since he’d seen or heard from Henri, and while he’d been the one who asked for some time and space, the more that Henri gave to him, the more Bailey was beginning to hate asking for it.
Still on leave from work, he’d had nothing but time and an empty house that was good for thinking but even better for overthinking. In fact, Bailey was positive he’d done nothing but think since the moment Henri had finished talking that night back in Jamaica. He was going stir crazy, but the problem was that he had no one he could talk to about this problem.
What Henri had told him was a secret Bailey was still trying to wrap his mind around. It was life changing, he knew that, and depending on what he decided to do with the information would determine whose life it would change.
Bailey flicked the light switch in his garage and stared at the punching bag in front of him. This was where he’d been spending a lot of his time over the last week, beating up this old thing as opposed to himself, because he couldn’t decide what the hell he was going to do.
On one hand, he could—and should—go down to the police station and report the crime that had been confessed to him on the best and worst night of his life.
Bailey picked up the gloves, slipped them on, and stared at the bag.
Or he could understand that Henri had lived in fear and terror his entire life, and know that what had happened that night had been to survive. It had happened because Henri thought Priest had been killed, and that he would be next.
Bailey’s glove smashed into the bag, as he thought about the documentary he’d watched yesterday on Jimmy Donovan, the infamous crime boss of New Orleans.
