Page 141 of Cruel Lies

38

CALI

The knife hovers between us, edge glinting in the light.

Todd flinches back. He puts his hands up, palms out. "Whoa! Cal, it's me. It's just me."

"I can see that." But I don't lower the knife.

He looks awful. That's the first thing I really take in, now that my heart isn't trying to punch its way out of my chest. Todd Bradshaw, who irons his socks, who once sent back a shirt because the collar sat a quarter inch wrong, is standing on my steps in a shirt that looks like he slept in it, ran a marathon, then slept in it again. There's gray stubble on his jaw. His eyes are sunk into his face. He smells like he hasn't showered.

He looks like I felt this morning.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

"I need to talk to you."

"No."

It surprises me how easy it is to say that. A month ago, I'd have had a whole speech ready, a whole spreadsheet of grievances. Now, there's just the one word, and it's ammunition aplenty.

"Cal—"

"Todd, I have had the single worst night of my entire life. I woke up an hour ago on my own kitchen counter, and I have a knife in my hand for reasons I am not going to explain to you. So whatever this is, whatever you think you're going to say to me, the answer is already no." I start to close the door. "Go home."

"I don'thavea home," he cries out. "Cali. Please. I'm not here to— I know it's over. I know that. I'm not here to win you back, I'm not that stupid, I know I burned all of that down myself. That's not— God, that's not what this is."

I stop pushing the door.

Because there's something in his voice I've never heard before. In ten years of marriage, I never once heard Todd Bradshaw sound scared.

He sounds terrified now.

"You have thirty seconds," I say.

I keep the knife. It's hanging low at my side, but I make sure my grip on it is firm. New Cali doesn't hand her weapons back just because the man on her steps has a sad face. I learned that lesson in the most devastating way there is.

Todd swallows. His throat bobs. He glances over his shoulder, down the block in both directions, like he's checking for someone on his trail. That little movement does more to unsettle me than anything he's said so far.

"Can I come in?"

"No."

"Cali, this isn't— I can't say this out here."

"Then say it fast and say it quiet, because you're not coming into my house. Not ever again."

He closes his eyes and nods. When he opens them, he looks like a man about to jump off a bridge. "Men came to see me," he begins. "After the bank. After you— after the meeting."

I frown. "What kind of men?"

"Federal agents," he mumbles. "Or at least, that's what they said they were. They had the badges, the business cards, the whole nine yards. They sat me down in a conference room downtown and they asked me questions for hours."

A cold dread oozes down the back of my neck.

I've got a data engine upstairs that's currently screaming that the Akov Firm is not what it seems. It's a money-laundering front, one of many, all with roots reaching down into something that purposely avoids the light of day.

So who's to say that Ronan isn't capable of sending men who can play the part of feds to hound information out of Todd?