Page 95 of Carter

She gives me a sad smile. “Teddy fits right in here. Her and Ryan are two peas in a pod.”

“I love that,” I say past a sob. “It makes me so happy.”

“If you’d like to come visit, you can, honey.”

“Thank you,” I say, and take a deep breath. I wipe my eyes again. “Seriously, thank you. I promise I’m not always such a mess, I’m just dealing with a lot.”

“I understand,” she says. “Trust me, I understand. I always have my hands full over here. But I’m sure Teddy would love to see you. Maybe you can come by this weekend.”

“I would love that more than I can explain.” I wipe my eyes again, sniffling.

“Let me check my schedule, and I’ll text you some times that will work for us. You let me know what works for you.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry, I know that’s all I keep saying.”

“It’s okay,” she says with a small laugh. “I’m so happy that I could bring you some peace with this. I know you were worried about her, that you care about her.”

“You have brought me more peace than you know.”

She smiles. “I’ll let you go. I’ll text you soon. Good night.”

“Good night,” I say, and end the call.

I stare at all the stuff in front of me and something changes. Something in me just… lets go. Detaches. Floats away. I feel lighter. Ready. Eager.

Then I start laughing. Small at first, until it turns hysterical. Then I’m crying again.

I spend the next five minutes crying. I let it all out because it does no good inside. And when I have myself together, when I’ve purged all the bad stuff, I finish going through Ryan’s things. I put away everything I’m keeping and pack the other stuff back in boxes that I leave by the door. I look up the number for the donation center that makes pickups and set a reminder to call them in the morning.

I can do this. I can really do this.

Chapter thirty-one

Nash

“He hasn’t been doing much of anything,” Gendreau says, her voice loud through the phone speaker. “Spends most of his time in his apartment, walking to the corner store, and working. Seems pretty quiet.”

“If I committed murder, I wouldn’t want to bring attention to myself either,” I grunt. “Keep checking in with the officers sitting on him and update me with anything of importance. I’m going to see what’s taking so long on all these files and then get an update on this warrant.”

“Will do.”

I end the call and get up to go check with our tech guy, Martin, when he walks in the door carrying a folder.

“Is that Mercer’s file?” I ask.

I’d run my own search but kept coming to dead ends, so I had to forward it to the tech team so that they could dig even deeper, since they have the software for that.

“Sure is.”

“What the hell took so long?”

“Guy has four different aliases,” he says. “I wanted to make sure I got all of the information. You’re going to like this.”

He hands it over. I narrow my eyes. “I hope you’re right.”

“You got a warrant going yet?”

“Not yet.”