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“Think of it as the equivalent to splashing cold water on your face,” Kai hissed back. “It was either your bestie or Chenko waiting in my apartment. I figured you’d appreciate the former.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Without anything to pummel, I deferred to an open-palm smack on Kai’s maroon stucco walls. They were thin, so the sound was somewhat satisfying. But not enough. Never enough. “If you want to put this to rest so badly, arrest me. Stick me in a room with Chenko. Donotbring Verily near me ever again.”
“You talk like she has leprosy.” Kai was genuinely shocked. “How could you not want her around, after all this time? I thought you missed her. I thought seeing the normalcy that used to be your day-to-day life would help.”
It was easy, probably expected, to throw another punch at the wall, this time closed-fisted. Anger, blame, and screaming all served to prove the point that Kai screwed up. But it was oh, so tiring. And I was spent. Dangerously close to giving up. I said, with brine-coated rocks on my tongue, “It only serves to remind me how much danger I’ve put them in. Her. Noah. My parents. Gordon Saxon wants me dead, Kai.”
At last, Kai was made speechless.
“How could you think I’d want Verily near me?” I gestured behind him. “Someone Gordon hired could’ve been in your apartment, or the one next door because he killed your neighbors for a stakeout spot, waiting for me, and instead getting Verily as a bonus. She was alone here, Kai. She wasby herselfwhen we both knew there are people out there wanting to kill me, and if that fails, hurting me where it would gut me the most.” I said her name like an elastic snapping in two. “Verily.”
“Jesus. Scarlet, I’m sorry. I didn’t … when you called me to come home, the first thing I thought of was to surround you with family. And when you told me about the Saxon hit in the car, I’d completely forgotten … no, that’s not an excuse. I’m supposed to be better at this. Sharper. It was a big fuck-up, and I’m lucky Verily wasn’t hurt. I’m sorry, Scarlet. Truly sorry.”
Kai’s repentance was like a cloud, bloated with acid rain, landing on my shoulders. I felt the weight like it was something I personally gained, but not what I wanted. It was so easy to shrink my world into a pinhole, where only Theo and I existed and our actions solely affected one another. In that shoebox there was no Saxon family, no Kai, no Verily, no parents, and most importantly, no guilt. Zero fear. Since the only person I had to look out for was myself, it was a simple task to barrel forward. I wanted blinders like those poor horses in Central Park, where my periphery was completely black, and I wouldn’t be spooked by crowds of pedestrians, the sudden acceleration and braking of cars, the screech of buses.
Tunnel vision. That was what I wished for.
Then I wouldn’t see my parents on the sidelines, Mom’s eyelashes thick and clumped with tears, Dad’s frown lines deepened first by the loss of Cassie, then by watching the slow decay of his remaining daughter.
“No,” I said. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have figured out another way to get back here, without involving you or anyone else I care about.” After a sigh, I realized, “I should’ve just called Chenko.”
“Now, that’s just stupid.”
“At this point? Not too much sounds smart.”
“If you’d brought the task force in, and I mean true, patriotic FBI agents with no attachment to you whatsoever, not even sexually, you’d be in custody and have no way—let me reiterate,zero chance, of figuring out where Theo is and getting to him first.
“Not to mention,” he continued, finger raised over any counterarguments, “the shit-river I’ve had to cross in order to get us here in the first place. You go down, you take me with you, and hell if I’m going to let that happen. I’ll go down harder. I had Theo in a room—nay, aboat—and I didn’t inform my superiors. I knew where you were the entire time you’ve been listed as a fugitive. I’m aware of Theo’s brand spanking new identifiable scar on his face, a fun fact that I am positive my boss would be over-the-moon to know about.”
Kai grabbed my shoulders, and repeated, nose-to-nose, “I. Am. Fucked. If you go to the FBI now, you might as well have done it well before betting your body to fucking Neri. Because you’ll be making everything we’ve done up until this point a piece of utterly pointless crap. You might as well shit on me.”
“All right, I get it.” I held up my hand, pushing his face away from mine. “I’d never betray you.”
“Same goes, pretty. Now.” Kai leveled his shoulders. “Let me get my gun.”
“We can’t go anywhere, even with weaponry.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know where Trace could’ve taken Theo. Not to mention the price on my head.”
“Then I’ll trade in my pistol for my thinking cap. Come on.” He gestured further into his apartment, seeming how we were both still standing in his small entryway. “Sit your butt on the couch, I’ll brew us some tea, and we can conference.”
I had one foot forward before my body froze. Stiffness traveled from my toes, rippling up toward my neck, but that was where it stopped. My face, it was left to crumble.
“Scar. Oh my—okay, come here. Come here.”
Kai’s arms came around. He was never a light hugger—the kind who tolerated reaching out merely to appear normal. Kai was all in, his bones pressing through his muscles in order to maintain a firm, steady, anchor.
“There’s been so much delay already,” I said into the fabric of his shoulder. He smelled of beach and ocean, musky with a touch of salt. “And I keep thinking back to why he came back in the first place, why he risked contacting you and seeing me again. It was to try and save my life. And I repaid by—”
“You didn’t know.”
“But I should have. Theo wouldn’t just appear out of nowhere to say hi. There’s always something going on under his skin. He was the best cold reader in poker—I should’ve remembered. He knew people’s moves before they did.”
“Exactly right. Which is why you couldn’t have predicted what was going on in his head. Or tried.”
“He’s hurt, Kai. I know he is. He wouldn’t have left without fighting…”
