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I say nothing, but my strained smile seems to be the only response he needs.
“I’ll let you finish up.” After planting a chaste kiss on my cheek, he leaves, but the relief I thought I’d feel doesn’t come. Just more pain. More unease. Both fester among the doubt sowed by Hale’s drawing. Why did he leave that for me to find?
After one last pass over the floor, I return to the main lobby and spy Colton standing on the sidewalk before a small crowd. A few potential converters have already strayed inside, scanning the framed portraits of various Salvation missions.
I should feel pride in his success, but I’m just anxious to leave and parse over my thoughts in peace. With a sigh, I step toward the doorway and run into someone approaching from my side.
“Excuse me,” they say.
I force a smile and keep moving. “It’s okay—” Belatedly, I register the familiar, guttural cadence of their voice. I smell him next. Instantly, I know this man is no stranger.
It’shim. Daze—but when I whirl to face him, he’s far from the malicious figure I’ve built him up to be in my head. He’s tired and battered, swaying on his feet. A gray woolen cap shrouds his head and the wound I know to be there, but there is no disguising his black eye or the cuts along his lip.
“Hear me out,” he warns, his tone low. “You think I’d come here if I wasn’t worried about you? You aren’t safe here—”
“Like you know anything about safe,” I spit.
The cold, icy Daze would smirk in response. Instead, he… Winces. My heart pangs. By my side, my fingers twitch toward him, but I shake my head and force them down.
“Go away.”
“I’m sorry, Frey,” he begins, his voice low. “I know you’re pissed at me, and I’m sorry you had to see that shit, but it was the only way I could get you your answers—”
“What answers? I still don’t know what happened to Hale or why,” I shoot back. “You need to leave. Now.”
His eyes darken, but rather than grab me, flash a weapon, or otherwise live up to his darker persona, he shrugs. “Fine.” Turning his back to me, he heads for the side exit before spinning back around, determined. “You asked why I was at the bridge that day, but what you really should question is why I would break a promise to a dead man and approach you in the first place. Right then? You needed me. Even Hale’s request couldn’t keep me away from you. If you need me again, I’ll be there. You know where to find me.”
He’s gone before I can even get a word in edgewise, though I’m not sure what I could even say. Perhaps that I didn’t need him? I had been fine on my own, isolated in grief, unable to ask anyone else in my life for help. To the extent that I emotionally unloaded on the first stranger to offer me a chance to speak. The first person to actually listen to me.
That doesn’t mean I needed him. It doesn’t.
“Frances?” Colton’s monotone voice catches me off guard. I didn’t even sense him come in. “Are you ready to leave?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say thickly.
Did he see Daze? From his face alone, I can’t tell. Still, an uneasy feeling sinks into my stomach and won’t leave. I try desperately to push these feelings away, but alarm bells begin ringing in my head, becoming louder and louder with each passing second. Until, suddenly, they’rescreaming.
How can I watch Daze kill a man and still feel entirely safe in his presence, yet being anywhere near Colton only seems to set off warning signals in my brain?
I’m now on guard, questioning everyone’s motives.
It’s as if the closer I get to the truth, the more none of this seems to make sense.
“Actually… I’d like to take a walk first,” I tell him, backing away. “I need to clear my head. I’ll call you later.”
“For dinner,” Colton says, leaving the request as nonnegotiable. “Your father would like us at his home. So, we can talk.”
“Yes,” I stammer, heading for the door. “I’ll be there.”
Though I can’t escape the feeling that it didn’t seem like a typical family meal. There is a significance to it that I can’t decipher. To talk about my relationship with Colton? Perhaps he wants to move things along and took it upon himself to approach Father directly.
Or…
The man I heard last night was no figment of my imagination. Father’s own agent was there at the ring, and if he wasn’t following me, then why…
SEVENTEEN
I walk for blocks,but I don’t wind up in front of my apartment in the safe, upscale part of the city. I blame the turmoil of my thoughts for wandering so aimlessly. I can’t stop seeing Daze. His face. Those eyes. I can’t silence his voice, echoing ceaselessly in my skull.
