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Tapping the green button just before the call could be sent to voicemail, I shakily lifted the phone to my ear. My body suddenly feeling so heavy and weak as I thought of the man on the other end of the call.
The man I’d thought was safe. The man I’d gone to multiple times each week, begging him to help, hoping he’d have some lead on Mike’s murder. The man I’d trusted.
“Detective,” I managed to say around the barbed knot of betrayal and loathing in my throat.
“Ms. Bennett,” Detective Higgins began smoothly, “did you get the message?”
“Eerie,” I whispered as I looked down the hall Diggs had gone, my soul stretching and reaching in that direction, begging me to go to him.
But I knew what his reaction would be. I knew Dare was trying to keep him focused.
And I knew what Dare needed me to do.
“What was that?” the detective asked as if he hadn’t heard me.
“Your timing has always been uncanny,” I explained as I forced myself to turn away from the hall and take a reluctant step toward the front door. Then another and another. “Whenever I was spiraling over what happened last year, whenever I was sure I saw someone in a mask, you would suddenly be there. And now, after nothing for months, when I’m caught in the middle of what I am...here you are.”
Higgins cleared his throat in that way of his. The following sigh so conceding it may as well have been an acknowledgment of every suspicion dancing through my thoughts.
“Where are you, Ms. Bennett?” he asked gruffly, earlier pretenses gone. “Exactly. Right now.”
“Exactly how close were you watching me in Richmond?” I asked as I reached the door, my fingers hesitating over the handle. When he didn’t respond, I admitted, “I feel like an idiot for not seeing it before tonight. But no one could’ve had your timing unless they were there with me, which means you were with me. Somehow. So, did you just bug me, or were there cameras too?”
“That’s illegal, Ms. Bennett,” he answered, but the hushed amusement of his tone had chills skating across my skin.
“Is it because I wouldn’t let it go?” I asked over the fear shaking my words and clinging to my spine. “Because I was trying so hard to get them caught? Get you caught?”
A breath that was laced with mischief sounded in my ear. “I was never there. You were going to tell me where you are.”
“I wasn’t because you already seem to know where I am. And whether you were there that night or not, you’re one of them,” I said undoubtedly. “You couldn’t find anything for a year, yet the day you suddenly catch a break—one that requires me going back to Richmond—just happens to be the same day one of Mike’s killers decides he wants me. With him. In Richmond.”
Heavy silence fell over the line for a moment before he said, “Timing’s funny that way, Ms. Bennett. Now, about getting you to Richmond—”
“Tell Lachlan Keane he needs to let Lily Borello go and come get me himself.”
My phone slipped from my hand, and a scream of pure terror ripped from my lungs as I was hauled away from the door with a hand clamped firmly over my mouth. But just as I started thrashing against the person pulling me farther from the door, a gruff, eternally cross voice sounded in my ear, hushed and admonishing.
“They’re here.”
My stare fell to the blood-stained arm guiding me, my head bobbing in understanding.
“Stay hidden,” Kieran said before disappearing from behind me.
Just as I stumbled back a step at the unexpected withdrawal, my body lit up—burning and aching and crying in relief—when another man slipped into place. One I knew, even though the gear he wore changed the way my body fit against his.
My soul knew his. At any time and in any situation, I would know him.
One of Diggs’ strong hands wove around to press flat against my chest, keeping me close to him for the span of two achingly beautiful beats of my heart...
And then he spoke.
Voice unforgiving and pained. Determined and betrayed.
“You run, Tree, then you run away from my world. You don’t run to him.”
“Diggs.” His name tore from the depths of my soul when he released me but was little more than a wounded breath as I turned to watch him stalk across the room. Catching up with his brother, Kieran, Jessica, and her twin.
“He’ll understand.”
