“Moms are weird.” She smiled when she saw the look on my face. “Just stop worrying about it so much. As a parent, it’s basically in the job description that you have to damage me to some degree. Just like it’s my duty to turn you prematurely gray.”
I tapped at my roots where strands of gray were popping through, along with my natural brown. No more dye jobs meant facing the reality of getting older. “Glad we had this talk.”
“Me too,” she replied. “Oh, and by the way? He’s wrong.”
“Who’s wrong?”
“Grandpa.” Andee’s head dropped to my chest again. “You’re not a disappointment.”
I felt myself melt into her. The words I’d needed—craved—hearing from my father, I’d finally heard. From the lips of my child.
“I love you,” I whispered.
A large set of arms encircled both of us from behind. Noah had exchanged his black outfit for an old T-shirt and pajama pants. Hair combed back the way he normally wore it, expression tamed, the feral blaze in his eyes gone. He was the same man I’d married, though the strength in his arms came with a new understanding. The hardened planes of his body had a different translation.
He was the same. And yet different.
Letting my head fall against him, I breathed, “You too.”
Twenty-Six
Instead of the events of last night feeling like a dream the next morning, they hit me with a white-hot blow of reality. There was no doubt who my husband was, only doubt for how I should proceed with this knowledge.
After crawling into bed sometime around two, I must have slept through my alarm that went off at five, and the back-up one scheduled for five thirty. With Andee down the hall and my father under the same roof, I didn’t dare bring up the topic Noah and I had been in the middle of when we’d been interrupted. I wasn’t sure what to say anyway.
When I’d finally closed my eyes to fall asleep, the last image I remembered was Noah beside me in bed, staring at the ceiling, expression unreadable, hands folded across his chest. I guessed he had as much to consider as I did with news of the “Huntsman” being captured.
My phone hadn’t stopped pinging with messages since seven thirty, but I didn’t dare break my forward momentum by pausing to reply to them. I wouldn’t make it into the office until lunchtime if I did.
Whisking through the living room to retrieve my purse, I glanced at the couch. The throw pillow was still lying on its side, the blanket in a crumbled heap on the floor, a couple of dents in the sofa cushions to lay claim to my father’s presence. He must have called himself a car sometime late last night or early this morning, once the booze burned off. I figured when I heard from him next, he would pretend last night had never happened.
Finding my purse on the end table where I’d set it last night, I discovered an intricate paper flower balanced on it. White in color, the blossom held a familiar shape. Origami. Another skill I wasn’t aware of in my husband’s possession. This one came with far fewer ramifications than the skill he’d confessed to last night.
Tucking the delicate paper flower into my purse, I rushed out of the house, eager to get to work and catch up on the latest information circling the arrest in California.
The office was a rare quiet when I stepped off the elevator. The receptionist never looked away from her computer to say hello, eyes transfixed on whatever she had pulled up on her screen. Passing offices, I found them lit up, the desks vacant. Not even the usual crowd congregated around the coffee pot in the break room.
About to round into my office, I caught sight of Connor buttressed against the doorway leading into the large conference room at the end of the hall. When he caught my attention, he waved me over, tapping his watch.
“Where in the world have you been?” he said once I was in earshot. “It’s pandemonium around here and you mosey in a few minutes after nine?”
“Pandemonium?” I echoed, discovering the reason Connor was stationed in the doorway—the conference room was packed with most of the office, their eyes unblinking and mouths sealed. I’d never known this many attorneys were capable of so much silence.
“They nailed the Huntsman sometime late last night, and the country’s been rolling to a boil ever since the news broke.” Connor’s attention diverted toward the large television at the front of the room where a news report was streaming across the screen.
“What are you talking about?” My eyes narrowed on the television as I watched short clips taken from across the country, in big cities like New York and San Francisco, to smaller cities like Eugene and Montpellier. Protesting in the streets, rioting in some places, the reels gave the luster of war-torn countries on the other side of the world, not here in the US.
“People want him released. The Huntsman.” Connor shook his head at the television when a scene portrayed a handful of people dressed in head-to-toe black and throwing Molotov cocktails at a courthouse in Orlando. “Herds of them are marching on city buildings and demanding all charges against him be dropped.”
“He killed thirty-three people,” I said absently.
Connor leaned in closer. “More people than not consider his actions more of a public service than a first-degree felony.”
I gave him a pointed stare. “More people than not?”
“I plead the fifth, Counselor.” He flashed his pearly whites at me. “Nice try.”
While Connor went back to watching the news, I pried my phone from my purse and sorted through my messages, running triage on matter of importance. Dad, Noah, my boss, clients, task force members, Andee’s school . . . every factor in my life was in need of attention and I wasn’t sure I could adequately follow up on anything until I’d made a decision about what to do with the knowledge Noah had bestowed upon me.
All the rest was white noise until I knew how to move forward, or past, this newfound knowledge.
“God, the government’s going to declare martial law if this keeps up.” Connor whistled faintly.
“Who’s the guy?” I asked, still scrolling through my missed messages.
“The Huntsman?”
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
“I would have thought with your dad’s contacts and your role in his super crime fighting task force, you would have had insider info before it broke publicly.” Connor nudged me when I stayed quiet.
“Crime fighters who spent more time chasing their tails than generating any real leads,” I muttered. “Let’s just say my dad reached a new level of pissed last night when he discovered some rookie cop who was in diapers when Dad announced his retirement collared the guy he’d invested six figures of time and money into finding.”
Connor covered his mouth. “How many veins do you think he burst?”
“In which part of his body?” I replied with a straight face. “Because I counted at least three in his forehead alone.”
Connor grinned as he pulled up something on his phone and handed it to me. “The guy’s name is Samuel Sullivan. Former Army Ranger, current bounty hunter, thirty-four years old. Six feet-five inches, two hundred and thirty pounds of solid muscle from the look of him. Single, never married, no kids, lives in Los Angeles by himself.” Connor took a breath while I stared at the former army photo of the man who’d taken the fall for my husband. “Pretty much the recipe to create a natural-born killer.”