Her animated neural pathways have not affected her stubbornness.
Her hair is one wild tangle. She’s still wearing my shirt. I have her scent embedded in my skin. The primal urge to bend her over my sofa and make her come until she admits her feelings rocks through me with crazed need.
I abandon the desk and storm toward her, every bruise and injury on my body rebelling against the movement. I reach her before she’s able to mount a defense and scoop her into my arms.
“Let me go—”
“We’ve already established that’s not happening.” I carry her into my bedroom and drop her on the bed.
She grunts from the impact as she rises up on her elbows to send me a lethal glare. “I’m not your captive anymore.”
“Would be safer for you if you were.” I haven’t completely ruled out locking Blakely up until the matter is handled. She wouldn’t despise me more than she already does.
Although the loathing in her drained eyes states otherwise.
“Sleep on the floor,” she says.
When she gives in to her weariness and lies back on the pillow, I remove her boots and toss them beside the bed. Then I yank the covers down from beneath her and gently draw them up over her body.
As I tuck the blanket around her shoulders, she watches me closely, a curious draw to her shadowed features.
I’ve touched every inch of her body. I’ve worshiped her, memorized her. I’ve reveled in the feel of her as she came undone in my arms, and yet this delicate moment here is the closest I’ve ever been to her.
I can sense her guard lowering. She doesn’t know how to shelter that fragile vulnerability yet, especially when she’s exhausted and emotionally spent.
“There’s nothing to fear.” I chance smoothing the hair away from her forehead, and she lets me. “We’re a force together. Your skills and my—”
“Psychosis?”
I choke off a laugh. “I prefer nefarious genius.” I kneel next to the bed, becoming level with her. “They won’t get near us. They can’t.”
After a weighted beat where I suppress the urgent desire to kiss her, I stand and start to move away. She reaches for my hand. Her fingers are light on my palm, but it’s enough to stop me. I follow the connection up to meet her eyes.
“What did Grayson say to you?”
Stalled, I watch the reflected lights from the street play across the wall. Her vulnerability could be a manipulation tactic, a ploy to lower my defenses. Even so, I have to give in to her. We’ll never reach our aligned destination if one of us doesn’t yield to the other.
I walk to the window on the other side of the bed and close the blinds to shut out the city lights. Then I reach behind my head and tug off my shirt. I drop the ruined fabric to the hardwood before I slip into bed beside her.
I give her what she asks and openly recount my interaction with Grayson, even admitting to where he approached me. She knows I’ve been inside her loft; she’s figured it out by now.
The groove between her eyebrows caves as deep as her thoughts. “I was right. They want us dead.”
I lie facing her, my head propped painfully on my burned and bruised fist. “Logically, yes. Use us to remove any correlation to the victims, then remove all traces of me, the only link to my sister.” Mary is the threat tying Grayson to the chain of events. Although the MO is different, authorities would have no issue drawing a parallel to The Angel of Maine for my crimes.
“And there can’t be any witnesses,” she says, piecing together her own demise as part of the equation.
“Letting either of us live would sabotage the carefully orchestrated vanishing act Grayson performed,” I say. “He won’t allow that to happen.” Also, I believe he fears what such an exposure will uncover about his psychologist’s involvement.
“But there’s another variable I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t consider, one the fiend himself was pleased to point out.” I hedge closer to her, the sheet an annoying obstruction between us. “Brewster.”
She gently shakes her head against the pillow. “I don’t understand.”
“The same software we used to spy on Brewster during the Ericson revenge job, Brewster can use to trace and find you. He may not be that tech savvy himself, but he has enough money and connections to find someone who is.” I rest my hand on her arm, gliding my thumb under the shirt cuff to ground a connection. “Brewster is a danger to you.”
Her skin pebbles with gooseflesh, and I try to rub the chill away.
“Why would—?” As soon as she starts to voice the thought, she realizes the implication.
“Money,” I answer simply.
She wipes a hand down her face. “I should’ve realized. I would’ve realized it…before.”
I draw my hand away. I could reassure her that her emotions will balance out, that she won’t always be so aware of or distracted by them. But I let the silence build, fuming the bedroom like steam in the shower.
“I could hack Ericson’s accounts,” she says, thinking aloud. “Then I could transfer Brewster’s money to an anonymous source, provide logins for him. If all he wants is his money, I can make that happen.”
“He’s being looked at too closely in connection to Ericson’s murder,” I tell her. “Any transactions will be traced. It’s too risky.”
“I plan to turn myself in anyway,” she says, staring at the ceiling. “It would just hasten the process.”
Her confession doesn’t distress me as much as the prospect once did. I watched Blakely pass a police precinct every day on her way to the martial arts studio. She’d pause in front of the building and stare at the door, and I knew what she was contemplating.
At first, I’d hover around a corner, waiting to intervene if she took a step toward that door. But as the weeks wore on, I rationalized this was only her process to alleviate the guilt. As long as she tells herself this is her course, then she can postpone as long as necessary.
We all lie to ourselves. Most lies are done for self-preservation. Our egos too fragile to view our insignificance within the universe candidly. Some lies are dangerous, when they delve into delusion to negatively impact others.
No matter what she needs to make herself believe, I will never let Blakely serve time for someone so vile and irrelevant as Ericson Daverns.
Taking into account her stubbornness, I don’t reveal this yet. Instead, I want her reasoning to further the analysis. “What has stopped you?” I ask.
She rolls onto her side. Her look is molten on my skin. “I can’t go to prison like this, Alex. I’ll either go crazy, be medicated out of my mind…or I’ll remove myself permanently. That’s the only control I’ll have.”
The sounds of the city outside the window become a muted buzz of static as the air thickens with a tense charge. Blakely’s threat is delivered with conviction, establishing a fear I wasn’t aware existed.
“You have all the power,” I tell her, handing over my control that easily. “You’ve always had it.”
She maintains eye contact. “Tell me what you’re planning.”
I don’t hesitate. “Frame Brewster for Ericson’s murder. Then he’ll go down for the rest of the kills.” Which is why I linked the methodology to Ericson’s murder in the first place. I didn’t have a target scapegoat in mind at the time, but I knew I needed one for Blakely in the event she tried to confess to the murder.