“Your processor couldn’t handle the data, I assume. If your computer isn’t built for this type of activity, it’s common for it to lose connection.” She sounded like a college professor. “I can reboot and try again?” she offered.
“If you’re up for it,” I said. “Would you like a refill?” I stood from the chair, my empty wine glass in hand.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Thank you. I’ll get changed while the computer starts back up.”
There was an abrupt chill throughout the house as I made my way to the kitchen. If this Deep Web Deep Throat knows me, it’s because he or she knows about my involvement with the Lathan Collins case. That could be either good or bad. Usually thoughts of Lathan resulted in an instant queasiness followed by a distinctly bad mood. I still had that lightheaded feeling from the first glass of wine, so maybe that’s why I was more relaxed than usual while thoughts of Lathan lurked in my mind. Hopefully, with a second glass, I would be able to maintain a tranquil demeanor when it came to talking about him.
I set the glasses on the granite counter and pulled the cork from the wine bottle. It opened with a soft pop, and I filled each glass halfway. As it poured from the bottle, the rich fermented scent lingered around my nose.
I picked up the two glasses and walked from the kitchen into the living room. As I passed the front door, a sudden ping came from the doorknob, as if someone was trying to pick the lock. My gun was in the office with Cait. Unless I was going to offer the intruder a glass of wine, I was rather defenseless.
“Cait?” I called, unsure if I was loud enough for her to hear me. Before I could call for her to bring my gun, the front door slowly opened.
From the porch light, a thin shadow stretched onto the living room floor as the door opened wider. I stiffened my posture and waited to see the intruder’s face before kicking the door against him. Or I could temporarily blind him if I threw wine in his eyes. Just as I was about to throw my body against the door, I recognized the figure walking in.
“Abi?” I stood in the living room. I clutched the wine glasses in my hands as I stared at her in disbelief. “You’re home?”
“Yeah,” she quickly confirmed. “I texted you this morning.” Between oversleeping this morning and getting a crash course in the Deep Web, I had completely forgotten to answer her text. “I see why you didn’t have time to reply.” Her tone turned cold as she stared past me.
I didn’t have to turn around to know who she was looking at. Cait must have heard my call for her and walked into the room before I had a chance to tell Abi that someone was here. Abi had never been the jealous type, so I didn’t understand why she would have a problem with my co-worker being here—until I remembered I was holding two wine glasses.
I looked back at Cait as Abi continued to stare her down. Cait wasn’t wearing a black blazer, black slacks, and white button-up shirt. Instead, Cait looked rather comfortable in a pair of my gray sweatpants and a white tank top. To anyone other than me, it looked as if Cait was my date for the evening, not my colleague.
“Is everything okay?” Cait asked at a cautionary speed. Abi’s death stare was alive with fury.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Abi, this is Cait, my partner on that case I told you about,” I casually reminded her. But I could have said Cait was my cousin, and it still wouldn’t have mattered. Abi’s eyes narrowed, as if she’d caught us in bed together. Her chest rose with each breath. Even if Abi did believe Cait was my co-worker, it was obvious by her glare that she had a feeling something else was going on between us. I had never invited a case partner to the house, and definitely not one who traipsed around the living room in my clothes at ten o’clock at night. “Cait, this is Abi….” I paused, the wine glasses clattering together as my hands subtly trembled. I didn’t want to give Abi a formal title—because, until now, Cait had no idea Abi existed.
“Her girlfriend.” Abi stamped the title on her forehead.
“Girlfriend?” Cait questioned as she turned her gaze to me.
Every moment Cait and I had spent together was an opportunity for me to tell her about Abi. I didn’t have to go into specifics, but why didn’t I ever mention that I did, in fact, have a girlfriend? Maybe I didn’t think they would ever meet. Maybe I didn’t want Cait to know that I was with someone—although the term “with” wasn’t exactly accurate, either.
Cait and I had walked straight into the office when we got to the house. Any and all photos of Abi and I were on the refrigerator or in the bedroom. Cait hadn’t walked into either of those rooms. The only way Cait would have known about Abi is if I’d told her. And I had accidentally on purpose kept that piece of information to myself.
“Do you mind giving us a minute?” I asked Cait as I set the wine glasses on the entertainment center behind me.
“Sure,” she said with temporary complacency in her tone. She looked at Abi and back to me. There was no doubt Cait, too, was interested in an explanation.
“Don’t bother,” Abi said. “I’m leaving.”
Before I could object, Abi tightened her grip around her car keys and walked out the front door. My legs had somehow turned into cement blocks, and I was too paralyzed to go after her. I turned to Cait, a plea in my eyes for her to stop this. Couldn’t she use her two working legs to go after Abi?
“You have a girlfriend?” Cait asked accusingly once Abi was outside. “Nice, Lena. Thanks for telling me.”
“It’s not that simple,” I tried to defend, though I knew it pointless. Cait had the right to know I was seeing someone. Whether anything was going to happen with her or not, Abi was a huge part of my life. And Cait was becoming a daily occurrence. The two were bound to collide. I was leading a double life, and keeping that part of my life from Cait was an insult to the trust we needed in order to work together. “Wait here,” I said. “I have to talk to her.” My legs unlocked from their hardened position.
“She’s already gone,” Cait said. “Let her go.”
It was a suggestion that I very much expected Cait to say. She was notorious for letting people go. She let me go; she let every girlfriend after me go. She had let go of so many people in her life that there was no one left for her to hold onto. As much as I envied Cait’s autonomy, I didn’t want that to be me. I wanted Abi to know I still cared about her.
“I’m not like you,” I snapped. “I can’t just walk away from people I care about.”
The front door let out a high-pitched squeak as I pulled it open. Abi was already at her car in the driveway by the time I stepped off the porch. Gray clouds formed around the edges of the moon, which dangled in the sky like a coin in a slot machine. Its glow lit the front yard as I jogged to catch up with Abi before she could make her escape.
“There’s nothing going on with Cait,” I said as I tried to catch her attention. “She’s my partner. That’s it.”
“Why should I believe you?” Abi whipped around, her jaw tight as she glared at me.
“It’s the truth.” I stopped walking. At least ten feet was between us.
“What do you know about truth, Lena?” Abi shot back.
I didn’t know what she was referring to. I had never lied to her about anything. “What truth haven’t I told you?”
“I know you’re seeing a psychologist.” She delivered that fatal blow, and my heart went as still as the earth felt. All this time I thought I’d covered my tracks in an attempt to convince myself that my omission wasn’t a full-blown lie. All this time, she must’ve known where I was going and who I was seeing, but still she didn’t say a word. A sudden shift in betrayal switched between us, and I understood why she questioned my honesty. But she had lied to me just as much as I had lied to her. “You can talk to a stranger, but you can’t talk to me?” she asked.
“It’s not the same.” I searched for the words to answer her question. A thick coat of tears grew in the back of my throat. It traveled up my sinuses and landed against the back of my eyes, like a dam trapping a flood of water. I swallowe
d the tears and looked at the ground. I broke from the staring contest with Abi. As much as I wanted to tell her why I kept my appointments a secret, I just couldn’t. Each time I took a breath to try to explain my actions, the words caught in my mouth like hair in a thorn bush. “I can’t do this right now,” I sighed.
“When can you?” she shouted. This was the first time I had ever heard her raise her voice—at least to me. “It’s always on your time, isn’t it?” She brought her tone down as if she knew she needed to compose herself as to not alarm the neighbors.
Why didn’t she understand that I couldn’t do this? Not now, not here. My body trembled as I held my breath, a last-ditch effort to hold everything bottled inside me. All the pressure inside my body was coming to a boiling point. I wanted to scream and shout, kick and curse. I wanted to run away from her—and this conversation. I just needed her to shut up and let me walk away before I burst.
“Why do you keep pushing me away?” she pleaded.
“Because!” The emotional volcano trapped inside me finally erupted. “Because you’re a reminder of what my life could have been—should have been.”
If it wasn’t for Lathan and the twisted torment I went through to beat him, I would still be normal; we would still be normal. I would be able to sleep through the night. I would feel safe and secure. I would be happy. But all of that was gone. Simplicity had turned into complication with a single punch from Lathan Collins’ fist.
“We can still have that.” Her plea sung through the growing space between us.
“No, we can’t.” I lowered my head as the truth carved its way out of me. “I’m broken.”
“We, Lena. We’re broken—because you destroyed us. With your bare hands, you destroyed everything by doing nothing.” She paused, as if she was waiting for me to defend my actions, but I couldn’t. She was right. Lathan may be dead, but the monster inside him was still alive, destroying my life and everyone who got close to me. “We could have left West Joseph, but you chose to stay. You did this. You broke us.” Abi took a step back and ran her fingers through her hair. She stared at her car as tears flooded from her eyes. I knew she wanted to leave, but her vision was too blurry. She sniffed back the tears that hadn’t yet fallen as she gradually composed herself. “I almost wish there was something going on between you two.” She gestured toward the house where Cait was still inside. Abi’s cold stare pierced my eyes. “It would give me a solid reason to hate you.”
“I don’t want you to hate me,” I said as I kept my distance. I wanted to hug her and tell her how sorry I was for everything. But I knew she wouldn’t believe me.
“Then why does it feel like you do?” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “I love you, Lena. I really do.”
“I know.”
“But I’m tired.” She sighed. “I’m just so tired of feeling like I’m never going to be enough. Maybe the truth is I never will be.”
“Abi, don’t. That’s not true. It’s not about being enough.”
“Yes! It is. I’m not enough for you… and you’re not enough for me either. I’m tired of loving this relationship for the both of us,” she said, then paused as she regained her composure. I more than knew the words that were coming next. I could feel them being imprinted onto my heart, the way initials are carved into a tree trunk with a pocket knife. “I can’t do this anymore.”
And there it was. She had finally reached her breaking point. She had endured as much of my neglect as she possibly could.
“Abi….”
“I assume you’re going to work tomorrow?” she asked as she looked down at the car keys in her hand.
“Yes.”
“I’ll get my stuff then.”
She walked to the driver’s side of her car and opened the door.
“You don’t have to leave. Where will you go?” I took a few steps toward her car. Abi looked up from the ground, and her eyes locked onto me as if she was in attack mode.
“Bye, Lena.” She sat in the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind her. She started the car, and the engine roared like a lion defending its young. She peeled out of the driveway, loose gravel spitting from under the tires.
As she drove down the street, I stood in the front yard and watched her leave until the car’s taillights were no bigger than the stars above me.
Abi was gone.
For months, I had felt this coming. At times, I had even wished for it. Not because I didn’t want her in my life, but because I didn’t want to be in her life. She deserved better than I could ever give her.
My heart slumped to the bottom of my chest as I stood in the front yard. I looked into the night sky and blinked back the tears as I tried to make sense of what I was feeling.
My heart was caught in a vicious game of tug of war. “Who I am” was the home team, and “who I’m supposed to be” was the visiting team. No matter who won, the result would be the same: somewhere, lying torn and beaten inside my chest, would be my heart, useless to anyone—including myself.
CHAPTER | TWELVE
“I WAS SURPRISED to see you were gone when I woke up this morning,” I said when I saw Cait in the parking garage.
We hadn’t said anything to each other last night after Abi had left. Cait had already made her way to my home office by the time I’d walked inside, so I’d grabbed what was left of the wine and brought it to my bedroom. I hadn’t been in a position to drive Cait back to her hotel. So hiding in my bedroom, wine my only companion, had seemed like the most practical solution at the time. My throbbing headache this morning told a different story.
“It didn’t feel right to stay. I took a cab back to my hotel last night,” she said as we walked toward the station together.
“You could have said something.” The fact that we were in the parking garage didn’t deter me from leaving my sunglasses on. I needed as much shield from Cait’s disappointed glare as I could get.
“I sent a text message when I left. I didn’t think you wanted to be bothered.”
“I didn’t. But still.” I gave up trying to receive an apology. I knew she would never give one. “You sent that text at one o’clock in the morning. Is that when you left?”
“Yes.”
“Were you in the forums all that time?”
“Yes,” she said and then paused. “We’ll talk about it upstairs—in your office.”
Cait held the stairwell door open as I walked through it. It was the same stairwell where I’d sought refuge when the news crew bombarded me. Cait was the one who’d led me to safety that day. If she hadn’t have intervened, I would have undoubtedly been charged with assault. Even if that reporter would’ve deserved it.
Since that day, all news crews had been banned from coming onto the station’s property without prior approval. Once I was a hundred feet from the station’s front door, however, I was fair game.
I stepped inside the stairwell with Cait close behind me. Once the door closed and we were shielded from potential eavesdroppers, Cait placed her hand around my elbow and gently pulled me back.
“We need to talk about last night,” she said when I turned to look at her. She let her hand fall from my arm.
“I know.” I sighed. It was a conversation I’d hoped she would forget about. “I should have told you about Abi. I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you? I thought we trusted each other,” she said, referring to the type of unconditional trust partners are supposed to have with one another. In order for her to trust me with her life, she had to believe I had her best intentions in mind. I had to be open and honest with everything in my life—there are no secrets between partners. Once secrets come into play, trust starts to fade. And only doubt can fill that void.
“We do—I do,” I stammered. “Everything… is just really… complicated.”
“Why are you so closed off to me?” she asked, a subtle plea glistening in her eyes.
“It’s not just you,” I defended. “It’s everyone.” I knew she had take
n it as an insult, even though I hadn’t meant it that way.
Cait took my unintentional right hook with grace. She lowered her head in a defensive nod and then locked eyes with me. “What happened to you, Lena? You were never like this.” Cait knew what had happened with Lathan Collins, but she didn’t know exactly what I went through. She didn’t know about the nightmares or the panic attacks. She didn’t know there was a constant well of tears behind my eyes so tall it hurt to blink.
As I debated how to express to Cait why I had changed, the door behind us opened. Two uniformed officers stepped inside and walked up the stairs. Cait followed the officer’s pace with her eyes and then turned back to me. “Maybe another time,” she said. She despondently smiled and walked up the stairs.
She was five steps ahead of me the entire way to my department’s floor. When we reached the door, she held it open, silence staining her lips. I walked past her and took a deep breath before I walked through the door. It was as if I was a performer, taking that last breath of confidence before running onto the stage. Unbeknownst to my co-workers, they had become the audience for whom I was performing. It was easy to fool them into believing I was the same person I’d always been. Cait, however, was different. The more time we spent together, the harder it was to maintain the act—and she’d caught on to my façade.
Once inside my office, I let out a low sigh. My office had become backstage, past the curtain, and out of the audience’s sight. I was able to regroup here, to relax and regain my strength for the next performance. Cait closed the door and sat in the chair opposite of the desk. I took that as my cue to take a seat.
“Your name,” Cait said, “is in the forums.” She sounded as if she’d just told me my phone number had been scribbled on a bathroom stall.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Before we get to that, there’s more.” Her tone sang of bad news. “I found an entire forum dedicated to Lathan Collins.” She paused, and I took a deep breath and held it. I wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but I knew it wasn’t going to be good. If forums really are like chat rooms, then that meant people were chatting about Lathan Collins.
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