He smiled.
Her gaze fell to catch it before it disappeared. “If there were someone at the gate—some standard—maybe it would improve the economic conditions of the girls who might get lured into it. It would save lives.”
“Too much money to be lost, and money is always king. Especially on Shadow Rock.”
“Which is why the government should step in and take the reigns.”
He smiled again. “They’re the first ones lining their pockets.”
Veda couldn’t argue with that. “Maybe if you could get Zena to talk, it’ll be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe if she talks, it’ll inspire the others to come forward and talk too…”
He opened his eyes just a touch, squinting at her. “You sound like me. Ten years ago.”
“Maybe the old you was onto something.”
He opened his eyes completely, moving his hand up her thigh just an inch.
They both drew in a deep breath.
“The old me’s dead and gone,” he said softly.
Veda paused on her stitching to hold his eyes. “Gone for good?”
“Seen too much. Learned too much. Buried under a mountain of Patron Silver, piled five years high.” He paused. “Gone for good, Veda.”
“What was he like?”
He drew in a breath through his teeth.
Though Veda understood this was one of the many cues he gave when he was annoyed with her line of questioning, she was also aware that, in his annoyance, he wasn’t paying attention to the pain.
“He was…” He stared at the ceiling, the tips of his fingers pressing into her shapely thigh, his callused skin threatening to slice right through its softness. “Warm. And strong. And… patient. Blood in his veins that didn’t qualify as a controlled substance.”
Veda poked her lips out. “I think you’re all those things now, Linc. Warm enough to invite me here. Strong enough to protect me. Patient when I’m all up in your business. Sober.” They shared a soft smile, and then her voice lowered. “You’re good to me. You’re good to your victims at work. You’re even good to your mother. And as far as I can tell, from the one time I met her, she’s a real hardass.”
He laughed in his chest.
“Don’t laugh,” Veda chided. “I’m almost done. I don’t want you splitting them open.”
“I don’t look anything like her, do I?”
“Like your mom?” Surprised by the question, Veda grinned. “No. It’s like a Wizard of Oz munchkin woman standing next to Lebron James.” She sighed, relieved that she was nearly finished stitching, happy that their conversation had succeeded in keeping him distracted. Even if there were a few fresh shadows still looming in his eyes that she hadn’t meant to put there.
“Yeah, I never did. I never looked like her.” He took a moment. “So that means I look like him.”
Veda snuck a look at him, just long enough to see that he’d disappeared into his own world, eyes forward.
“Sometimes I wonder if…” He waited for her to pause the stitching before moving his gaze to hers. “If every time she looks at me… she sees him.”
Veda’s eyes shrank, feeling her heart splitting in two at what she saw in his gaze.
“And if she does…” His eyes floated off again, as well as his voice, ebbing softer by the moment. “If she looks at me and sees him every time… How could she ever really feel safe? With a son who looks so much like the man that destroyed her?”
Veda’s chest swelled when he met her gaze once more. A million responses flew through her head, but none of them seemed right. Finally, she landed on the truth she knew was one hundred percent real. “You make me feel safe.”
His eyes glowed.
The squeeze of her thigh.
Veda sucked in a small breath. “Really, really safe. And not just today. All the time. Even when you’re spitting fire. Even when you’re swinging at me in the boxing ring.”
He hissed out a laugh.
“Always, Linc. And I have no doubt in my mind she feels the same way. I really hate the idea of you beating yourself down with the idea that she could feel anything otherwise.” Her eyebrows clenched. “Does she even know who he is? Does she remember him?”
He shifted. “I don’t know. I only asked her once. When I was nine. Never again.” He scoffed as he recalled the memory. “She got so upset. I hate seeing her like that.” He breathed deep. “She’ll tell me when she’s ready. If she ever is.” He disappeared into a faraway place once more, eyes somehow vacant and filled to capacity simultaneously.
Something rushed through Veda. “You’re not your father.”
He shot his eyes to her.
She shook her head. “You could never be so weak. So much a coward. Not even if you wanted to.”
His eyes drank in her every word like water. Then, they fell to her lips. His palm drew a heated trail a little farther up her thigh. His breathing came more evenly, more deeply, his chest rising to its highest high and falling slowly to its lowest low as their skin melded together.
He squeezed.
Veda’s eyes fell to his hand, watching his fingers constrict, and licked her lips as her gaze moved to the bullet wound sitting at the deep v on his hips. The waistband of his sweats. The drawstring.
Veda waited for Linc’s eyes to come back to hers, and when they did, she knew what she saw in them. The same shadows, the same wickedness, the same depravity she’d seen in the eyes of the monsters who’d bent her over the white stone rails, still glowing in the distance at the top of the cliff behind him.
She looked down and saw the same tent in his navy pants as she’d seen in theirs.
He showed her his palms again. “I’m a police officer. I would never hurt you. You can trust me.”
Veda blinked back to the present, stunned that she’d managed to devolve into her head. Into memories of the first time she’d looked into Linc’s stormy green eyes, and the first time she’d seen his body react in a way he couldn’t control—in much the way it was reacting right then. Her wild eyes zoomed back up to his stitching, relieved when she saw it was still intact. It was nothing short of a miracle that she hadn’t disfigured him during her trip down memory lane.
Slightly shaken, she tried to go back to work, breathing labored as she lifted her eyes from the mass under his drawstring and up to his, where she saw an honesty in his own gaze that she’d never seen there before. “The old you isn’t dead and gone. You are warm, Linc. You are strong. You are patient.”
He watched her.
Silence.
With a deep breath, Veda continued her stitching, and a moment later, she’d tied the last knot. “Done.”
Sucking in a breath through his flared nostrils, as his eyes fell to his chest, Linc exhaled softly, removing his hand from her thigh so he could reach up and touch the wound.
She slapped his hand before he could. “Don’t. It’ll get infected, and then you’ll really need to go to the hospital.”
He lowered his hand and leaned back on the cushions, angling his large forearm across his lap to conceal what Veda had already seen. He clasped his hands together, squeezing so tightly she worried he was moments from crushing his own bones.
Remnants of the warm weight of his hand lingered on her thigh, making her skin tingle long after he’d pulled his touch away.
Even as she cleaned and bandaged his new sutures, it remained.
It lingered.
14
Several days later, Gage leaned forward on his desk at Shadow Rock Hospital, bringing his ass to the very edge of his leather rolling chair. He played a pen between his fingers, eyes lowered against the morning sun rising outside his window.
“I love that you made me fight so hard for you,” he whispered into his desk phone—into the abyss of Veda’s voicemail—smiling softly as he recalled the first time he’d met her, the first time they’d kissed, and the first time they’d made love. Really made love. Not just mindless screwing. He recalled how hard he�
��d had to work to get her to open up, and realized he didn’t regret a single moment of it. “You made me fight so hard, and I love that because it ensured that I’d never forget, for a single moment, that I had the ultimate prize.” His smile grew even as his voice fell. “I love your penchant for waking me up in the middle of the night, whispering in my ear how badly you need me inside you. I love how you demolish a bag of Blow Pops faster than the speed of light. I love your brilliance. Not just intellectually, but spiritually.” He swallowed heavily. “I love your heart. A heart so beautiful, you were able to forgive me even when I was acting like a damn fool. Veda, I hope that, even though a huge misunderstanding drove me to act like even more a fool, I hope you can still find it in your heart—”
The phone beeped.
Gage cursed under his breath, sick and tired of getting cut off by her voicemail. The timeframe it allotted him to spill his heart out felt shorter everyday. But, regardless, he hung up the phone, upholding the promise he’d made to himself.
To save the rest for tomorrow.
He had enough material to leave a voicemail on her machine for the next ten years. And he wouldn’t hesitate to do just that.
Right on time, his secretary’s voice filled the room through Gage’s intercom.
“Mr. Blackwater, Detective Lincoln Hill is here to see you.”
Gage rolled his eyes and pressed his finger into his phone, activating his intercom as well.
“Thank you, Maria,” Gage said. “Send him in.”
——
Minutes later, Gage adjusted the tie of his suit when it began to feel like it was choking him, all while studying the police warrant Lincoln Hill had just set down in front of him. He felt Linc’s eyes searing into the top of his head from across the desk, where he stood in jeans and a black t-shirt, breathing so heavily Gage worried the hot air might blow the papers clear off his desk. The badge around Linc’s neck flickered against the sunlight beaming into the window across the office, which also cast a soft light against the brown leather recliners in the meeting area.
After examining the warrant thoroughly, Gage tossed it away. It landed on the opposite side of the desk. Linc’s rough fingers came into view as he leaned forward and reclaimed it.
Clicking his pen with a soft roll of his eyes, Gage flipped open his calendar, voice deadpan as he scribbled. “I’m not sure how many times you can turn my hospital inside out before you finally accept that The Chopper isn’t one of my employees but…” He paused to finish what he was writing. “I’ve got the cheek swabs scheduled for two weeks from today. I’ll have my assistant send out a memo alerting the staff a week prior.”
Linc lingered with a look on his face that seemed tailor-made for Gage. The one where his eyebrows seemed permanently glued to the top of his head, his eyes permanently hooded—flat—and lips permanently upturned into a condescending smile.
Gage couldn’t even be annoyed because he could feel himself giving Linc the exact same expression. Even as he became aware of it, he couldn’t fix his face.
Apparently, neither could Linc, who decided the better option would be to turn and leave without another word. Which he did—his eyes appearing to be stuck in a permanent roll as he made his way for the door.
Gage clutched the pen in his hand so tightly he nearly split it, unable to stop himself from calling out the moment Linc had his hand on the door handle. “How is she?”
Freezing in the midst of turning the handle, Linc stared at the door for a long moment, as if contemplating whether or not he was in the mood for this. “Safe.”
“Would’ve been safer with me.”
Linc swiveled on his heel, holding his hands out. “Apparently she feels differently.”
“I’d like to see her.”
“She’s back at work next week.”
“I’d like to see her today.”
“Not my decision.”
Gage’s eyes narrowed away, and then he was leaning forward on his desk once more, the pen falling from his hands so he could dig his nails into the wood. He looked toward the rising sun, now blazing a shard of light straight at him. Gage looked into it, letting it burn his irises, hoping that, somehow, he could get a little of that light inside of him to drown out the shadows that had been collecting over the weeks.
“My family…” Gage paused, covering his mouth with his hand before shooting his eyes back to Linc. “They said they were out to dinner the night Veda was pushed. Said they had nothing to do with it.”
“I know that. Their alibi cleared, and they’re no longer suspects.”
Gage’s teeth ground. “I don’t believe them.”
Linc’s brows jumped, and he faced Gage once more.
Gage’s nostrils flared as he cut his eyes at him. “And I don’t think you do either.”
Unable to refuse the invitation he’d just received, Linc jumped in headfirst. “Your family is a herd of professional liars with enough money to pay the right people to keep those lies under wraps. They’re no different from Al Capone or Bernie Madoff. They belong in prison. Of course I don’t fucking believe them, but their lies and their money have sent me crashing into a brick wall, head first, the way they always do. Are we done?”
“What if I could help you bring their lies to the forefront?” Gage’s voice rose when Linc put his hand back on the door handle.
Linc winced, and then it was him studying Gage from the corner of his eyes, squinting.
Gage licked his lips. “I don’t believe they pushed Veda. I don’t believe they killed my child. But I do believe that they know who did. And I’m done—” His voice broke, and he closed his eyes, taking a moment before looking back up at Linc, feeling the heat staining his eyes. “I’m done.”
Linc appeared unmoved, but Gage could see it was a concentrated effort on his part, mostly due to the lump that moved down his throat. “What are you saying, Blackwater?”
“For years, you’ve been after my father. Accusing him of having something to do with what happened to your wife. Insinuating there was foul play involved because she went missing on one of our cruise ships…” Gage saw the facade Linc had been fighting to withhold crumble in an instant, and that he was no longer able to hide his true emotion, his Achilles’ heel, which everyone in the town had learned long ago could only be awakened by thoughts of his missing wife. “What if… What if I could convince my father to give me a position at the cruise line… and use it to help you get information?”
“I don’t trust you.” Linc cringed, the mere mention of his missing wife leaving no more room for pleasantries. “And I never will.”
“I’m offering you an opportunity you’ll never have otherwise. An opportunity to have eyes and ears on the inside. To get your hands on the kind of information you’d never see without a warrant. I’m sure you’ve noticed how difficult it is to get your hands on those around these parts. I could write out a list right now of all the judges and DA’s my father has in his back pocket, and that would only be scratching the surface. You can’t begin to imagine the amount of people he owns on this island. The people who would drop dead before they ever talked. People you’ll never think to look at without my help.” Gage paused when it became clear that Linc needed to hear it plain. “I’m offering to be your confidential informant.”
“Why?”
Gage’s head fell, and he took a moment, shaking his head slowly. “I was able to turn a blind eye when they were screwing with other people’s lives. I’m not proud of it… but I was able to delude myself into believing they were good people at the core. Good people who were working in the best interest of the family in the only way they knew how. But nobody…” Gage clenched his hands into fists. “Nobody hurts her and walks away without repercussion—not even them.”
“You’ve been after a spot on the cruise line for years, and your father still hasn’t given it up. What makes you think he’ll have a change of heart now?”
Gage swallowed. “When you questioned me about V
eda—when you made me a suspect, I immediately went to my parents’ place and demanded to know what happened. They denied any involvement. I pretended to believe their bullshit, and then I told them you’d be there to question them next. I told them to have their best attorneys ready because you’d be arriving with guns blazing. I told them every question you asked me at the hospital.”
“So you conspired against the police department by giving your parents a heads up. Is that supposed to make me trust you?”
“You don’t understand. I gave them the heads up to gain their trust and prove my loyalty. If they believed I held even an ounce of suspicion or resentment towards them, a job at the cruise line really would be out of the question forever. But, as of now, they believe that I blame Veda for what happened. That I’ll never forgive her for destroying our engagement, keeping her pregnancy from me, and losing our child when I could’ve been there to protect her. They believe that I despise her… and it has to be that way if I’m ever going to convince them to hire me onto the cruise line. I’ll convince them that I’ll never forgive her, get them to hire me, and work as your confidential informant from the inside.”
Linc chuckled, his eyes moving toward the shard of sunlight blasting through the window. He stared right into it as well, making Gage wonder if he wasn’t doing the exact same thing he’d been trying to do a moment ago. Get some of that light into the deepest, darkest caverns of his soul.
Gage could almost see the moment Linc realized the light wouldn’t reach his deepest depths. The moment he realized that nothing would. Not until he found a way to seal up the hole that had been blasted open inside him five years earlier.
“Why should I believe you’re not playing me the same way you’re talking about playing them?” Linc’s eyes blazed back toward Gage, a sharper green under the heat of the sun. “Why should I believe you’d do this for me?”
It was Gage’s turned to chuckle. “I’m not doing it for you.”
Pulse (Revenge Book 5) Page 13