by M. S. Parker
That made the temptation to stay even worse.
But we couldn’t. We had to go. Soon. Very soon.
My thoughts were interrupted by a phone ringing. Not my phone or the hotel’s phone. Clay’s phone. Even from where I was sitting, I could see it was Ray Matthews.
I wasn’t the sort of person who snooped, but I couldn’t wait for Clay to get out of the shower and call Agent Matthews back. Not when he could know something that could help me find my sister.
Needing no more justification for my actions, I answered the phone, “Agent Matthews?”
There was a pause, and then a man’s voice came over the line. “Yes. Is this Tess Gardener?”
“Yes. Clay’s in the shower, but I figured it’d be more practical for me to answer the phone than wait for him to call you back.”
Even as I said it, I knew Clay wouldn’t be happy with what I’d just revealed to his partner. Just because Agent Matthews knew my name didn’t mean that Clay had told him the two of us were sleeping together, though I supposed the fact that I’d answered Clay’s phone would’ve given Agent Matthews a clue.
Another pause as he digested the information I’d given.
“I looked into the calls to and from your sister’s phone since last night,” Ray said. “Clay gave me her number, as well as numbers from you, him, and someone named Sylvia. I found a couple numbers that weren’t one of those three, all local, but none during the timeframe Clay gave me. None since then either. I did a number search on the unknown ones, and they were to restaurants, hotels, that sort of thing. Not a single personal number.”
I closed my eyes, trying not to let the disappointment crush me. “Dammit.”
“Sorry.”
He sounded uncomfortable but genuinely apologetic.
“It’s not your fault,” I said with a sigh. “My sister’s the one who took off. Since there’s no calls today, that means either Sylvia is lying or…”
“Your sister has another phone.”
“Dammit!” Immediately, I felt bad. “Sorry. I’m not annoyed at you.”
“I get it. I have a sister.”
In spite of myself, I felt the corner of my mouth tip up. I’d been wrong to suspect Ray was hiding things from us. I really needed to work on my trust issues. “I really appreciate you helping us out.”
“Glad to do it,” Ray said. “Especially since I’m the one who got Clay involved in this mess in the first place.”
“Yeah, but I’m glad you did. Otherwise, I would’ve been down here by myself when the shit hit the fan.”
“If there’s anything else I can do, let me know.”
“I will. Thanks again, Agent Matthews.”
“Call me Ray, kid. Looking forward to meeting you.”
The call ended, leaving me staring at the phone and wondering what he’d meant by that last comment. Had Clay said something to his partner about me coming to Colorado? Had he meant a visit, or something else? Maybe he planned on looking me up if he was ever in New York. Or maybe Clay had given more thought to the future than I had.
I pushed the thought aside. The only future I needed to worry about was the immediate one where we didn’t have any leads to follow. Clay had said he’d called a few contacts, so we did still have a chance of hearing back from them, but I knew that Ray finding that number had been our best hope.
Absently, I went over to Clay’s recent call list to see who else he’d talked to. The combination of worry and anger that I’d been nursing against Brianne was leaning more toward anger the longer we went without finding her. Knowing that she’d either faked the call somehow or – more likely – had another phone that none of us had known about just reinforced the likelihood that she’d intentionally disappeared. There was always the chance that something had happened to her like it had to me. She’d gone somewhere based on information she’d received in that call, and something had kept her from returning.
Except my gut was telling me that wasn’t the case.
I scanned the list of names next to the phone numbers. Jack Limon. Rachelle Sylvester. Andrew O’Dare. Donald Beau.
Fully aware that I was moving from relevant curiosity to something more like snooping, I moved from his recent call list to his address book. As I scrolled, a name caught my eye. I went back up to it. Sofie Harmon. That was the name of the woman who’d called in a favor with the Secretary of State to get Clay down here to find my sister. Brianne’s girlfriend.
I frowned. Clay having the number wasn’t strange. Once he’d gotten her name from Ray, it made sense for him to be contacting her directly rather than going through a round-about way. What was strange was that he hadn’t called her today. Not to tell her that Brianne was missing, or to ask her if she knew where Brianne was.
I didn’t know a lot about Sofie, but I did know she was the secretary’s sister-in-law and had been in the army. I trusted that Clay knew Ray well enough to know he wasn’t corrupt, but we had an informant saying our government was involved with what was happening down here and that we also had a government official with a tie to my missing sister. If I’d had this information when I’d first learned about Brianne’s disappearance, I would’ve gone to DC rather than Costa Rica.
I didn’t have the pull to talk to the Secretary of State directly, let alone a private line to reach him. What I did have, however, was a number I could call and maybe get some answers.
I tapped the screen before I could talk myself out of it. One beat. Two beats. Three beats. My heart hammered in my chest. Ringing. Ringing. Ringing.
“Clay?”
The woman’s voice was husky and didn’t go with the mental picture I’d created of my sister’s girlfriend. I’d thought military-short hair, someone with an athletic body similar to Brianne’s, a stern face. Her voice, however, conjured images of some sultry sex kitten.
Dammit. That was the last thing I wanted in my mind. My sister with a sex kitten.
“Clay? Are you there?”
“Hi,” I blurted.
“You’re not…” There was a gasp of surprise. “Tess? Is this Tess?”
“You know who I am?”
She laughed, but it was a nice laugh, clearly meant in the best way a laugh could be meant. “Of course I know who you are. Bri talks about you all the time.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. All I could managed was a breathy, “Oh.”
“Is everything okay? I mean, I’m glad to finally get to talk to you, but I’m surprised you’re calling on Clay’s phone.”
“Is that my phone?”
Clay’s question overlapped the last of what Sofie was saying.
“Shit. Sorry, I’ve got to go. Everything’s fine. We’ll talk to you later.” I didn’t take my eyes off Clay as I ended the call.
This was not good.
Five
Clay
I’d been in a fantastic mood in the shower. These last few hours with Tess had been incredible. Sure, we still had to figure out what had happened with Brianne, but after how she’d handled herself at the cartel house, I felt like she could probably handle anything that came at her, even if it was trouble she’d gone looking for.
When I’d been drying off, I tried to figure out how to approach Tess about returning to the States, at least for a short while. Ray had been running interference for me, telling my superiors that I was doing a special assignment for someone in DC, and Secretary of State Ganesh had provided whatever documentation Ray had needed, but I knew we were pressing our luck. I needed to get back to Denver and figure out how to help Tess find Brianne while still managing to keep my job.
Then I’d opened the bathroom door and found Tess talking on my phone. I stared at her as she ended the call, wondering what in the world had possessed her to do something so intrusive. Okay, so it was a burner phone, not my personal phone, but still.
“What the hell, Tess?” I asked tightly. I stalked over to my bag and pulled out some clothes. I didn’t want to do this wearing only a towel.
“Ray called,” she began. “And I figured it’d be okay for me to answer it.”
“So you were talking to Ray then?” If that was the case, it was understandable, but the way she couldn’t meet my eyes told me that she hadn’t stopped at just answering my phone.
“No. Not anymore. I talked to him, and then I–”
I held out my hand for my phone, and she fell silent as she handed it over. One glance told me what she’d done. “You called Sofie Harmon.”
“I did.” The words were soft but there was an edge beneath them too. Something flared in her eyes when she looked up at me again. “Because you hadn’t called her. All the calls you made to your contacts back home, and you didn’t call the one person who has a direct connection to Bri.”
“How do you know who I called?” Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. She’d checked my call history. What the fuck? “What gave you the right to go through my fucking phone?”
“It’s a burner phone,” she snapped back. “It’s not like I went through your personal phone.”
My eyes narrowed, anger and frustration warming my skin. “You’re telling me that if our roles were reversed and you’d caught me going through your phone, you wouldn’t care?”
“That’s…that’s not even the point.” Heat flooded her face, and she folded her arms, a mutinous look taking over her expression.
“Like hell it’s not!” I started to take a step toward her, then thought better of it. When I got too close to her, I tended to not be able to think. Not with my upstairs brain anyway.
“Why didn’t you call Sofie?” she asked. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Like what?” I couldn’t believe her. “Is she someone else you’re going to accuse me of fucking? I mean, I must like fucking lesbians since I fucked your sister, right?”
She stalked over to me and pointed, her finger less than an inch from my chest. “Out of line, asshole.”
“You’re the one who was going through my phone,” I reminded her.
“I told you why I was doing that.”
“No, you didn’t. You turned it around like I’m being the unreasonable one.” I wanted to shake her. Wanted to kiss her. Wanted this whole thing to go away. “Maybe it’s because you don’t want to tell me the real reason you were snooping.”
“The real reason is because I wanted to know who you were talking to about my sister. I just want to find her so I can get the hell out of this country!”
“Do you think I don’t want to find her?” I asked, throwing my arms up in abject frustration. “I’m doing everything I can!”
“Are you?” The skeptical look on her face just pissed me off more. “Because I’d think ‘doing everything’ would include calling Bri’s girlfriend. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Something I’m not telling you? You snoop on my phone, then accuse me of hiding things? What’s the phrase? ‘me thinks thou doth protest too much?’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” This time, it was Tess who backed away.
“Maybe the reason you keep coming after me is because you’re the one hiding something.” A horrific thought came to me. “You kept saying there was some story here, but you haven’t found anything. Not anything real. But you can’t go home empty-handed, can you? An FBI agent operating on foreign soil would be a nice piece to make up for whatever you’ve been pitching your boss.”
Tess’s jaw dropped, but I couldn’t tell if her surprise was due to outrage over the accusation…or because she hadn’t thought I’d figure it out. I’d been wrong to think that I still knew her. Terribly wrong.
“You got into my phone to get a list of people who could give your story some credibility. Isn’t that right? You called Sofie to try to get to Secretary Ganesh. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
The knot in the pit of my stomach twisted, and a little voice in my head begged me to stop talking. But she wasn’t denying anything. She wasn’t giving a logical explanation for what I’d caught her doing. I had to be on the right track.
“I just can’t decide if you’re that desperate or if you’ve always meant to make me your story. Some sort of twisted revenge for what you thought happened all those years ago. Ruin my career and maybe even shame your sister too. Get us both back with one swipe of your pen.”
Her face went white. “Leave.”
Her ghostly pallor surprised me. “What?”
“Never mind. I’ll leave.” She snatched up her bag and shoved things into it. “I’m getting my own room, and I’m going to find Brianne by myself too, so you can go back to your sad little life in Denver now. Brianne doesn’t need you, and I don’t need you.”
“Like hell you don’t.”
She yanked the door open, pausing to have the last word even though she didn’t look at me. “If I’d have known this was how things would end up, I never would’ve come down here. It wasn’t worth it.”
Six
Tess
How had things gone so wrong, so fast? Less than an hour ago, I’d been sharing a room with a man I’d trusted with everything. Sure, there had been things we’d still needed to discuss, and there was a chance that we could’ve decided to go our separate ways once we got back to the States, but we would’ve parted as friends at least. Instead, Clay had just proven that we never should have reconnected.
How could he accuse me of using him to get a story? And to throw revenge in my face? As if I’d been pretending this entire time, simply biding my time until I could finally make him pay for something he hadn’t done. That was the other thing that pissed me off about his accusation. I’d told him that I believed him about what happened when we were teens, which meant he thought I’d lied about that. I was the one who’d been lied to, not the one who’d done the lying.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have gone into his call list or called Sofie, but if he would’ve called her in the first place, I wouldn’t have needed to. And I hadn’t done any of it for a story. All I wanted was to find my sister and then go back to my life. I’d had a few wayward daydreams about what it would be like to have Clay in my life again, but I hadn’t let myself give them too much ground, and now I was grateful for that. I could only imagine how furious I would’ve been if I’d actually thought what we had was going anywhere serious.
Even as I told myself each of these things, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d royally fucked up, and I didn’t like it. I kept trying to convince myself that the guilt was misplaced, but deep down, I knew I deserved it. Knowing it, however, just made me angrier because it meant I was the one who needed to go back and apologize first. I’d started this mess.
I continued to pace the same path I’d been walking for the past half hour, one foot in front of the other, back and forth across the room. It didn’t accomplish anything, but I kept doing it, hoping that it would eventually make me tired enough that sleep might be possible. All it did was put the thoughts in my head to an annoying rhythm.
“Dammit, Bri!” I kicked the dresser and immediately regretted it as pain shot through my foot. It would’ve been worse if I hadn’t been wearing shoes, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch.
That was enough. I gave up and went into the bathroom. The shower was tiny, but the water was hot and the pressure good. I closed my eyes and let the water beat down on my tight shoulders. The noise reminded me of what it was like back home on the rainy days when I curled up in my favorite overly plush chair and read a book while listening to the gentle tapping on the window.
Growing up, I’d always loved the rain, especially during the summer, even thunderstorms. When I’d been a kid in DC, and the weather had made it impossible for us to go outside, Bri and I would spend the day playing together, even after she’d made it clear that she was too old and mature for games of make-believe. Those days we were trapped inside, they’d been special.
After we’d moved to Arizona, rainy days had been few and far betwe
en, but even if it’d rained constantly, things wouldn’t have been the same. Brianne and I had been broken, and the worst part of that was something I hadn’t wanted to think about: she’d let it happen. She’d caused it to happen. It would’ve only taken one word of the truth, and things would’ve been different. If she’d been the one to tell me, things would’ve been different.
But none of that had happened, and that was why I was currently in the shower, wishing that I would’ve gotten more than a few minutes of peace.
The hotel towels were rougher than I liked, abrading my arms as I rubbed myself dry. I wrapped the largest one around myself and trudged back into my room. My entire body ached and throbbed, sore from my earlier physical exertions, but also wanting more.
“Too bad,” I muttered. “We’re closed for business, got that? We went for thirty-one years without sex. We can manage until we find someone better.”
I felt like a damn fool for talking to myself like that, but the sound was also soothing, reminding me that no matter how crazy things seemed, I had a life to go back to. A job that was important, not only to me but to the world.
I picked up a bottle of water and sat down in the armchair. I didn’t know what to do next. We’d been waiting on Clay’s contacts, but now, I didn’t have access to that information. Even if any of them knew anything, they’d tell Clay, not me, and there was no way in this life I was going to beg him to share.
I would do it myself. I could do it myself. I’d intended that in the first place. Relying on Clay’s help had been a mistake. It made me doubt my own abilities. I wasn’t a soldier or an FBI agent, but I was an excellent reporter, and those were the skills I needed now. If rescuing Brianne was necessary, I’d figure things out then. I had to find her first.