“I’m not even going to be here. I have plans,” I called out after putting the cold stuff in the fridge and leaving the cabinet stuff in the bag. I was never hungry anymore.
Gigi appeared in the doorway and leaned against the doorframe. “You aren’t running away. Not tonight.”
“I’m not running. I’m working. Bad guys didn’t decide to take a vacation after Sloan died. Families with missing kids just like Ford’s need my help.”
Gigi crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe you should let the others help you track these monsters.”
“No point. I’m getting the job done, but enjoy your party.” I pulled out a half-empty bottle of wine from the fridge and took a swig as I walked out of the kitchen.
“Sloan died. We get it.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with Sloan,” I said, ignoring the knots tightening in my stomach.
She ignored my answer. “You’re hurting, but you aren’t the only one. You died for seven seconds on the operating table. You think you’re the only one who was affected by what happened? You’re wrong. I almost lost you, Lucy,” Gigi snapped.
“But you didn’t,” I said with a sigh. “I’m fine. I’m alive and kicking.”
“Ignoring the people who care about you is selfish,” Gigi said through gritted teeth.
“Just because I’m not attending whatever you have planned doesn’t make me selfish. I have work to do tonight,” I answered, walking into my closet. I pulled out a pair of dark jeans and a matching dark shirt. My new uniform for when I was hunting the scum of the earth.
“You can’t keep doing this vigilante-style justice, Lucy.” Gigi waved her arm at me. “People are starting to question things and put the pieces together.”
“Who’s asking questions?” I asked, resting a hand on my hip.
“Detective Asher Rowen for one. He keeps calling the compound and asking for your whereabouts. He knows what you’ve been doing, and if you keep tracking these scumbags without the weight of the FBI behind you, then you’ll be sitting in jail instead of a psych ward this time.”
Gigi meant well. She knew me better than anyone. “He doesn’t have any proof I’ve done anything wrong.”
“How do you know?” she asked with a raised brow.
“Because, if he did, he would have arrested me by now,” I answered.
Detective Rowen had once helped figure out who was behind death threats against my boyfriend, Sloan, and his ex-wife. He was kind of smart like that. It was why I was carefully staying off his radar.
Those had been easier days.
In the end, Rowen was still sitting like a thorn in my mind when he’d hinted that he knew more about my past than I’d ever divulged, including the nickname my deceased husband had called me.
The answers to how he knew me were written in the past, and one day I’d figure them out.
One day, hopefully before I’d need the leverage to keep myself out of jail, and judging by what Gigi suggested, that time might be sooner than I thought.
“Fine, since you have no concept of self-preservation, then maybe you’ll rejoin the team for another reason,” Gigi said.
“I can’t think of any reason to rejoin the team.” I said, fighting the tightening in my chest.
“Sam needs your help,” Gigi blurted out, making me pause.
She went straight for the sucker-punch, knowing I couldn’t ignore her statement.
Sam was like the younger brother I never had. The kind of kid who knew right from wrong and sometimes stepped over the lines if it meant helping people. He was like me, and I’d been trying to break him of it.
“He knows you’re going through a lot, so he’s trying to give you space, but he really needs your help, Lucy.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. If Sam needed my help, then Ford would have told me or Sam would have told me when I texted them to let them know I was okay.”
“Oh, you mean the...’hey, I’m fine, go away” text that you sent him?” Gigi asked sarcastically as I grabbed my clothes and headed for the bathroom. She rested her hand on my arm, stopping me. “I’m serious, Lucy. Just stay for dinner. You’re observant. You decide if I’m telling you the truth.”
“I can’t fix everyone, Gigi. If I could, Sloan would still be here.”
Sloan appeared in the room again, this time lounging on my bed and watching the exchange as if we were there for his own personal entertainment.
Gigi dropped her hand. “Damn it, Lucy, It’s not your fault. So what that you were confused about Sloan and Ford. That doesn’t mean you killed him, and it doesn’t mean you wanted him dead. Lucy, you’re human.”
“You weren’t confused, Red. You knew what you wanted,” Sloan said.
“She always knew what she wanted, but we both know how stubborn she can be,” Martin Steinbuckle, my deceased husband, said as he appeared right next to Sloan.
Martin had promised me an annulment after a hot night in Vegas all those years ago, and he’d lied. He was dead now. Instead of making me a divorcee, he’d made me a widow. Both men, in life, had been just as cunning and, as spirits, were just as annoying.
Sloan rocked a sly smile on his face. Martin’s face was more somber, as if he was trying to figure me out.
No one would ever believe that my exes were haunting me. Maybe it was a side effect from dying, or maybe it was a side effect from the new blood flowing in my veins. Either way, it was something I wasn’t ready to confess, not even to my twin sister.
My head started to throb.
Gigi followed my gaze to the bed. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, turning my gaze away from the bed.
“Liar,” she whispered.
I clutched the clothes in my hand tighter as I met my sister’s gaze. I didn’t know how to make her understand. “It was my car, Gigi. It should have been me. Only me. He wasn’t even supposed to come back.”
Tears misted my eye. Damn tears.
When would they ever stop?
After the slashed tires, I should have checked to make sure there that killer cop hadn’t screwed with anything else. I should double checked.
Gigi crossed the room, took the wine bottle out of my hand and sat it on the dresser before pulling me into a hug. “The only person you can control is yourself. He wouldn’t have listened even if you’d told him to stay away. He loved you, and that’s what people do.”
The wall I’d erected around my heart started to crack. That fine fissure let some of the feelings back in. Gigi was right. Sloan wouldn’t have listened.
“Now get a shower and change. There are people coming over, and I’ve been ordered to use handcuffs and threats to keep you on the property.” Gigi leaned in. “And you know they meant it.”
I spent an absurd amount of time in the shower, letting the spray of the water wash away the evidence of my tears. By the time I dressed and stood in front of the mirror, there was nothing I could do that would make me look okay. The bruise around my neck had started to heal but hadn’t faded, and neither had the cut above my eye. I looked tired. Hell, I was tired.
“Screw it. This is me,” I said, walking out of the bathroom.
Although my exes were no longer sitting on my bed when I emerged from the bathroom, a chill lingered in the air.
I left the room to the herbal aroma of Italian drifting through my house. Gigi and Grant were in the kitchen. The sound of voices made me pause at the entrance to my living room.
Sam Zachman, the hacker, was sitting behind my computer. He could track any ghost given to him and find an electronic trail with little information.
Carson Tines was sitting on my couch with his feet propped up on my table while watching a football game on TV. He was the squad’s weapons expert with the ability to not only build anything they’d ever need but to cloak it from prying eyes.
Ford was standing at the window, looking out into the darkness. He was a world-class thief with the ability to infiltrate
any structure.
They were all part of a motley crew brought together as liaisons to help the FBI catch and track killers. They were all a bunch of misfit vigilantes who now carried badges, although they played by a different set of rules.
Their rules, which got shit done.
Martin, my deceased husband’s spirit, was following my sister around the dinner table. The first time I’d witnessed him and Sloan in spirit form had scared me into believing I was going bonkers.
“I miss food the most,” Martin said.
“I miss the interactions.” Sloan’s ghostly presence stood next to Ford and gestured to him with his thumb. “Can you believe this guy offered to walk away from Lucy if I helped him save her?”
“That’s true love,” Martin said. “No different than what I did.”
Ford turned as if feeling my gaze on him. I couldn’t read the intense look in his eyes as his gaze slowly traveled down my body and back up as if cataloging my new bruises. His brows dipped.
Carson rose, ignoring the football game when he noticed me. The fact he hadn’t been keeping a trained eye on my ghostly exes traipsing around the room, led me to believe that he couldn’t see these two. Maybe there was something to the fact that benevolent ghosts only haunt those they are connected with. One day I’d have to ask him when I was ready to admit that I could see them now too.
Carson crossed the room and pulled me into a bear hug, lifting me off my feet.
“There you are. It’s about time,” Carson said, returning me to the floor. He leaned out of the embrace and stared down at my body. “You’re skin and bones.”
“She’s exerting all that energy putting herself in danger,” Sloan said in a disapproving tone hovering nearby.
“And here I thought she’d found people to care about her,” Martin said. “Good thing I had my own plan in place.”
I ignored them both. I wasn’t about to tell Carson how right he was. Making sure I ate was no longer my priority.
“All the cardio I’ve been doing,” I answered.
Sam lifted his bloodshot gaze and held mine from behind my computer. The bags beneath his eyes were dark. His face was blotchy. He looked how I felt.
Maybe Gigi wasn’t lying after all.
Chapter 4
Sam dropped his gaze when my brother-in-law, Grant, walked into the room. Grant had been my protector during the FBI experiment that had given me the ability to hunt predators by simply touching their blood.
He was the calm to my crazy in our little team of FBI misfits.
“We have about fifteen minutes before dinner,” Gigi called out from the kitchen.
I followed the sound of her voice and stepped away from the assessing looks from the guys whose job it was to notice everything. I wasn’t ready for them to know all my secrets.
Gigi was at the fridge with a water bottle in hand. She shut the door and handed it to me instead of the liquor I’d need to get through this evening. “You can have wine with dinner.”
I snatched the water bottle out of her hand and twisted off the lid. “Smells good.”
“It is good. Gigi announced. “I found Mom’s old recipe book in the attic when Grant was trying to help me get my memory back.”
I’d missed my sister while she’d been in a coma and even more when she’d woken with amnesia. She was my twin. She was the other half of me.
“Well, it smells excellent, and I’m starving.” I lied.
I stared out into the living room where the guys were hanging out. The branches of hope they offered were twisted in my stomach like vines of steel.
“They need you,” Gigi said, keeping her voice low so the others wouldn’t hear.
“You’re wrong,” I said, turning to face my sister.
“Get over it already, Red. I died. Move on,” Sloan said before peeking his head into the fridge.
I kept my mouth shut for fear my sister wouldn’t believe what I was seeing. Sloan hadn’t moved on. Not if he was haunting me.
“Noah has been giving his boss the runaround about when you’re going to return. He’s covering for you. They all are.”
Noah had recruited me over a year ago into playing his version of cat and mouse. He’d been unusually quiet during the last couple of months, considering I’d ignored his last text about a new case.
“You’re going to have to make a decision, Lucy.” Gigi slid the last breadstick into the bread holder and wrapped it to keep it warm. She turned to stare at me with determination in her eyes. “You either need to let them go and tell them to find another girl to work with, or you’re going to have to rejoin the land of the living.”
“You don’t want to walk away.” Sloan shook his head.
“Lucy has never been a team player,” Martin said, his gaze studying me. “Maybe it’s better she leaves the danger to those better suited for it.”
“I guess tonight can be a farewell party,” I said, heading for the door. I walked into the living room where Carson, Ford, and Grant were in a discussion. My gaze landed on the kid. My IT punk who’d once claimed I was his best friend.
I crossed the room and pulled up a chair next to his. “What are you working on?”
With a few clicks of the keyboard, he closed the windows he’d had opened. “Nothing, just checking my email.”
I leaned in. “That didn’t look like nothing.”
Sam swallowed hard and dropped his gaze as he whispered, “I can’t talk about it.”
“Sure, you can. There’s no judgment in my house,” I answered.
“I can’t,” he said, pushing out of the chair. He picked up his backpack as if he were about to leave, but I grabbed his arm and stepped into his path, blocking his exit. “Sam, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” There was a distinct warning in his voice.
I held up my hands but made no attempt to move. “If I have to be here for dinner, so do you. My sister made my mother’s lasagna.”
He sighed in resignation as he dropped his backpack to the desk. “How are you? How are the voices?”
“I can block them.” Unless I was sleeping, although I didn’t bother telling him that. The kid looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
He stared at me as if unconvinced. “When are you returning?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to lie. These guys deserved the truth from me, considering if I’d been honest with Sloan, he might still be alive.
“No, I wouldn’t have. I’d already told you that I wasn’t giving up. You just won’t accept the fact that you couldn’t save me. Fess up, Red. No one could, not when I’d made my mind up that you were the girl for me,” Sloan said.
My heart clenched at his admission, whether his words were true or just a lie. I’d never know. That story had been cut short.
“Something tells me the thief is good at stealing. He would have stolen her back,” Martin added.
“Where did you go just now?” Sam asked, resting his hand on my arm.
“Nowhere. I’m right here.” I smiled up at him. It was fake, but it was an attempt to use those muscles I hadn’t used in months.
Gigi called Sam and the others to help set the table.
I slid into the chair at my computer desk, and with a few clicks of the keyboard, I backtracked into Sam’s email, which he hadn’t had the chance to log out of. The only opened email read, You’re next. When I clicked on the attachment, it opened to a copy of three different newspaper articles referencing three deaths spanning different states in the United States. I gritted my teeth as the fissure around my heart hardened like cement when combined with water.
Who the hell would threaten Sam?
I snapped a picture of the articles and made a screenshot to save for later.
“Well, are you going to join us, or are you going to try and make a run for the door?” Gigi asked.
I looked up, feeling like a deer caught in headlights. A few clicks of the keyboard and I, t
oo, closed out of the account and shoved out of my chair, sliding my phone back into my pocket. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know, Lucy, are you?” Gigi asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
I smirked at her in passing as I entered the dining room. The easy banter ceased when I walked into the room.
“I’m fine, guys. Really,” I said.
I took my seat at the end of the table and ate while awkward conversations started around me. I felt like an outsider looking in. These people were here because they cared about me, and I’d shut them out.
It was a nice reprieve from my lack of appetite and living people to talk to. Even if I was just listening. It solidified my needs.
A knock cut through the conversations, and I rose to answer. I could feel Ford’s and Gigi’s gazes on me as I left the room. I glanced over my shoulder at them both. “Don’t worry. I’m not making a run for it.”
“You don’t want to answer that,” Sloan said, peeking his head out the door.
Martin followed suit and did the same thing.
“Someone is in trouble,” Martin said in a singsong voice.
I peeked out the peephole. A man dressed in a suit, who I’d never seen before, stood on my stoop.
I slipped my gun out of the foyer table drawer and tucked it at my back beneath my shirt before unlocking the door and pulling it open. “I think you’ve got the wrong house.”
The man looked down at a piece of paper in his hand. “Are you Lucy Bray?”
I tilted my head. The hairs on my arms stood up. Everyone that mattered was already sitting at my dining room table. “Who's asking?”
Chapter 5
The man reached into his pocket, and I grabbed the gun at my back and had it pointed at him before he could pull his fingers away.
“Whoa, easy there,” the man said. “I’m just reaching for my ID.”
“Lucy, is everything all right?” Carson asked as he rounded the corner. He, too, had his gun out and pointed at the stranger.
“You guys are a nervous bunch,” the man said, sliding out his wallet with two fingers. He tossed it at Carson. “I’m Gerald Kent, Homeland Security.”
Hacking Justice (Fractured Minds Series Book 5) Page 2