Chương 7
She grabbed the receiver.
“Status?”
“Alive.”
“Location?”
“Sterling Tower, east garage, level B.”
“Is he in custody?”
A pause followed.
Then the agent answered.
“Not exactly.”
Mara frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“He’s sitting outside storage cage fourteen.”
Luca said, “Why?”
The radio voice continued.
“He says he won’t move until Jessi Sterling gets here.”
Every face turned toward me.
Mara pressed the receiver.
“Why does he want her?”
Another pause.
“He says the person behind this will only come out if she does.”
Luca stepped in front of me before anyone could answer.
“No.”
Mara’s expression hardened.
“Mr. Sterling.”
“No.”
I pulled my hand from his.
He turned.
I had spent forty-six hours believing him dead because people around him had decided what I should know, when I should know it, and how much truth I could be trusted to survive.
I was finished letting other people protect me by making choices on my behalf.
“Get out of my way,” I said.
Luca stared at me.
“Jessi, whoever sent that message threatened to kill you.”
“Yes.”
“And Graham may be compromised.”
“Yes.”
“You are not walking into that garage.”
I held his gaze.
“You climbed into a coffin without telling me.”
“That was different.”
“It was exactly the same.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You decided danger gave you the right to control my reality.”
His face tightened.
I pointed toward the chapel doors.
“Now someone has used my name to move your uncle, threaten Celeste’s daughter, and manipulate your investigation.”
I stepped closer.
“If they expect me to stay scared and uninformed, that is the one thing I’m not willing to give them.”
Mara watched me for several seconds.
Then she said, “You do not go anywhere alone.”
Luca looked at her.
“You cannot be considering this.”
“I’m considering controlled contact.”
“She is my wife.”
Mara’s eyes did not soften.
“And she is currently the only person the unknown subject has explicitly identified as necessary.”
I hated the word necessary.
Luca hated it more.
Outside, sirens began somewhere beyond the chapel grounds.
Mara took her coat from the back of a chair.
“We move now.”
Luca caught my wrist.
I looked down at his hand.
He released me immediately.
His voice dropped.
“You don’t have to prove anything.”
“I’m not proving anything.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
I looked at the empty coffin behind him.
“Because I have had enough funerals today for people who are still alive.”
The drive to Sterling Tower took seventeen minutes, but every second felt borrowed.
Luca sat beside me in the back of the unmarked SUV, silent except for the occasional movement of his thumb against his wedding ring.
He kept touching it without realizing.
I noticed because I had spent eight years noticing things about him that he believed nobody saw.
The way he tapped his fingers when reading difficult reports.
The way he cleared his throat before apologizing.
The way he stopped eating when he was worried and pretended he was not hungry.
The man beside me had always been terrible at hiding fear.
He had simply been better at hiding what he was afraid of.
Mara sat in the passenger seat with a tablet balanced on her knees.
Two other agents followed behind us.
The city moved normally outside the windows.
People crossed streets carrying grocery bags.
A delivery truck blocked traffic near a coffee shop.
A woman laughed into her phone while waiting at a bus stop.
It bothered me more than chaos would have.
The world had continued.
Mine had split open.
“You’re angry,” Luca said quietly.
I looked out the window.
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
He looked at me.
“You’re right.”
The honesty surprised me.
I turned slightly.
He stared at the floor.
“I keep trying to explain the plan because if I explain it correctly, maybe it becomes less awful.”
“It doesn’t.”
“I know.”
“You let me stand beside a coffin.”
“I know.”
“You let me hear your mother accuse me of ruining your life.”
His jaw tightened.
“I know.”
“You watched me believe I had lost you.”
“I was watching.”
The words stopped me.
“What?”
“I was watching from the medical transport room.”
I turned fully toward him.
“What are you talking about?”
“The chapel cameras were connected to the investigation team.”
My stomach dropped.
“You watched?”
“Not the whole time.”
“How much?”
He looked away.
“Enough.”
A strange emptiness replaced my anger for a moment.
“You watched me cry?”
“Yes.”
“You watched me touch your coffin?”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed hidden?”
His voice lowered.
“I almost stopped it.”
“Almost.”
“Yes.”
I laughed softly.
There was no humor in it.
“Do you know what the worst part is?”
He did not answer.
“The worst part is that I would have forgiven the danger.”
His eyes lifted.
“I would have understood protecting evidence.”
I swallowed.
“I would have understood protecting yourself.”
The SUV slowed at a red light.
The driver looked straight ahead.
Mara remained still.
“But you made the decision that I was the one person who could not handle the truth.”
Luca looked like he wanted to argue.
He did not.
That was worse.
“I was afraid,” he said.
“Of what?”
“That if you knew, you would do what you always do.”
“What does that mean?”
“You would fight.”
I stared at him.
“That’s your complaint?”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“It’s what I love about you.”
The anger in my chest shifted.
Not gone.
Just forced to share space with something older.
Something softer.
“And?”
“And it is also what scares me.”
I looked away.
Outside, the light turned green.
The car moved.
“When I met you,” he continued, “you were the only person who looked at my family and didn’t care about their money.”
“That’s not exactly romantic.”
“It was to me.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
“You hated my expensive car.”
“I hated the way you parked it across two spaces.”
May you like
“You still bring that up.”
“Because you still park like that.”
