She’d asked me for it before. Prior to the kidnapping and the election and the threats from Aubrey, she wanted to run away. I see the moment so clearly now. A stunning gown, two stolen kisses, a bracelet meant to keep her safe, and an unspoken request to pick her up and take her away from all of this when she knew she couldn’t go. I wish like hell I hadn’t talked her out of it.
“We’re not cut out for a life on the run,” she murmurs, her voice softened by memory as she returns to the circle of my arms. “That’s what you told me that night, and you were right to say it to me then, just like I’m right to say it to you now.” She smiles, but the upturned line is riddled with sadness. “I want to be free. I want to be with you and Cal. I want those things more than I want my next breath. If you’re right, and Aubrey wants me dead?—”
The tips of my fingers dig into her waist. “I am,” I tell her without an ounce of doubt in my body.
She takes my face in her hands. “I believe you. It’s exactly where my mind went this morning, but Beck, you know just as well as I do that running won’t stop that desire in its tracks.”
“It’ll make it stronger,” Cal says, shrugging when I frown at him. “It’s the truth, Beck. Running makes the chase more enticing.”
“And staying is the same as locking yourself inside a trap,” I shoot back. “I don’t understand how you two don’t see where we are right now. This is dire straits. You have no security, no protection, no one in that fucking place that’s in your corner. We’re on the outside of everything, if something happens….” My voice breaks, images of Selene falling over the railing in Charlie’s place flashing through my mind. Tears burn at the back of my eyes. “I can’t save you.”
Selene lifts up on the tips of her toes, offering me solace in the form of a sweet, licking kiss that does nothing but make me more desperate to pick her up, sling her over my shoulder and run away. When she pulls back, there’s a world of tender understanding in her eyes.
“You’ve already saved me, Beck. From Jacob, Charlie and Leigh Anne. From guilt and grief and loneliness and even from myself. I know there isn’t a battle you wouldn’t fight for me or a sanctuary you would keep me from, but I don’t want shelter, Beck, and I don’t need you to grab your sword and ride off to slay the dragon.”
“But I will.”
“I know, baby, and I love you for it. Believe me. But Aubrey ismydragon, and I don’t want anyone else cutting off his fucking head.”
In the time that I’ve known her, Selene has given me a million different reasons not to bet against her. When her top lip curls and the purest form of hatred hardens her eyes as she talks about ending her husband, I know that I’ve found reasonone million and one. Selene isn’t scared; she’s determined. She’s a general with a battle plan in hand that, hopefully, includes two soldiers prepared to die and kill for her.
A quiet sigh of resolve leaves me, and a victorious smile curves her lips when I say, “Read me in.”
19
SELENE
Bringing Beck and Cal up to speed doesn’t take long.
Mainly because they’re quick studies, but also because I don’t have a lot in the way of actual proof. My whiteboard—which Monique has taken to calling a ‘murder board’—is divided in half. One side dedicated to the things I know for certain, and the other filled with theories, questions and, towards the bottom, names and other single word phrases I haven’t figured out where to place.
“Mistook peanut butter for tahini?” Beck gapes at the witness statement from the sous chef who made the fatal swap. “Isn’t tahini white?”
“It’s more beige or deep brown, depends on how the sesame seeds are processed,” Cal says, leaning in close to my computer screen to get a good look at the pictures of Sutton’s planner that her father sent to me.
Several dates marked ‘CD’ with little hearts around the letters corresponded with times Aubrey was at Camp David. Cal and Beck were always with him on those trips, but they said if she was there, they never saw her. It doesn’t surprise me sincethey never got to see or vet a lot of the people who visited Aubrey there.
While they’ve pored over all things related to Sutton, I’ve tasked myself with rescuing at least one thing from the side of the board that represents obscurity and insignificance. So far, I’ve had no luck.
Beck appears at my side suddenly, the frustration rolling off me as I gaze at the board a beacon he can’t resist. “Why do you have President Sanders up there?”
In an instant, Cal is on my other side, and then I’m wrapped in the bubble of their warmth and familiar scents. Despite the stressful circumstances that made this moment possible, I’m nothing but grateful to be standing here with them looking at the pieces of a puzzle and figuring out how they all fit together.
“He died in the middle of the campaign, and his death guaranteed Aubrey’s win.”
“So did the sympathy he garnered from your kidnapping,” Cal points out. “Why isn’t that up there?”
“You think Aubrey was involved with my kidnapping?”
I never even considered it. Some things, like the kidnapping and AJ’s death, felt so clear to me in terms of responsibility. Jacob was responsible for my kidnapping. He recruited Leigh Anne and flipped Charlie and Agent Harris. He introduced my temple to the barrel of a gun. He was bred in hate and fed pain from the time he could walk and talk. That same thing was true for the child who ended AJ’s life. None of those things had anything to do with Aubrey, or, at least, I didn’t think so.
Beck plucks the marker from my hand and walks over to the board, adding the kidnapping under the half-erased note about the military base. “We’ve never found any links between Aubrey and Jacob that didn’t include you. Personally, I don’t think he was involved, but when you’re conducting an investigation,everything matters until you’re able to determine that it doesn’t.”
My core clenches, something primal in me reacting to the display of competence. Cal’s gaze is warm on the side of my face, but his knowing chuckle is an open flame that threatens to melt me.
“Did that turn you on, pet?”
I bite back a smile, wondering how it’s possible to be wet when we’re talking about one of the scariest days of my life. “Shut up, Drake.”
