When his footsteps faded, Chloe leaned against the wall, arms crossed again. “I know you still carry it,” she said.
“Carry what?”
“That case in Georgia—the guilt.”
He didn’t look at her. “I’m trying not to.”
She sighed. “Dawson’s never going to say no to hearing your thoughts, and I’m not going to get in your face about it in front of him, but you didn’t just leave the FBI because it was time. You quit because it got to be too much.”
“And you didn’t?”
“I was driven to find my sister’s killer. Once that happened, everything in my world shifted. My priorities. My goals. And it wasn’t just because of Hayes. It was because I had a singular focus. I wasn’t burnt out. I didn’t walk into the office one day, call my boss a fucking lazy bastard who kissed DC’s ass, set my badge and gun on his desk, and waltzed out like years of service didn’t mean anything.”
“Why don’t you tell me how you really feel about my departure,” he said, his bitterness hitting his taste buds like vomit.
“I’m just saying you don’t have enough time and space between what happened and where you want to go to not let this one hit you between the eyes,” she said. “Go home. Get some sleep. Try not to chase ghosts tonight.”
He wanted to argue that he didn’t chase ghosts—that ghosts chased him. But the hallway lights buzzed overhead, and the thought felt too close to the truth to say out loud. His gaze drifted back to the glass, to the girl motionless under white sheets. “She said blue,” he murmured. “What would you think if you were me?”
“The Chloe that was chasing her sister’s killer would be going down the same rabbit hole you are.” She inched closer, resting her hand on his forearm. “But the difference is that was one killer, and I had one purpose. My entire career was built on personal. You let one case get personal. There’s a difference.”
“Maybe.” Only, he knew damn well, she was right. He rubbed the back of his neck. “You think she’ll make it?”
“I’ve seen worse come back,” Chloe said. “And I’ve seen better not. So flip a coin.”
That landed heavy.
He nodded once, stepped back, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Let me know if she wakes up again. And that’s not me being obsessive. But I will admit the Georgia case changed me.”
“I know, and I’ll keep you posted.”
When he stepped back into the stairwell, the air hit cooler, thinner. He leaned on the rail a second before starting down.
Below, the vending machine hummed beside the sound of his own thoughts. Blue.
He told himself it wasn’t his case.
He told himself even if this was trafficking—it didn’t involve him, and he should stay out of it.
He told himself he believed that.
He was good at lying to himself.
Outside, the humidity clung like breath. The parking lot was half-empty, the town beyond it asleep. Buddy paused under the yellow glow of a lamppost and looked back once. In the second-floor window, a pulse light blinked steadily. Blue, then gone. Blue, then gone. Like a heartbeat he couldn’t stop hearing.
Then he turned toward the dark and started walking, knowing damn well he wasn’t getting much sleep tonight.
Chapter Four
By eight-thirty, the town wore the heat like a damp shirt. The Everglades buzzed across the street—cicadas drilling, frogs croaking, alligators moaning that low, steady breath that said the swamp was ready for anything.
Fallon locked her front door, slid her phone into her back pocket, and paused when it buzzed. She glanced at the screen.
Unknown number. No preview.
That was never good, but it also never stopped her from looking at the unnecessary spam that seemed to come across her cell weekly. It didn’t matter that she’d done a purge of her passwords. Somewhere, somehow, her data had been leaked, and she hadn’t been able to stop the influx of spam that assaulted her phone and email.
She thumbed the screen, and the words hit like a palm to the sternum.
