And yet, here she was.
With her phone checked in to evidence, Saffi couldn’t monitor thesituation with Hector Olsen. She’d already given her statement to the police, but it didn’t seem that any of the news channels playing on the hospital’s TVs had picked up on it yet. Early this morning, they’d snuck into Olsen’s trailer, which had been unnervingly close to Dimple’s, and planted the evidence. Smeared blood, the gun. Still, a part of Saffi was worried they’d overlooked something.
She pulled on loose threads of the old scrubs she’d been given to wear. She was slowly but surely losing her mind.
Just as she’d been about to go ask the nurses, yet again, if there had been any updates, the waiting room door swung open. She sat up abruptly, wincing when her arm protested the movement. Part of her expected Dimple Kapoor to be standing there like a beacon, uninjured and captivating as ever. If not her, then at least a nurse to tell Saffi she could visit her.
Instead, there was Taylor.
Saffi rose to her feet. She’d never seen him look so lost, so manic. He scanned the room before landing on her. Before she knew it, she was being pulled into a bone-crushing hug. It pulled at her stitches, but Saffi didn’t care. Taylor was warm and she’d been so, so cold until now.
When she pulled back, finally able to read every emotion on Taylor’s face, Saffi felt the urge to throw up come back in full force. Because she hadn’t just killed Andino. She’d robbed Taylor of his other half. She could see it in the pull of his mouth, the furrow of his brow, the tension he now carried in his shoulders that she feared would never go away.
“Are you okay?” Taylor asked. He held both of her forearms in a gentle grip. It suddenly struck her how awful it was that he was asking her that question.
“You’re shaking,” he said. Saffi looked down. As it turned out, she was. “Do you need to get looked at?”
That finally broke her from her trance. “No,” she said. “I’ve already been cleared. But Andino—”
Taylor shook his head, cutting off her words. His lips were pressed into a thin line. One push and it seemed like he’d fall apart. Saffi knew a man in need of a distraction when she saw one.
“How’s the situation with Olsen?” she asked instead.
Taylor breathed in deeply, the man’s name alone enough to bring that rare dark glint to his eyes. “He’s in custody until his trial. No bail.”
Saffi raised her brows. “How the hell did you manage that?”
“Even if his trial is in a few days, I wasn’t going to let the bastard walk free for another second,” Taylor declared. “I’ll make sure he rots for life. And then in hell afterward.”
Saffi felt sick again, Taylor’s words too similar to her father’s for her liking. If he knew what she’d done—
“Tell me something,” Taylor said, pausing to collect his thoughts. “Was it painful?”
Just like that, she was transported back into the moment. Andino choking up blood. Crumpling to the ground. It happened so quick, he hadn’t even been able to vocalize his pain.
“I don’t know,” Saffi found herself saying. Because who truly knew the pain of death until they felt it? If it was anything at all similar to the pain of causing another’s, then she feared for what was to come. “It happened faster than I could comprehend.”
“Good,” Taylor breathed in relief, but it didn’t last long. A complicated expression overtook his features as he seemed to mull something over. “Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?”
The question caught her so off guard, she pulled away. Taylor’s expression was grave.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” she admitted. “I didn’t even really know where I was going. I just knew Andino could be in trouble.”
“After both of you disappeared for hours, I had to find out from the police that my closest friends were shot. And that one of them is dead,” Taylor said. “How do you think that felt?”
Saffi was silent. She’d never been on this end of his anger. There was nothing she could say in the face of it that didn’t feel like a cheap mockery.
“I thought you coming back meant we could all be together again,” Taylor said. He let go of Saffi in favor of pacing. “Don’t you think I get sick of always being in the middle? You’re too stubborn to admit you care about us and Atlas is—was—too stubborn to admit it hurtshim, but what about me? Both of you have hurt me too! Do you even care? Do either of you think about me at all?”
“I thought you would come,” Saffi blurted. It was a childish sentiment, but she needed him to know—of courseshe’d thought of him. “It felt like such a big moment, I thought you’d burst in and save us, like you always do.”
Taylor stopped pacing. Saffi braced herself, but his words were far from accusatory. “You know, before you left, Atlas and I were going to ask you to start the new business with us. To be a partner.”
Saffi froze. “What?”
When she’d heard from the other side of the world that Andino and Taylor had created an agency of their own, she hadn’t been surprised. They’d always been Andino and Taylor—Atlas and Eli—aduo. Saffi was the outsider. The coworker they were kind enough to indulge every once in a while. She tried to imagine a place where Andino, Taylor, and Iyer Private Eye could exist. Even in a world where Andino lived, it felt fantastical.
But was that why there was an extra office waiting for Saffi when she came in? All set up as though they were always expecting her to come back?
