"I don't deserve to make you promises."
"Make one anyway."
"Not again." My arms tighten around her. "Never again."
Then she stiffens.
"The note."
"What?"
She pulls back. Her jaw tightens.
"He had a note. In his pocket." She's already crawling across the floor toward Daniels' body. "A suicide note. In my handwriting."
She reaches into the dead man's coat and pulls out a folded piece of paper. Blood-soaked. She crawls back to me.
She unfolds it. Holds it so I can see.
The handwriting is hers. The loops, the slant: perfect. Blood creeping across the margins.
"'I can't live with what I've done.'" She reads without inflection. "'Detective Carver tried to help me, but I couldn't take the pressure anymore. The things he made me do to keep me safe. The way he touched me.'"
My hands curl into fists.
The way he touched me.
"'I told him to stop and he wouldn't. So I stopped him. Now I have to stop myself.'"
She lowers the paper. Looks at me.
"Carver never touched me. He was the only one who believed me when no one else would." Her voice wavers. "He killed Carver because Carver cared about me. Because he was trying to protect me." Her eyes find mine. "I get it now, Diesel. Why you pushed me away."
I can't speak.
I look at Daniels' body. At the hole Eden put in his head.
If I'd known about this note, I'd have made him last for hours.
"He practiced my handwriting. Used my interview notes." She stares at the paper. "He was going to put the gun in my hand. Make me pull the trigger. And when they found my body, they'd find this."
I stare at the note. At Carver's name.
"He killed Carver and framed him as a rapist. Would have killed me and made me the murderer." She lets the paper fall. It lands in the blood between us. "Tidy. That's what he called it."
She comes back to me. Fits herself against my uninjured side, her hand pressing over the wound in my flank. Applying pressure. I hiss through my teeth.
"They'll call it self-defense," she says.
I look at her. "Was it?"
She holds my gaze. "Does it matter?"
Chapter 13
Eden
The silence after violence is its own kind of sound.
