“And now what?”
“Let’s wait and see. It’s probably going to be a day or two before we know anything.”
My flight,I think suddenly.
“Even if I’m done with Halligan before noon tomorrow, I’ll be worried about making it to JFK on time. I’ll have to change my ticket—I guess to Sunday night.”
Of course, that will delay being with Bas, but it’s critical to follow through with things here.
“That makes sense,” Logan says. “And I’ll go with you to headquarters tomorrow.”
I glance at my watch and see that it’s almost midnight. This is all the talk I can handle tonight. When I look over, Logan’s staring intently at me.
“Bree, please stay tonight, okay?” he says.
I’m not going to have sex with Logan tonight. Even if I tell myself it’s justone last time, it will dig me even deeper into wrongdoing. And yet for the second night in a row, I can’t bear being alone. Logan won’t be able to ease the guilt I’m feeling or distract me from my fear overlosing Bas—I’m on my own with both of those—but his presence is helping with the other part of the nightmare: Mel’s senseless death and how close we came to not knowing the truth. He’s the only one who’s traveled the same dark roads of hell that I have, so nothing about that journey has to be decoded for him.
“We can just hold each other if that’s what you want,” Logan adds, picking up on my hesitation.
“Yes, that’s all I can handle tonight.”
Logan gives me an extra toothbrush from his dopp kit, and after washing up, I swap my clothes for a T-shirt he offers from his suitcase. When he comes out of the bathroom himself, I notice he leaves the door ajar so that the glow from the night-light reaches the bedroom.
“You remembered,” I say, touched by the gesture. Is he hoping that somehow we can be friends from here on? But there’s no way that can happen. If I do manage to salvage my relationship with Bas, I can never have Logan as an active presence in my life.
“Yeah. I figured that even if you were over your fear of the dark, it surely came back this week.”
As soon as we’re in bed, he pulls me to him, and as I lie in the crook of his arm, I hear his breathing slow until it’s coming from a place deep within his chest. But I’m not so lucky. My brain is flooded with more troubling thoughts than it seems able to handle—the awful truth about Mel’s death, my role in Riley’s murder, the likelihood that I’ve wrecked things with the man I’ve recharted my life with. It’s raining out, I realize, not pouring exactly, just a repetitive, rhythmic drip on the windowsill and car hoods below. I try to use the sound as a distraction, but after a while it’s like an earworm I can’t expel. I drag a pillow over my head and finally, mercifully, sleep overtakes me.
When I wake, Logan is sitting on the edge of the bed beside me. His hand is on my shoulder, and I realize he’s jostled me from my sleep.
“What time is it?” I ask groggily. There’s light from the living area, through a partially open door.
“Just past six thirty.”
“Is—is everything all right?”
“Yeah, more than all right. Morgan Kroll was arrested early this morning for Riley’s murder.”
Chapter 33
I bolt up straight in bed.
“How do you know?” I ask, shoving the hair off my face.
“That pain-in-the-ass Chip Conway texted me ten minutes ago,” Logan says. “He sent a link to a short news item that went up online around six a.m.”
“But what could they have on her? DNA tests still take days, I’ve heard.”
“Fingerprints, maybe? Though it seems too soon for a hit on that, either.”
I finally focus on the fact that Logan is fully dressed—in jeans, a collared shirt, and a blue zippered cardigan.
“How long have you been up?”
“Since five. I couldn’t fall back to sleep, and once I saw the story, I figured I’d better dress to face the day in case all hell breaks loose.”
“I need to see the piece. Can you forward me the link?”
