“Keep pressure on this and tell me where to go.” When she hesitates, I sigh, and roll my eyes. “I’m blind. Not helpless. Unless your fridge is pear-shaped with a combination lock, or you keep your glasses stacked like a Jenga tower, I can make my way around a kitchen.”
“Fridge is directly behind you,” she mumbles, and in four steps, I find the handle.
“And the juice?” If I can keep her talking long enough to get some sugar into her system, she’ll be fine. If not, I’m going to have some serious explaining to do to the police.
“Bottom shelf of the door. The carton.”
“Boss?” Five knocks—Vasquez’s pattern—follow the tense word, and heavy footsteps thud down the hall. “Your driver said the police are almost here. No sign of the perp.”
I shake my head as Evianna sucks in a sharp breath. Vasquez needs to learn to be a little more sensitive. “Find a glass,” I snap as I return to her side with the carton. But as soon as I sit down, she takes the carton from me.
“Don’t need one.”
My jaw drops open as she takes a couple of large gulps loud enough for me to hear. Shit. Something inside of me warms. I wish I could comfort her, but that’s not why she hired Second Sight, and I don’t do comfort.
The police knock, and I reach into my pocket for my PI license. “Tell them everything, Evianna,” I say quietly. “And then I’ll take you somewhere safe. You’re not staying in this house tonight.”
Evianna
My house isn’t…mine anymore. My…attacker…tossed almost every room. Only the kitchen and downstairs bathroom were untouched. Two police officers spend over an hour taking our statements while a crime scene tech dusts for prints, Vasquez finds my first aid kit and presses a couple butterfly bandages to my cheek, and Dax sits stiffly, his hands on his thighs, his back ramrod straight.
The tension rolling off of him makes the knot in my stomach twist and turn, and even Vasquez brewing me a cup of tea doesn’t help.
I need to get into Alfie’s logs. Something’s wrong with her. She should have caught the break-in. But I went through every single event she recorded—the mailman delivering my weekly allotment of junk, my neighbor’s dog getting away from her and running up the steps, and a group of construction workers passing by horsing around. Nothing at the front or back doors to let me know someone broke in, and none of the window sensors went off.
But I can’t concentrate on anything right now. All I want to do is sleep. Or cry. Anywhere but here.
“Ms. Archer, we’re done,” Officer Danvers says as she hands me a piece of paper. “Here’s the report number. You’ll be able to access this online in a few hours.” Her partner heads for the door, and she leans closer. “You might want to stay somewhere else tonight.”
“She’s staying with me,” Dax says. He hasn’t uttered a word in twenty minutes, and my mug rattles on the table as his rough drawl startles me. “Secured building, not linked to her in any way.”
The officer nods. “Perfect. Good night, Mr. Holloway. Mr. Vasquez. Ms. Archer.”
As my front door clicks shut, I turn to Dax. “Um, I’m staying where?” I’m too tired to argue, really, but his presumption that I’ll just go with him rallies me a bit.
“You want to stay here?” His brow arches, highlighting the burns on his lids. “Your call. I can sleep on your couch just as well as I can sleep on mine.”
“And what if I want to be alone?” I don’t. But his arrogance has sent me from a state of shock and exhaustion into anger.
With a heavy sigh, he pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes for a moment. “If you want to be alone, Vasquez can take you to a hotel. But he’ll be outside your door all night. You asked us to protect you. This is how we do it.”
He removed his glasses sometime in the past hour or so, and now, I can see the damage to his eyes. It’s like…he’s wearing opaque ice blue contact lenses. His pupils are pale…almost gray. Yet his stare seems to bore right into me, and I wonder how he manages to almost always know right where my eyes are. “Fine. I need a few things first.”
“Do you need Vasquez to go with you?” Dax asks as I start for the stairs.
I roll my eyes at him, the gesture only slightly less satisfying knowing he can’t see me. “The police searched the whole house. I think I can manage to pack my own underwear.”
Vasquez stifles a snort as I pass him, and Dax mutters something under his breath I can’t hear. I can’t decide if he’s being sweet and protective or rude and patronizing. Yet, upstairs, seeing the mess my attacker made searching through my things, knowing he touched my clothes, my pillow, the jewelry box my father made for my mother…it’s too much.
Sinking onto the floor, I cradle the antique wood box to my chest. The lid hangs from broken hinges, a tangled mess of earrings and necklaces peeking out from under the dresser.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until Dax kneels next to me. “Evianna? Darlin’? You need to get out of here. Come back downstairs. Tell Vasquez what you need, and he’ll find it.” His warm fingers curl around my arm, brushing the edges of the box. “What’s this?”
“All I had left.” The words escape on a whisper, as if saying them aloud will somehow make them real. Make my last memories of my father fade into nothingness. Dax eases the box from my grip and runs his fingers over the intricate patterns on the lid, finding the broken hinges and the dented corner.
“Who made this?”
I can’t tell him. Hell, I barely know the man. As he gingerly sets the box back in my hands, I peek up at his face. Grief deepens fine lines around his lips, furrows his brow. Despite the damage to his eyes, I see the pain there too.
