I nod, and though I’m still terrified, I know he’s right. The only chance I have to truly get my life back depends on this surgery. If I can get through that, I can get through anything.
Chapter Sixty-Four
AJ
The fire pops and cracks behind the glass insert, and Grace tucks herself tighter against my side. She’s been cold all day, and even wrapped in a blanket with Belle curled up at her feet, her hands are pale and clammy.
Physically, she’s stable. For now. But damn if I don’t want to surround her in bubble wrap to keep her that way. If she falls—or if the bone fragment moves—it could be debilitating.
I can’t lose her. I won’t survive it a second time.
Zephyr leans closer to her webcam, face lit by the blue glow of the monitors around her. “I pulled everything I could from a two-mile radius around the art supply store,” she says. “The best angle I found was from a pawn shop on the corner.”
The screen splits, and a grainy video reveals a man in a dark hoodie and jeans, sunglasses hiding his eyes, carrying a tightly wrapped bouquet of white and pink oleander flowers.
“He gets off a bus a block over, hangs at the edge of the parking lot for a few minutes, then double-times it to Connor’s truck when a couple of cars block your view from the store’s front windows.”
“That’s it?” Parker’s hushed tone doesn’t hide her frustration. But, she’s sittin’ less than twenty feet from Harris’s office pretending to go through receipts for the fucking motor pool. I’m amazed she hasn’t imploded already.
“He waits to make sure Grace sees the flowers before he takes off. But he’s no fool. Never picks his head up, never removes the hood, never takes off the sunglasses. I can tell you he’s five-foot-nine, close to two hundred pounds, but that’s it.”
“Fuckin’ hell,” Jasper mutters from the armchair next to us. “Here I was thinkin’ we’d be going after yahoos chanting in the woods by candlelight. Not whatever black-ops rejects these sombitches are.”
Connor takes himself off mute and clears his throat. “Mikayla got the flowers this morning, but she doesn’t think they’re gonna tell us anything. Oleanders bloom in late spring and summer. These were likely from a hothouse somewhere.”
“It was the smell,” Grace says softly. She’s twisting the corner of the blanket hard enough, I’m surprised it’s still in one piece. “That’s why I panicked. He—everyone called him Prophet—held this…ceremony on the full moon. That’s what I’ve been drawing. The lanterns. The altar. It’s where I…” Her voice cracks, so tiny it sounds like she’s about to disappear.
Sliding my palm over hers, I give her hand a gentle squeeze. “You’re safe, darlin’. No one’s gonna hurt you here.”
She nods, though I’m not sure she believes me. Still, she lifts her gaze to the orange light on my laptop. “It’s where I was supposed to die. He poisoned me first. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. Then tied me down on that altar under the lanterns. The flowers…they were everywhere. All around me. In my hair. In the ropes. I couldn’t breathe, the scent was so thick. And people were…chanting. Or singing. But I can’t remember the words. I just know it hurt. God, I hurt everywhere.”
She presses her hands to her chest, her breath stuttering, shallow enough I’m worried she’s about to hyperventilate.
“Grace, look at me.” I nudge her chin up. The fear in her blue-green eyes does me in. “Stay here, darlin’. Tell us the rest, but stay here. There’s no poison. No flowers. No ropes. There’s just Belle and me and home.”
The dog jumps up onto the couch and stretches across our legs until she can slide her head under Grace’s hands.
“I…wasn’t Grace there. I was Nova.” Tears spill down her cheeks. “He took my name from me, AJ. He took everything. All so he could have his ceremony. So he could tie me down and stab me.”
“Can you describe him?” Parker asks.
Grace swallows a sob. “No. I…knew I was panicking. I could hear Jasper. Then AJ. I held on to your voices because I was so scared. I didn’t want to remember what it felt like to die. God. I should’ve been braver?—”
“No. Fuck, darlin’. You’ve been fightin’ monsters every day for three years. I don’t know a single person who’s braver. Who could fight harder. And look around you. There are some pretty damn brave people in this room.” The words escape harsher than I intend, but I don’t soften my tone. “This is more than we’ve had yet, and it’s all because of you.”
“Hey, don’t forget the two cowards at the station,” Hardison says. “While you’re over there facing down nightmares every day on the regular, Parker and I are armed with keyboards, coffee that could strip paint, and a pact that if Harris yells too loud, we run.”
Grace hides a snort behind her hand. “God, Nate. You’re making my panic attacks sound like a weekly staff meeting.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Parker says. “Or he’ll put them on an actual calendar. Color-coded, categorized, and everything. It’ll be a literal work of art.”
I’m about to remind the two of them that this is serious—that in three days, my wife is having fucking brain surgery—when Grace sits up a little straighter at my side. “Parker, you’re brilliant.”
“Tell that to the chief,” she mutters. “He thinks my talents are best spent on fuel efficiency calculations and auditing the motor pool’s yearly maintenance bills. But…go on…”
Grace turns to me. Her unsteady fingers comb through Belle’s fur. “The board in your office… You’d pieced together a timeline of my day. At least…until my phone stopped moving. I went to my classroom. That’s where I started my run?”
“Yeah, darlin’. I found your car in the lot. It’s…been in the garage ever since.”
