If we weren’t in the middle of all these people, I’d kiss him. I want to. More than anything. But over his shoulder, Nate watches us. So I brush my lips to the shell of AJ’s ear. “Everyone’s staring.”
“Let them,” he grits out.
Parker clears her throat. “Boss, we’ve got work to do.”
With a low, rumbling sigh, AJ releases me. “Fine. Someone bring us a couple of slices. Grace likes hers with extra red pepper flakes.”
Jasper and Emi drag chairs in from the dining room, while Connor doles out slices. Parker sets two plates on the coffee table in front of us.
“Lieutenant Supreme Disappointment reporting for duty,” Nate says, flopping into a chair next to the fireplace and shoving half a slice into his mouth at once.
I catch Parker’s eye, and she huffs. “He eats like that in front of suspects too.”
Nate dabs at his mouth with a paper napkin. “Keeps the blood sugar steady. Plus, the perps let their guard down when you’ve got marinara on your shirt.”
His jokes, Parker’s comebacks—they’re nothing, really. But the way they spar like brother and sister gives me something solid to hold onto. My nerves don’t vanish, but they ease enough, I reach for my plate.
AJ shakes his head. “Enough with the comedy routine. Your little dead zone play won’t keep Harris off your back for long. We need you at the station tomorrow morning. Hell, we need you to call the chief back when we’re done here and apologize. If he shitcans you too, we’re all fucked.”
Nate’s gaze pings between AJ, Parker, and Connor, before landing on me. “Can do. What do I know? More importantly, what don’t I know?”
“You don’t know shit,” Connor says.
“Yeah, that isn’t gonna fly.” Leaning forward so he can grab his bottle of Coke off the coffee table, he nods at Parker. “She’s been acting squirrely all week. Harris might have bought the ‘food poisoning’ story, but I didn’t. Maybe I don’t ‘officially’ know anything, but here? Now? I want the whole truth. Not some FBI-level intelligence briefing with black bars all over the damn place.”
Silence fills the room, broken only by the pounding in my head that’s been nearly constant since my panic attack.
“Cap,” Hardison says, “you can’t give me a shovel and not tell me how deep to dig the grave.”
With a heavy sigh, AJ drapes his arm around my shoulders and presses a gentle kiss to my temple. “Fine. Last Friday night?—”
“Hold up.” Jasper straightens in his chair, eyes narrowed on Nate. “Ground rules first. Rule number one: until the chief spells somethin’ out for you, you don’t know shit. Rule number two: nothing you hear tonight leaves this room. Got it?”
Nate glances in my direction. The urge to cower behind AJ rears up, but I swallow hard and force it away. If I’m going to get my life back, I can’t shrink into a quivering ball of panic every time a man so much as looks at me.
“Got it. But there’s one more. Rule number three,” Nate says. “If it comes down to protecting my job or protecting Grace, my job can go fuck itself.”
Parker chokes on a sip of her beer. “You sure about that?”
Nate huffs. “Listen, Lieutenant Loose Cannon, I didn’t drive all the way across town on a Friday night after a ten-hour shift because I was worried about my pension. Yes. I’m sure.” He picks up his slice of pizza and takes another massive bite.
AJ gives him a terse nod. “Then I’ll try this again. Last Friday night, I got a call from a doctor down in Mexico.”
AJ
“Nothing?” Hardison asks, brows hidden somewhere in his shaggy mess of hair. “Not being taken? Not escaping?”
Anger prickles along my spine. “She didn’t escape. The unsub left her for dead.”
“Doesn’t change the original question.”
I clench my hand around my bottle of beer until my knuckles ache. “For fuck’s sake?—”
“Nothing,” Grace says softly. “I have…flashes.” She stares at the plate in her lap, unable—or unwilling—to make eye contact with Hardison. And while her voice isn’t loud, it’s mostly steady. “A wooden door. A man’s voice. Being somewhere…all alone.”
Nate leans forward, elbows on his knees. “What about before? Your life with AJ. Going out for that last run.”
“None of it.” She finally lifts her head, and her gaze finds mine, tears lending a subtle shimmer to her eyes. “Everything I know about my life came from AJ. Without him, I wouldn’t even know my own name.”
