But Eve didn’t hear the meaning in the moment. Instead, she simply doubled down.
“Maybe he needs me more. Now, can I see him or not?”
Darius was quiet a moment. Then he rapped the desktop with his knuckle twice.
“Yeah, you can, but under one condition.”
“And what’s that, Detective?”
Darius didn’t skip a beat with his answer.
“I have to be with you.”
A heaviness settled against Eve’s chest. That would make talking impossible. Or maybe not. She looked into those dark eyes and wondered how much she could get past them.
Sure, they had once been inseparable, but then they had indeed gone their own ways.
Darius might have known her then. That didn’t mean he knew her now.
“Only you?” she clarified.
Darius nodded.
Eve’s anxiety spiked. She would also realize later that, in that moment, she also was skimming over one very obvious fact.
Shealsowasn’t being given a choice.
Eve let out a small breath. Then she agreed.
“Let’s go.”
THE ROOM HADa whiteboard against the wall on one side, a long table with chairs tucked underneath it in the middle, and Mitchell Keys in a tux against the back wall.
During Darius’s career he had seen all kinds of people waiting in the big room. Victims, loved ones, witnesses, colleagues and suspects he didn’t want to spook with an actual interrogation room. He had walked alongside them, let them lead or sat in his usual chair, waiting for them to be brought in.
He had seen reactions from every angle.
Sadness. Anger. Happiness. Apathy. Confusion. Exhaustion.
It all blended in a carousel of memory.
So he shouldn’t have been surprised at the reaction the ill-fated, almost-married couple gave when Eve walked into the room ahead of him.
And yet, Darius couldn’t help but pause in the doorway.
Mitchell Keys might not have been the same as his brother, but so far he had been holding himself with a rigidness that was nearly contagious. Anxiety and a twitch beneath the skin just itching to get out. Darius had expected that anxiety to lessen at the sight of Eve because that was what he believed to be a normal reaction. To see the woman you were supposed to marry after a tragedy kept it from happening? After you clearly hadn’t been able to talk anything out with each other?
Never mind being the number one suspect in a homicide investigation.
However, the second Mitchell laid eyes on Eve, there was only one emotion that was so palpable that Darius nearly felt it too.
Relief.
Undeniable and absolute relief.
So much so that the man who had once had a decent height to him, lost an inch or so as he sagged into an exhale. In one moment he was taut, a rubber band ready to snap, in the next he was melted ice cream, pooling on the old carpet floor.
And Eve’s reaction tohisreaction was just as surprising.
