“Olena thinks I disappeared with it. She probably thinks I am off living my best life while she’s been in prison for ten years, plotting my death for having a hand in getting her sent there. That’s why I’ve been looking over my shoulder. Her network is wide. The DSA knows all this. Part of our arrangement is basically witness protection. Wallace classified the details about the diamond in my file to keep me safe. It has worked until now.” I swallowed a hard lump in my throat. The threat had finally come to fruition.
He studied me for a moment. “Wow. That’s … a lot.”
I snorted. “You’re telling me. Now do you see why I was so freaked out when Wallace wasn’t here? He’s been protecting me this whole time.”
“I can protect you,” he said without a beat of hesitation.
The offer filled my face with a warm rush. “Great. You can start by getting me off the Del Rio case and finding me a new place to live.”
“Well … I can’t exactly do that,” he half muttered, looking like his offer might have been more reflex than reality.
“Why not?”
“It’s … complicated.”
“Bray, these are the people who were going to kill me when I was a teenager, and they know where Ilive. I don’t see what’s complicated about that.”
“Yes, I get that, but I don’t have authority to pull you from the case.”
“Well, then call someone who does.”
“That’s … even more complicated.”
I growled in frustration and whacked my hands on my pillow nest.
Bray looked pained. He sighed a tight breath and stood. “Just give me some time, okay? I’ll report what happened today and have a patrol unit put outside your apartment. And anyway, Del Rio is probably the safest place you can be. With all the helicopter parents in that neighborhood, someone will probably call the cops on my patrol unit.”
“That’s reassuring,” I grumbled.
He squatted down so we were eye level. He spoke with a determined sincerity. “Erin, I won’t let anything happen to you.” The earnestness in his voice, the promise in his eyes—even when he’d been irritating me moments before—put a lump in my throat. He held my gaze, waiting for me to acknowledge.
I considered it, wondering how much he could do againstthe people who were after me.Not much, I thought. But at the same time, no one had ever really offered to protect me. Wallace hadn’t even gone this far. No one had ever treated me like I was a person and not an expendable object. Even if he was bossing me around and reminding me how short my leash was, he was doing it with a level of humanity I’d never been afforded.
And he called me by my real name.
“Fine. I’ll stay, but I want a gun.”
He gave his head one firm shake. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” he said with a commanding authority. It stirred something inside me.
“Bray, I have nothing to defend myself with, unless you count the umbrella. And besides, I’m injured now. I can’t even run away if I have to.”
He looked at my ankle buried under the bag of ice. “I somehow doubt a sprained ankle would slow you down.”
“Then you are overestimating your skills as a nurse.”
He shook his head with a quiet laugh. “I have some bandages you can use to wrap your ankle for support. I’ll show you how and then call you a ride home.” He stood and left me stewing in worry about goinghome, and wondering how I was supposed to keep up with my cover, and with two kids, with only one foot.
“Speaking of Del Rio, I got some intel out of Brittany today,” I called down the hall where he’d disappeared.
“Oh?” he called back.
“Yeah. Apparently, she overheard Melanie on the phone one day saying the wordMontrose. When Brittany asked Melanie what it meant, she fired her.”
“Yikes,” Bray said when he returned with a beige spool of stretchy fabric. “That’s a red flag reaction.”
