“Hmm. So, the hero mentality started young, I see.”
“Hero?”
“Yes, Ramesh said he thinks you’re a hero.”
Color spotted his cheeks. “What else did he say?”
I shifted to tuck my legs up underneath me and pulled his sweater tighter. “Let’s see …” I trailed off like the list was long and watched his face grow redder. “He said you play the cello.”
A laugh bubbled out of him. “Ah, yes. That was my dad’s attempt at turning me into something more refined than a kid throwing punches on the playground.”
“Did it work?”
He stroked his jaw, and then leaned back with his arm draped over the sofa’s back. “I’d say so.”
The wine had gone to my head, and I so desperately wanted to crawl to him and tuck myself under his arm. Instead, I did something even more reckless. “Can I get a refill?” I held up my glass before sipping the last drops.
He eyed the dregs of red clinging to the glass like he was considering the right answer. “Sure, but then we have to talk about serious things.” He stood from the sofa and reached for my glass.
“I think your musical talents and history with playground violence areveryserious things.”
He snorted a laugh and headed for the door. “Be right back.”
I snuck a peek over my shoulder while he was gone. The prison had never left my mind. It perched like a hawk on a high branch, waiting to strike. I somehow knew, deep in my gut, when Wallace sent me here, my path would cross with my father. And here we were. Closer in physical proximity than we’d been in years, and the case that had sent him to prison, and my life into an endless spiral of alternating identities, was stalking me like a hungry wolf.
I closed my eyes and saw his face from that night in the hotel. The last time I’d seen him. The fear. The failure. The realization we’d finally been caught. The pain.
“Here you go.” Bray’s voice cut into my memory and made me jump. “Sorry,” he said when he noticed.
I shook myself and took the wineglass with both hands. “Thank you.” I gulped half of it in one go. I noted he had not refilled his glass, but he did sit closer to me when he returned to the couch. He landed where the angled cushions met, close enough his knee almost touched mine.
“It’s a shame such a beautiful piece of waterfront property is a prison,” he said and nodded in the direction I’d been looking.
“Big shame,” I echoed and downed another gulp, wanting to move from the subject, though I knew we were headed toward another unpleasant one. I considered going and getting the wine bottle in preparation.
“So,” Bray said, getting to business by his tone. “We’ve probably only got a few days before someone at the DSA notices we’re not in Del Rio. I can buy us some time, but we’re going to have to move quick if we’re going to do this on our own. In my eyes, solving this case proves to my mom—the director—I’m capable, and sets you free from Olena. It’s a win-win.”
I figured he’d been thinking something of the sort. “Easier said than done,” I said with a frown. “You realizesolving this casemeans finding that diamond, right?”
“Yes.” He said it so simply. As if I hadn’t been unsuccessfully looking for it in back channels during every spare second I had for the past ten years. “We need to find it and officially lock it up in evidence, and then Olena has no choice but to trust you don’t have it.”
Lock it up, what a shame, a sinister little voice said in theback of my mind. I tried to quiet it by keeping my eyes on Bray’s determined face.
“Right. Do you happen to know where it is?” I asked.
“No, but do you?”
I gaped at him. “Are you still on this?No, Bray. I don’t know where it is. If I did—”
Suddenly, he shifted and removed my glass so he could set it aside. He took both my hands in his. His large palms burned warm against my skin. “Erin, you were the last one to see it that night. Maybe if you try, you can remember what happened.” The fire danced in his pleading eyes, setting the gray off into shimmering silver. He looked almost otherworldly.
“I—” My voice caught in my throat. A cocktail of emotion swelled in my chest: shock he was touching me, desire for him to put his hands other places, but most of all, fear at what he was asking me to do. I swallowed against my dry mouth and found my voice. “Bray, you’re asking me to remember the worst night of my life.”
His hands tightened around mine. “I know, and I’m sorry. But I’ve been there too. I know what it’s like to have shock blank out parts of your memory, believe me.” He paused and another emotion swelled in my chest. This one warm and aching at the same time.
Of coursehe knew. He’d almost died in a traumatic situation. I’d almost been shot that night, and hehadbeen shot.
“Calvin …” His first name slipped from my trembling lips by accident.
