“I don’t know, you tell me. Maybe this is a long-con and part of your plan.”
“My plan was to end up with my daughter holding me at gunpoint?”
“Seems pretty on-brand to me. Just hope I don’t pull this trigger.” My jaw was nearly locked shut while I spoke.
“Erin—” Bray said from behind me.
“I’m fine,” I spat over my shoulder.
“You should listen to your boyfriend, sweetheart,” my father said. “I don’t know what kind of deal you’ve got going, but I’m not invisible. With a reputation like mine, my death would be hard to make disappear if your finger gets too twitchy there.”
“You have no idea what I can make disappear,” Bray said. The cold threat in his voice slid down my spine like ice, in the best way.
“Okay, easy, Romeo,” my father said. “No need to get defensive, especially if you want anything to do with my daughter—”
“Don’t you dare,” I warned. “Mylifeisnoneof your business.” My finger moved closer to the trigger. Angry tears blurred my eyes.
My father flinched. Maybe it was the look on my face. Maybe it was the fact that his life was in my very angry hands. Maybe he’d simply finally run out of deceit. Whatever it was, I saw something in him break. Something previously unbendable finally surrendered to decency. “I don’t know where that rock is, and you can trust me on that. But I heard through the grapevine Joseph Wallace died in Houston, so maybe start there.”
Hearing him say Wallace’s name threw me for a loop. They’d both been there on that critical night, and they were both giant figures in my life, but I’d never seen them in the same room. They were two spheres that never overlapped in my world. But of course my father knew who Wallace was. Maybe they’d even met before.
“You think that’s relevant?” I asked, having yet to follow up on this same lead since Bray told me.
My father shrugged. “Houston is the last place they both were—the rock and Wallace. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”
I had to agree he was right. By the look on his face, we weren’t going to get anything else out of him, and I wasn’t in the mood for more of a reunion than we’d already had.
I lowered the gun and took a step back. “Bye, Dad. Enjoy prison.”
“Feel free to visit any time you like!” he called after me.
I ignored him and handed Bray his gun. I climbed in the carand shut the door, ready to go home. The closed door dulled sounds of them shuffling my father back into the van. Bray and Simmons exchanged a few words outside before they both returned to the car.
The ride back to the condo was silent aside from the smooth jazz satellite station Simmons had the radio tuned to. Bray fumed in the back seat beside me. I assumed he was saving his lecture for privacy. I knew he’d be upset with me, but I also knew my father would take the bait, and I needed to know. I finally had my answer: I was the child of a selfish, cruel man who couldn’t be trusted and would always put himself first. That night in the hotel room when he’d shot the ghost and told me to run might have been the only honest moment of care I’d ever receive from him—and he might have only done it because I was still nearly a child then. Now that I was an adult, I was fully on my own.
My heart split a crack, and I hoped Bray wasn’t going to go too hard on me, because that one really hurt. I’d assumed, sure. But to see it play out in action shot an incurable pain through my entire body.
When we arrived back at the condo, Simmons marched inside and headed for the guest room, leaving me and Bray alone in the kitchen. The dark night twinkled outside the windows. The soft yellow lights inside cast the room in a warm glow. But still, the air felt frigid and tense.
Bray busied himself at the liquor cabinet, this time skipping a bottle of wine and going straight for scotch. He didn’t offer me a glass.
“So, are you gonna yell at me now?” I asked, and watched him pour two fingers’ worth of caramel liquid into a crystal tumbler.
He held up a hand. “Don’t. Just … don’t.” He set the bottle beside his glass and recorked it.
“I’m sorry, but I knew he’d go for the gun, and I knew I could disarm him. It was no big deal.”
He had the glass halfway to his mouth when he stopped and huffed a breath. He shook his head. “No big deal?No big deal?Erin, he had a gun to your head!Mygun! So I couldn’t even do anything to help!” His angry voice ballooned into the room.
“Bray, I had it under control. You didn’t have to worry.”
He scoffed. “If someone has a gun to your head, I’m going to worry, Erin. I don’t care what kind of Jason Bourne shit you’re capable of.” He finally took a swig of his drink.
“Jason Bourne is amateur hour,” I said with an arched brow.
“This is not the time for jokes.”
“It’s not a joke.”
