“From?”
Travis pulled his hand back, revealing the cursive writing on the front. “Kylie.”
Gage stopped, his legs locking. “What?”
Travis turned the envelope so Gage could read it. “Evidently, she wrote us a letter and left it with the attorney. Said we were to get it in the event of her death.”
Although he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, he asked anyway. “What does it say?”
Travis shrugged. “I haven’t opened it. Can’t.”
Gage’s attention was locked on the standard white envelope and the familiar handwriting. He knew Travis didn’t mean it was physically impossible to open the letter, but rather he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Gage understood fully because, looking at it now, his first instinct was to back away from it.
Although he was a far cry from getting over what had happened, he felt stronger than he had in the beginning. That first week … he’d been a mess. And it had taken days for him to be able to breathe without tears clogging his throat. But suddenly all the progress he’d thought he’d made faded away, leaving him breathless and sad.
“Should we read it?” Travis asked, his voice scratchy and raw.
Gage looked at him, looked at the letter.
If he read a letter from Kylie … especially one from the grave…
Gage shook his head. He couldn’t do it.
“I was gonna tell you,” Travis said softly. “I’ve only had it for a couple of days. Wasn’t gonna open it without you.”
That wasn’t what Gage was worried about. Strangely, he believed Travis, knew the man wouldn’t keep something like that from him. Not unless it was to protect him.
“Do you want to open it now?” Travis repeated, the letter still sitting there between them.
“No,” he blurted, backing up. “No, I don’t.”
He felt Travis’s eyes on him as he left the room, leaving the letter and Travis behind him. Now he had to deal with a fresh wave of grief.
Chapter Fifteen
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Brantley woke on Saturday morning with amigraine hangover.
While he hated the feeling, he would take it over the actual headache any day. And last night’s had been brutal. It had hit him midafternoon and lasted well into the night.
Although he rarely tried to tie the headache back to a trigger since they seemed random and indiscriminate in their assault, he wanted to believe this one was brought on by the stress of the past week. The winter storm that had all but leveled central Texas had been brutal, leaving a mess in its wake.
There were still large portions of the area without power and water, and while they’d lost both for a short time, it appeared they were up and running despite the boil notice in effect.
Of course, the storm had completely derailed their investigation, mainly because it had shut down the town and the neighboring cities. Having been forced to lock down, they hadn’t been able to actively search for Juliet. The Sniper 1 Security team had been impacted, the storm taking a bite out of the Dallas area as well.
Now that it was over, he hoped they could get back on track, because while they hadn’t found her, Brantley had thought they were making progress. Thanks to JJ and Luca’s combined efforts, they’d made a connection between Juliet and a computer programmer by the name of Samuel Aldering. It wasn’t a huge breakthrough, but they were able to track him down and learned Juliet had had an affair with the man, something good ol’ Sammy wasn’t proud of, obviously. And thanks to some blackmail on Juliet’s part, Sam had helped her to hack into a few camera feeds and a phone.
The information wouldn’t necessarily lead to them finding her now, but it did fill in some of the holes and answered a few questions.
“You awake?”
Brantley rolled over toward the sound of Reese’s voice. He offered a small smile as an answer.
“How’re you feelin’?”
“Like I was run over by a truck. The headache’s gone, at least.” But that meant he would be moving slowly, his body’s natural response as it tried to avoid doing something that might bring the pain back.
