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Gabriel locked his gaze on the distant sea.
“Gabri?” Raul prodded.
“It reminds me,” Gabriel ground out.
“Of?”
“Everything.” He stopped himself from touching his earlobe. The terror. The pain. His lungs seemed unable to get enough oxygen, as though the mountain air had gotten thinner. He forced himself to breathe in for a count of ten before he exhaled.
“I told Pater you would hate that damned medal, but he said it was important to recognize service to our country in a public way.”
“He told me the same thing.” Gabriel shook his head. “It’s been a year. Yet, all of a sudden, Mikel has come up with two leads on the kidnappers in the past week. That seems like a strange coincidence.”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Raul said. “It’s because Mikel hired that American woman to find the people who abducted you.”
“You mean Quinn Pierson?” Surprise made Gabriel pivot toward Raul.
“She’s some kind of combination of profiler and computer wizard at tracking down criminals. Pater allowed Mikel to hire her and go all out on the investigation. Now he’s getting results.”
Surprise exploded into shock. “Wait, why didn’t he go all out on the investigation before he hired Quinn? The trail is harder to follow the colder it gets.”
“Mierda! I forgot you didn’t know.” Raul scraped his fingers through his hair. “Pater wouldn’t allow Mikel to bring you into the investigation because he wanted to give you time to recover. Psychologically. He didn’t want to interfere with your progress.” He shrugged at Gabriel. “Now he thinks you’re strong enough to handle identifying the abductors.”
Gabriel pushed up from the boulder, his hands scraping on the rough basalt, and walked to the edge of the overlook, a boil of anger and frustration searing through his chest. “We should have started the day I was released.”
“We did start. Mikel interviewed you for several days, remember? You shut yourself up in your rooms after every session and wouldn’t talk to anyone.” Raul walked up to grab his arm and pull Gabriel around to face him. “I banged on your door, but you wouldn’t open it. I thought you were going to kill yourself.”
Gabriel turned his head toward the vista to avoid his cousin’s anguished face. “Why does everyone think I’m suicidal?”
“Maybe because the kidnappers ruined your life.”
Gabriel’s fury turned cold. He skewered Raul with his gaze. “You give them too much credit. My life is not ruined.”
“You’re selling your guitars. If that doesn’t mean your life is crap, I don’t know what does.”
Gabriel’s fury transmuted into guilt. He had not considered how his behavior might appear to his family. Without his music, he had drifted untethered—and often despairing—as he struggled to find some new purpose for his life. The burning passion that had driven him to practice for hours had slowly and painfully flickered out, leaving him with gray ash in his soul.
But he had never truly considered ending his life. He had obligations to the people and the country that he loved.
The anger flared again. “You know me better than that, Raul.”
“But you’ve changed. You’re”—Raul searched for the words—“closed up. You don’t let anyone come near you.”
“After the music was gone, I was lost.”
“For fuck’s sake, I wanted to help you! We all did!”
Gabriel held up his hand. “Some roads must be walked alone. Only I could decide what direction my life would take.”
“I thought you were shutting me out because on some level you blamed me for what happened.”
“And you’ve never forgiven me for taking your place.” Exhaustion settled on Gabriel like a sodden blanket.
“I’m sorry,” Raul whispered and then cleared his throat. “I hated how I felt, but I couldn’t seem to stop it. Yet you were the one who was the injured party.”
“Which made it worse,” Gabriel said.
“Yeah. Guilt piled on top of guilt. That doesn’t excuse it, but”—Raul shrugged—“it turns out being a prince sucks sometimes.”
