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Grant huffed at the air. What might have been a laugh died in his chest cavity. “Quick wit,” he muttered. “She’ll like that.”
My throat tightened.This is why investigations and personal life should never clash.“I wasn’t here for her,” I murmured.
“No. You’re FBI now, aren’t you? S’pose you can’t tell me the case you’re working.”
My eyebrows shot up, a response I couldn’t curb if I wanted to. “Someone kept up with the local news,” I observed, finishing my glass in one.
He eyed me, finally. “They teach you to drink like that, too, son?”
I snorted. “I started drinking the day I went to your house, found the door unlocked, and your daughter’s phone on the bed, my messages and calls unread and unanswered. I woulda called the cops, but they were swarming all over your front lawn. You’re the reason I chose that career, Mister Little.”
He winced. “Lawson. It’s Lawson, now. We…changed it. To protect my wife.”
“Lawson.” I sucked in that extra piece of bullshit and filed it away for later. Archer’s cynicism was rubbing off on me. “I tried to open a file on Bonnie, but that got closed on me, time and again.” I met his gaze, refused to back down.
You wouldn't have anything to do with that, would you? With your money and friends and power?
I didn’t believe a word about everything being to protect the mother who took a turn. Sure, she was damaged as hell from trauma. I got that, loud and clear, and it was horrible. Bonnie wasn’t the same, either. Something happened to them, but no one talked to me, then or now.
“So you could look for her?” he challenged.
“So I could stop what the fuck ever happened to her from happening to any other girl,” I fired back. Swiping a hand through my hair, I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, honestly. What happened, happened. I can’t stop that. Hell, my family isa clusterfuck of its own.” He stiffened, but I barraged on. “I only just got back to Texas after walking away for years. Finally got the case I wanted after all this time. Because the FBI wouldn’t give it to me.”
He frowned. “You're not FBI anymore?”
I shake my head. “Texas Ranger, brand spanking new.” There was no keeping the pride out of my voice. I mightn’t have been sure when Archer first called me, but I damn well was by the time I walked out of his office, hat and badge in hand.
Grant stared at me. For the first time the edge of his mouth smoothed out of the permanent frown it had lived in since he entered the dining room. “Not a bad career choice after all. What’s the case you’ve been chasing all this time, then?”
Night air and sea salt filled my lungs on an inhale that made me wish I was back inside with Bonnie in my arms.
If she’d let me touch her.
“Taking my grandfather and his cohort out of their comfortable retirement homes and putting them into solitary where they fucking well belong. Lot of lives they damaged in their reign of terror. Apparently one of my key witnesses is a local for the season.”
Turning away from the horror on his face, I let the obsession that burned within my chest for too long as an ember take full root.Consume me.
“Thanks for the chat, Mister Lawson.”
I turned away from the man I could have calleddadif all the stars aligned and headed back to find his daughter, if she’d see me. If not, I had work to do. Sleep was meaningless after all these years.
I’d learned to live on little of it.
CHAPTER 4
BONNIE
Snores emanated from the unit next door that we rented. I locked the door between us, keeping my father out as I knew he’d want to talk—or rant—after he and Nash parted ways. Whatever their beef, I wanted no part of it. Those years were so long ago and yet still yesterday but the dread of it all followed me like I couldn't step away from it. From them.
Him.
And yet Nash was here. I wanted him near me, holding my hand like he used to, and asking me to dance with hope in his eyes and a tremor in his fingers.
But the Nash I met again forged his own path and didn’t have time for hope or simple things like dancing. And I was simply the forgotten girl whose childhood fell away before she became an adult who didn’t get to play with simple dreams and things like hope any more.
Swallowing back the way of blackness that threatened to push me to the carpet, weighing me down. I forced one foot in front of the other, glancing back at the interlocking doorway that connected mine and my parent’s room, knowing they would be furious if I left, but I hadn’t been a teenager for a long, long time.
Nor, in all those years, had I claimed any sense of freedom or self at all.
