Dearly Departed, page 15
Chapter Eighteen
Paris
It worked. The trackers worked! The little green dot moved across my map, the perpetrator already out of the building and making their way through downtown Applechester. While it would be easy to jump into a car and trail them, there was more of a risk of being caught. I could control everything in my office in a way I couldn’t control it on the street. Besides, once I had a face, we could go hunting.
I grabbed a pencil and a sticky note. The tracker sent a signal as soon as it was jostled for more than one minute. Assuming the perp was on foot, was not using any mobility devices, and they were average height with an athletic build—like most SHAP employees who could also access the evidence room and climb a ladder—would mean they would’ve been in the building between roughly 9:46 am to 9:55 am.
After opening my laptop and launching a program to block my identity, I logged in the SHAP database and accessed the security system. I glanced at the clock. I had about three minutes before someone noticed me poking around.
I scrubbed through the recorded footage, scanning for something, someone that didn’t belong. In a second screen, I piggybacked street footage from traffic cams and security cameras in SHAP-friendly businesses. My eyes shifted to my phone. Perp was still moving at a steady pace. Applechester wasn’t a small town, but it was a quiet one, and someone aggressively walking the morning of an ice storm was rare.
They paused at the corner. I pulled up cam footage from the intersection. A man with a dark coat, aviator sunglasses, a baseball cap tugged low, short beard, and a black shoulder bag was crossing the street. Something twinged inside of me.
Fear.
No. Dread.
This was the man following Eliza at Café Eleonora. And that coat…I swear I could feel the texture of it in my memory. I jumped back over to the SHAP footage, scanning for the same man. There. Walking through the back entrance and getting into the service elevator. I switched to the evidence room floor cameras.
The elevator doors opened, he took one step out, and then he disappeared. “What?!” I whisper-shouted. I paused the video, toggling between the two frames. He was holding a tablet, and his hand swiped the screen before he disappeared. That meant he could get into the system.
I’d expected an employee with access to the evidence room would be the one to steal the venom and vixen, someone with a plausible excuse to be there. This was so far beyond. I only knew two people who could hack the SHAP security cameras from a tablet—me and Dallas. So who was this guy? And why did he look so familiar?
I toggled back one more time. He slipped his sunglasses on the second before he stepped out of the elevator car. Zooming in on the black and white footage, I let out a single laugh of disbelief.
Wow, Paris, you need more sleep. I shook my head and looked again. My gut clenched, my chest filled with cement, making my lungs unable to suck in oxygen.
Impossible. I had to be hallucinating.
I snatched my phone and checked on the trackers. The signal was gone. Completely gone. I refreshed the signal, pinged the trackers, and restarted the app. Nothing worked. Which meant either someone had found them and removed them, or they had blocked the signal transmission.
Dallas was the only other person alive who knew both how to disable the security cameras for the evidence room and how to detect and block the trackers I’d made, information I’d kept out of both the manual and official report.
But Dallas could have told someone.
Holy shit. What the hell was happening? What I thought I knew was battling what I was seeing with my own eyes. My brain rejected the possibility because that would mean…
A cacophony of expletives whipped around my head as my shaking fingers moved—seemingly independent of conscious thought—to delete the footage. I didn’t trust anyone else with this knowledge. Dallas had to be involved, and until I got answers, I couldn’t risk exposing whatever he was working on.
Not again.
My heart was thrumming so loudly, it blocked out all other noise in my ears. It was impossible. The man standing in that elevator was impossible. The trackers disappearing were impossible.
After deleting the footage, I closed my laptop with shaking hands. Grabbing my phone, I dialed Dallas and paced aggressively. Directly to voicemail. I called again. This time it rang five times, and then went to voicemail.
“I can do this all day,” I told the phone as I dialed again, then a fourth time.
On the fifth, Dallas picked up. “What?!” he hissed. “I’m working.”
“I put some trackers on the vixen in evidence. They were stolen this morning.”
Silence.
I pulled the phone away from my ear to make sure he hadn’t hung up. “Do you want to explain to me why a dead man was on the security footage before he looped the cameras?”
He swore.
“Dallas, where the fuck are you?”
There was rustling and the sound of an engine starting. “Meet me at the gym in an hour, okay? We’ll talk then. And Paris? You can’t tell a soul.”
“Fuck you.”
“Promise me! I’ll explain it all later.”
I hung up then let the phone drop. I fell into my chair and put my head between my legs, breathing in and out. Black spots danced at the edge of my vision.
He was alive. Ben was alive! He’d dyed his hair and grown a beard, but he was wearing the same coat I’d dragged out of the water.
A knock at the locked door shot my heart back to racing. Eliza.
Chapter Nineteen
Eliza
My fist clenched around the strap of my bag, anxiety and anticipation making my legs feel like springs. I was bouncing in place, waiting for the door to open. It was impossible to forget the day we placed the trackers and now, we were finally getting answers.
Paris’s office door opened, but only wide enough to stick her head out. “False alarm,” she said. “They ripped off the trackers and threw them in a trash can just outside the building. No clear footage. I’m sorry, I just figured it out.”
My body deflated as if I were one of the flailing inflatable guys and someone had pulled the plug. “What’s our next step? Why are you blocking the door?”
“I’m not feeling great, incoming migraine.” She rubbed at the center of her forehead. “Can I text later? I think I’m going to work from home.”
Paris didn’t get headaches in the center of her forehead. She got them up the back of her neck and over her left eye. I studied her shaking fingers, the perspiration around her hairline, the way her chest rose and fell. She was having a panic attack and was trying to hide it.
Was she having one because something happened with the trackers, or something didn’t happen with the trackers? Also, we’d agreed not to take the files outside of the office, just in case, so how would she work from home? None of what she was saying made sense.
“Let me in,” I ordered.
“No, I—”
I crowded her. She was taller and stronger than me, but she stepped back, as if it were too much energy to force me out. I moved fully in and then closed the door behind me, locking it.
The moment we were alone together, all the feelings from last night, the vulnerabilities, the longing, the desperation crashed over me like a wave. I pressed my hand to the door for balance. “I’m going to ask you a question and I need the truth.”
She didn’t answer, just stood in profile, staring at the wall, lips pressed together. Her right hand was picking at the cuticles on her left.
I reached out and grabbed her hand, smoothing it in mine. “Was Dallas working with Ben when he died?”
Paris’s entire body tensed. I had my answer.
“On what?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“What do you know?”
A sharp breath broke from her chest, and she pulled her hand away, covering her face for a long moment before continuing. “No one’s connected you to Ben, at least no one who didn’t know you personally. The HR file with Ben’s address and paycheck information has been deleted. Daisy’s birth certificate was altered so his name’s not on it. You never married. You’re not linked in the SHAP system.”
My hand fell away from the door, my chest empty, achy. “It was you? You were the one who was hiding the files while Javier was looking?”
“Whether or not you want anything to do with me, I’ll always protect you. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”
I staggered back, hitting the door, the confession still swirling between us. “You changed Daisy’s birth certificate?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Why? Ben’s death was ruled an accident.” I didn’t believe it, and clearly neither did she.
She swallowed hard. “I don’t know who was after Ben and I don’t know what they were looking for, but I do know Dallas is still working on that case. I figured if they got desperate, they may do some digging, leading back to me.” She hesitated, then added, “Or worse, leading back to you and Daisy. The more barriers, the better.”
Had she been protecting me and Daisy all this time? “How long have you been covering things—how have you been?”
She stared at the wall behind me, as if trying to decide how much to share. “A while.”
My stomach had crawled into my chest cavity and seemed content with staying there. “So, it wasn’t just an accident.” A statement, a confirmation.
Paris blinked and refocused on me. Her look was clear. No, this wasn’t an accident. “I knew Ben before I met you. Not well, but through Dallas,” she admitted, quietly. “I didn’t realize you were his Eliza until after…well, you know. When I made the connection, I started to make sure you were safe.”
“How? How have you been able to do it? SHAP’s security system is supposed to be hackproof.”
“I helped build the system. I know the back entrances and exits.”
I blinked at her. “You? Built the security system?” How had we dated for nearly a year and I didn’t know this?
She slumped against my desk, as if her legs couldn’t hold her upright. “As much as we talked, we didn’t communicate. At least not more than ‘yes, please,’ and ‘right there.’” Her smile was bitter. “You’re so charming, so adept at turning the conversation away from you, and I…wanted us to be on the same level. So, I kept my cards close to my chest, too.”
I blinked, cheeks burning from the call out. Keeping people out was a trauma reflex, one that had proven useful time and again. But useful didn’t mean healthy. “What a great couple we were.”
She released a watery laugh and stood, walking the four steps to the window, staring out across the parking lot. “Yet your claws are still sunk in me so deep, it hurts to breathe.”
I leaned against her desk, wrapping my fingers around the edge. “You’re not easy to get over either,” I admitted. “I can’t believe you built the security system.”
“Helped. I don’t have the expertise to build it from scratch. For that you can thank all the supernaturals. But I worked on programing portions of it, like the employee log in system. I got my masters in both software and electrical engineering.”
“You’re only thirty-three. You had to come to SHAP right out of school.”
She stuck her hands in her back pockets, still not looking at me. “Graduated high school a year early, spent my summers at computer camps, then sped through undergrad. Computers come easy. It’s everything else that’s hard.” She looked over her shoulder and gave a brief, self-deprecating smile.
I began to reframe how I thought of Paris after the last twenty-four hours. She was used to feeling like a burden, which probably had something to do with her home life. She sped through school and graduated young into a male-dominated field. She didn’t seem to have a huge circle of friends but would do a lot to protect people she cared about…like drive to their house during an ice storm.
I could picture a shy, quiet Paris, glasses on, staying home alone with her computer, striving to be the best at what she did, to prove she was worthy of love. Now, adult Paris was using her knowledge and skills to protect me and my daughter. Warmth eased across my chest, and I took a shuddering breath.
I still love you, I didn’t say. Tell me there’s hope.
She removed her hands from her back pockets and wrapped them around her middle. I didn’t miss their shaking. I pushed off her desk and walked over to her, sliding my arms around her waist. I pressed my head into the spot between her shoulder blades.
Finally.
“Paris, tell me what happened that night. Please. Please,” I pleaded. Tell me so we can somehow move past this. So, I can hear more about your childhood and have more breakfasts together, and spend nights in your arms again. I hadn’t spoken the words aloud, but she’d heard them anyway.
Her hands covered her face for a long moment, and I wondered if she was looking for a future scenario. She gasped, her shoulders rolling forward. She was crying.
I turned her around and pulled her into my arms like she did to me the night before, running my hands through her hair and rocking her gently back and forth. “Talk to me, honey,” I begged in a low voice.
She fisted my coat at the use of her nickname. Then, she sank into me as if she’d given up the fight. “Dallas texted me ‘if anything happens, you were always my favorite sister’. I tried calling him, but he didn’t answer. I broke several national security laws finding his location.”
I held her tighter. If Jake ever texted me that…I didn’t know what I would do. Thank god Paris had been there to save him. I kissed the top of her head, a secret thank you as she continued her story.
“I found him, cause I’m fucking great at computers.”
I laughed softly. “You are.”
She sucked in a broken breath and let it out slowly. “I followed him and…” She shook her head.
Her voice was barely louder than the sound of my breath, so I held it, desperate for answers. I squeezed her tighter, hoping to encourage her to continue.
“I don’t even understand what I saw.”
The weight of her words slammed into me like a cannonball, knocking all the breath from my body. “What did you see?”
“I was at an angle and couldn’t see anyone’s faces. It was an abandoned warehouse. I recognized the backs of Dallas and Ben, and they had three guns pointed at them. I didn’t have a lot of weapons, but I had smoke bombs. I threw two then grabbed my brother, and Ben ran out after us.”
“You threw smoke bombs at people with guns?” I asked, incredulously.
“Simple but effective.” She swiped at the tears on her face with force. “Ben carried me out, refusing to let me help. Then, he followed me to make sure we weren’t tailed, but we were. I saw the headlights. As soon as I got past the bridge, I heard crunching metal.” She paused, her body shaking. “He was just gone.”
I was crying now, and we both gripped on to each other as if an ocean was trying to tear us apart.
“I tried to get to him,” she promised. “The water was so cold. I thought I had him, but it was too dark and I was out of air. I-I only came up with his coat.”
Each word slammed into my chest with the force of an air gun. Ben had died trying to protect her, trying to make sure his friend’s sister was safe. It was heroic, and it proved just what an amazing man he’d been. And Paris dove into a freezing river in the dark to try and rescue him.
“If I hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have—” a sob cut her off.
“You didn’t ask him to follow you? You didn’t know he was there until you showed up?” I had to know.
She shook her head.
Everything I thought I knew about that night had been wrong. I assumed Paris was the one who’d led him there, had targeted him specifically. That she’d somehow arranged for him to be on the bridge with her. But it was Dallas and Ben who’d made the decision. Paris was only trying to do what she did best—protect her loved ones.
The truth washed over me in a wave so unexpected, I lost my breath. She hadn’t killed Ben. And she likely saved her twin’s life, too by giving him the upper hand.
I sucked in air, and it felt like the first breath I’d taken in five months. “You didn’t kill him. If you hadn’t been there, it’s likely you would’ve lost Dallas, too.”
She pulled back and stared at me, face splotched red and damp with tears. She was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. “What did you say?”
Her expression was contorted in misery, but not deception. I raised my hands to cradle her face. She closed her eyes and pressed a soft kiss to my right palm. Using my thumbs, I brushed away the newest tears. “It’s not your fault,” I whispered.
Her eyes opened and she searched mine for a long moment. Then, she reached out, dug into my hair, and brought her mouth to mine.
Finally, finally, finally.
The missing piece of my heart snapped back into place with a jolt. I cried out when her lips moved against mine. Relief flooded through me, extinguishing the ball of anger in my chest and making my head spin. This wasn’t a sexy kiss, but a teeth-mashing, sloppy, desperate reconnection. I fisted her shirt, desperate to be closer, futilely wishing we could somehow go back in time and not waste nearly half a year apart.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, sucking in air and then kissing her again for a long moment before moving my lips to the soft skin below her jaw. She tasted sweet, like honey, like hope.
She tilted her head back and sucked in a sharp breath. “How could I tell you I was the reason your fiancé was dead?”
“But you’re not.” I kissed her lips again. “And we’ve lost so much time.”
“We did.” She wrapped her arms around my back, lifting me a few inches off the ground as her lips returned to mine. She parted me with her tongue, kissing me deep.
Moments led to minutes led to memories, with our hands gripping and caressing, our mouths only separating for desperate gasps of air. I’d never forget this homecoming. Panting, she set me back on the ground, burying her face in my neck.
