Page 24 of Danger Close (Mourningkill #3)

Nothing

Cobra

She’d dismissed me. But I refused to be ignored.

The envelope from Beaufort weighed heavy in my pocket.

It confirmed all of my worst nightmares.

My Princess had a medical history that was far too long, and too intense for doubts.

Either she was a lightning rod for bad luck, was extremely clumsy, or someone had—over the course of years—intentionally hurt her.

The number of times she’d been reportedly “mugged” and taken to the hospital was more than what was statistically probable. The number of broken bones she suffered from falling down the stairs, or bumping into furniture was staggeringly high for someone of her grace.

Occam’s Razor said that the simplest explanation was probably the best… so I needed a name.

“You’re tired?” I asked, feebly.

Talk to me! I wanted to cry out, to shake her, to insist that I was here. That we could get through this together . All she had to do was open the door just a little bit and I’d slip in and do the rest of the work.

But she didn’t move.

“I’d like to sleep.” She did sound tired, but I doubted that was all.

My palm still felt electrified from where I’d touched her forehead. Her temperature was normal. If anything, she felt cold.

I reached down and tucked a bit of her hair behind her ear.

Did my fingers linger too long against her skin?

Yes. Yes! But it felt so right. The contact, the desire.

It wasn’t something as insignificant as lust. It was an overwhelming desire to carve myself into a shape that could contain all that she was.

To surround her, protect her, care for her.

But that wasn’t my job, was it? Not really. Not until she asked me to.

Until then, I’d be the underhanded bastard I was, and snoop where I wasn’t wanted.

“Goodnight, Princess.”

I’d take any excuse to stay. To hold her. When she didn’t say anything, I sighed, resisting the urge to bend over and plant a kiss on her temple.

“I saw you once.” I thought my mind was playing with me when she whispered those words. It was so quiet, I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it. “Or I thought I did.”

I braced my hand against the wall beside the open door. I turned to look at her. She lay on her side, turned away from me. Her position emphasized the beautiful curve of her full hips. I wanted to lay down behind her, spoon her, and hold her while she slept

“Yeah?” I said, when she didn’t continue. “When was this?”

“Trinity was ten years old. We were in between Georgia and North Carolina. Or maybe South Carolina?”

Georgialina. The town name blared like a siren in my brain.

I’d been there on a mission to kill a domestic terrorist that was building a cult-like following of incel recruits.

I’d put a liquid into his cigarettes—just a bit of Paradigm medicine that, once ingested, disrupted oxygen delivery, increased blood pressure.

The autopsy reported that his cause of death was a stroke.

Seeing Teri as I ran with a crowd of hardened, leather-clad bikers had knocked me so far off my game, I almost missed the window to complete my mission. I’d assumed that I just missed my family, and was seeing them in the faces of random travelers.

“I had lost my home, and driven all night. I didn’t know what to do.

Not really. I thought I had a plan… but then I realized how stupid I was.

” She swallowed every criticism like a seed until it grew roots, and tore her apart from the inside out, like a tree that grew in the middle of a ruin.

It cracked at her foundations, and I could see her crumbling, slowly, giving in to it.

“I had to stop for gas.” I could hear her tears, even if I couldn’t see them. “Motorcycles lined up at a bar across the street and I thought I saw you.”

The whimper in her voice was devastating.

“I thought that you saw me. Trinity was in the front seat, asleep. I…”

I leaned my shoulder against the doorframe, pressing my forehead against the wood as my heart sank to my feet. My fists clenched as I shut my eyes. The ugly tendrils of guilt wound its way up my limbs, rooting me to the spot.

All I could do was stand there, and take the pain I deserved.

“You… what, Princess?” I prodded. “What happened?”

I already knew. But if she was going to rip my soul to shreds, then I might as well get it full force.

“I had hope .” I heard her swallow the lump in her throat. “It felt like Christmas morning.”

The pain would never stop, would it? The past was there like a poison that choked us both. So many mistakes. So many misunderstandings. So many missed chances.

“I thought that if I could just get to you, then maybe… maybe everything would be alright. That someone could help me.” She whined.

I’d heard that sound before. It was the sound of her holding back a sob. She’d done it often enough when her mother insulted her in front of me. When her father, in his quest for money, rubbed salt on her every wound.

I hated her parents for it. Now, I could hate myself as well. These tears were because of me.

“I turned off the gas pump. When I looked up again, you were gone.”

I was a coward. I had hidden from her, afraid of the past. Afraid of looking back at that beat-up old sedan, and actually seeing her and Trinity.

I was afraid of being brought to my knees by feelings I’d locked up ten years prior.

Of seeing the missed years of the baby that had grown into a pre-teen without me.

“I think God must hate me,” Teri said. “If there is pain to be distributed, I will get more than my fair share.”

The Teresa Archambeau I knew in Paris had danced in the rain on her one night off. Our date night.

I’d wanted to take her for a walk in the city she adored. A freak downpour cleared the Champs-élysées of all the musicians and troubadours that catered to the whims of tourists.

I was just a poor young man at the time. My half-brother had found me, and it was my last hoorah before I started working for Paradigm, and my fortunes changed. I didn’t have the funds to take her to a grand restaurant. Not at the Parisian price tags, at least.

But her infectious laugh, her joie de vivre … it was contagious, heart warming.

“I was born unlucky.” She twirled around, spinning and spinning, her joy calling to me. I was a moth, and she was the flame. “But I have a boy who’s crazy about me, and my luck is changing!”

I was that boy. She didn’t know it yet, but I wasn’t just crazy about her. I was deeply, passionately in love with her.

“I can make my own luck,” she’d said, her face up to the gray clouds. I picked her up by the waist, and held her high above me, just so I could lower her down, our bodies gliding until her feet were on the ground and we could share a passionate kiss.

She’d bewitched me. I was hers . Her boy. Her man.

Her husband.

It was the sweetest drug that ever existed. Her unrestrained love for me, for our baby. It was that thing worth dying for.

But someone had come in and snuffed her light out. Someone had dimmed her fire, reducing it to nothing but the faintest glow. Maybe it wasn’t one person at fault. Maybe there were many people. And maybe I was one of them.

“You can still make your own luck, Princess.” I threw back words that she’d said when she was young, hoping that I could reignite that spark I’d treasured.

“I’ve made my own luck,” she scoffed. “I made everything so much worse than an unlucky star ever could.”

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I went to her bedside and knelt beside her.

“Teri, I’m so—”

“I have not slept well in years, because I dread the darkness almost as much as I dread tomorrow.”

Teresa Guerro was a woman who broke my heart. She did it in a hundred different ways. Somewhere in that pain, there was this little flame that I remembered – a light that I’d adored. A light our daughter had inherited.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left,” I said, not sure if I was going to make it better or worse. “I was a stupid young man, chasing glory. I didn’t think about how hard it would be for you. I thought sending you money and writing would have been enough until I got back.”

I swallowed, because everything had gotten so absolutely fucked up.

“I never considered that you didn’t get them. I didn’t think it was a possibility.”

She finally turned her head, looking at me from above her slender shoulder. “You never sent money. I… I started having to work weeks after you left to afford that apartment. I worked customer service in the evenings with Trinity on my breast, and took a dozen odd jobs just to–”

“I know.” Frustrated, I ran my fingers through my hair. I knew too much. “I swear to God, I am hanging on by a thread trying to figure out what happened, and I’m–”

I stopped myself before I said too much. If she had any sense of self-preservation, she would have let my statement die, but she didn’t.

“You’re what?” she pried.

I scoffed, bitterness and jealousy roiling through me.

“I’m really, really trying to do the right thing here, Princess. I’m staying as far away from you as I can.”

“Why?”

I let my head drop backwards, hitting the wall with a thud. I grit my teeth.

“Because…” I sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “Because I don’t feel any differently towards you now than I did back then.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you should go to sleep, before I do something you hate me for.”

“Like what?”

“Jesus Christ, Teri. Don’t fucking ask me.”

She was quiet for just a moment. Just one brief respite from everything going on inside me.

Then, in a voice that sounded light and amused, she asked again, “Like what?”

Brat.

“Like crawl into bed with you.”