Page 52 of Perfect Order

You don’t know what it was like for us. We were one soul. We shared one lifeline. And I was late. Because of it, she’s gone. I can’t shake that feeling.

You’re wrong. I do understand.

Were you a twin, Kane?she fires back.

No, I was a soldier. The lives I was responsible for may not have shared my own blood, but their blood is still on my hands.This time I’m pissed enough to be the one who blocks her, just as Beckett’s phone rings. I see Carys’s name on the caller ID and answer it. “Hello, Carys. Let me get Beckett.”

“Please don’t interrupt him if he’s in the middle of something.” Her voice is droll.

“Do I look like I have a death wish?” I mutter aloud.

“Fortunately, no. And if you value your hearing, you may want to take cover. He’s not going to be happy.”

“Thanks for the warning.” I bound up the stairs to the back of Paige’s lanai and knock. Beckett’s rude “Go away, Kane” doesn’t deter me. “It’s Carys. She says it’s important.”

“Crap, Paigey. I need to take this.” Beckett reaches for his phone.

Paige shifts in his arms but doesn’t move out of them.

I slide out of their view and head back toward the side yard to ignore the ache of my conversation with Lee.

Later that night, an email from an address I don’t recognize from the Hudson server appears in my work inbox. It’s titledMy Blood. After running it through the normal checks, I open it and swiftly inhale every ounce of air in the room.

The first picture is two babies swaddled in matching pink outfits.

The second is blonde toddlers dressed for a birthday party.

The third is two little girls lying together eating carrots in the grass.

More and more photos of two girls identical in every way until they got older and began dressing differently. It suddenly becomes easy to pick out Leanne from Kylie. And I ache when the last image is the blogger StellaNova capturing Lee singing over Kylie’s grave long after the funeral service is over.

The message is simple.Every time I close my eyes, this is what I see. She was the other half of me. She died and I know there was something she needed to tell me. In that, and in so many other ways that have been pointed out to me, I let her down.

I have to live with that.

But I owe you an apology, Kane. I’m so deeply sorry for those you lost, soldier.

I hope you know, that you believe down to your soul, there was likely nothing you could do to have changed the outcome of his death. You made the only call you could. He was a traitor to everything you were fighting for. How dare he betray everything you stood for, bled for? You did everything by the book. What was the alternative? You could have died yourself if you didn’t take the shot.

You were right, and I was wrong. I guess we all have our own ghosts. They pop up everywhere, don’t they? Shadowing us no matter how far we try to disperse them.

It almost makes a person wish they could become one to escape the pain.

Terrified I drove this woman into doing something drastic, I immediately reply to the email, only to find the email address doesn’t exist. Frowning as I begin to dial Caleb, I wonder how she obtained my work email. The minute he picks up, I’m royally chewed out, ending with “I said friend her, not lecture her.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” he reassures me.

“She’s holding on to guilt she’s likely to make a mistake,” I press.

“That’s not in question, Kane. It’s why I read you in. But the game is already in play. It’s too late to pull her out now. Especially since she now has to be in the headspace to perform in front of millions of people at the Grammys.”

“The call from Carys,” I surmise.

“You got it. I don’t know what you said to her, but way to go, hotshot. She said for now if we have anything to share about the case to work through Carys. She doesn’t want to speak with any of us.”

“Caleb, did you give her my email?” I question.