Clouds cover the sky, hanging thick and with varied shades of gray. Rain’s coming and with it, a darkness that will cover the day.
“I did,” he tells me, leaving a book he’s eyeing to come to stand where I am and hand me the box.
“What do you think?” I ask him.
“I agree with you,” he says simply. “It’s why I like working for you.”
As I’m inspecting it, he delivers news I didn’t think would come so soon. “There may be a room, or tunnel, or shelter of some kind.”
He leans his back against the leather chaise, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “The blueprints for the bridge don’t show anything. So what’s under the bridge is… we don’t know.”
“You’re sure of it?”
He bows his head in acknowledgment. “We’ve kept an eye on the people associated with Jenny being taken. They’re out there, making these rounds and going to the same spots. Last night, one disappeared. Nik was watching him, and then he was gone. There has to be some hideout there we haven’t yet found.”
Slipping the box into my pocket, I ask him, “Did he do surveillance?”
“Not yet.” Uncrossing his arms, he slips his hands into his pants pockets and glances at the unlit fireplace before turning back to me. “I wasn’t sure how you wanted to proceed.”
“You seem distracted,” I tell him, rather than giving orders. It could be a setup. It could be suicide. Carter should know before we decide anything.
“Me?” he questions.
“You didn’t think I’d noticed?”
His answer is to tilt his head. With a cluck of his tongue, he pushes off the chaise and walks to the bookshelf before confiding in me. “We’re distracted for the same reasons, I think.”
Every hair stands on end at the thought of him being distracted by Bethany. The skin across my knuckles stretches and turns white as I crack them with my thumb, one by one and consciously resist forming a fist.
“What reason is that?” I ask and my voice is low.
“A girl.”
“Bethany?” I question and now my tone is threatening.
“She’s yours and I have mine.”
“So you are seeing someone?” I ask him and the edge of jealousy seeps away, although not as easily as it came.
Instead of answering, he suggests, “You should take Bethany to the graveyard. I think it’d be good for you two.”
“You’re good at distraction,” I comment as I eye him moving down the rows of books he’s seen before.
“You go there often…” he pauses before continuing, seeming to struggle with how he wants to say what’s on his mind. Choosing a new book, one I recognize by the distinctive spine, he tells me, “I almost took her there when I picked her up a few days ago. Thought you could meet her there, but then I got your message.”
“Why would she want to go there?”
“She’s empathetic. She reacts to emotion. If she saw the end result of what you’ve been through… it makes things more real. To see loss.”
“She knows what a graveyard looks like. She’s been there herself a time or two.”
“She hasn’t though. She didn’t go to her sister’s funeral. I don’t know about her mother’s either. She was working a lot back then.”
The fact that Seth knows this and I don’t makes me feel a certain way; I hate him for it, but I’m grateful for the message. We work differently, we see things differently. I could have never imagined it’d work so well for so long.
“I have to tell you something before I forget.” Tapping my fingers along the hard walnut shelves, I let my gaze stray down the shelves. “You need to get rid of your shoes.”
“What?” His surprise is met with a huff of humor. “Now you’re going with the distraction method,” he jokes although he’s still waiting for me to explain what the hell I’m talking about.
“The ones you wore when you went to check on Bethany. When she thought there was a break-in.”
“I don’t even know what shoes they were.”
“White with red stripes on the sides,” I answer him and finally make my way to take a seat. “She saw them, so it’s best to get rid of them.” As I sit down, I focus on the box, thinking about it rather than Seth and the fact that Bethany saw his shoes.
“Fuck.” Seth closes the book in his hand with a thwack, lowering his head and shaking it. “That could have ended badly.”
“If she didn’t tell me, I imagine it would have if she’d seen you in them.”
“Are you going to tell her it was Marcus or Romano or some random burglars or what?”
“She’s too smart to think it was random.” Leaning my head back, I close my eyes and hate the way all this started. “I don’t know,” I answer him. “One fucking lie after the next with her.”