Eventually, she turned her face into him, covertly wiping her tears on his shirtfront.
“You’ve lost weight,” she said shakily into his chest.
“I haven’t had the benefit of your good cooking,” he replied in a low voice near her ear.
Sophie leaned back and felt herself sinking into the depths of Thomas’s fiery green eyes. Someone cleared his throat from behind them.
“Agents Hargrove and Ellis and I will occupy ourselves out here for a while,” Fisk said levelly. He stepped out of the screen door and waved Thomas and Sophie inside the house. Sophie smiled gratefully at Fisk and grabbed Thomas’s hand.
“Wait,” Thomas said gruffly from behind her when they neared Fisk. He addressed the young agent. “I told you that I had something for you, many weeks ago. I want to give it to you now.”
Fisk’s brows rose in interest. “The tape of Bernard Cokey?”
Thomas nodded.
“We have enough evidence to put away the major players for good, thanks to you,” Fisk told Nicasio. “But if that tape exists, it’d be the icing on the cake.”
“It exists. It’s what my brother and nephew died for,” Thomas said soberly. Much to Sophie’s surprise, he tightened his hold on her hand and led her into the kitchen. He stopped once Fisk had followed them into the house and the screen door had closed behind him.
“Where’s your briefcase, Sophie?” Thomas asked.
“My . . . what?”
“Your briefcase,” Thomas repeated. “The one with all your journal articles inside it?”
“It’s right there, next to the chair,” Sophie said bemusedly, pointing to the supple brown leather bag that was nearly as stuffed as it had been that evening a month ago, when Thomas had helped her to retrieve her spilled papers.
Thomas released her hand and picked up the briefcase. He deposited it on the kitchen counter. Agent Fisk and she watched as Thomas searched amongst the pouches, finally extricating a journal—The Lancet. Sophie’s mouth opened in wonder when he opened the magazine, tapped it on the counter, and a tiny cassette fell out.
He picked it up and handed it to A
gent Fisk, who looked nearly as surprised as Sophie.
“It . . . it’s been there? All along?” Sophie asked Thomas.
Thomas nodded. His gaze flickered over Agent Fisk before it settled on Sophie. He must have read the stunned question in her eyes, because he shrugged.
“I guess part of me trusted you with the truth all along, Sophie.”
Sophie broke out of the trance of Thomas’s eyes when Agent Fisk spoke.
“This is great, Thomas. Thanks. Like I said before, icing on the cake. I’ll take good care of it.”
Sophie continued to stare at Thomas as Fisk left, shutting the back door behind him.
She and Thomas stood alone for the first time in weeks. It seemed like an eternity.
“I was really out of it after Rick and Abel’s funeral,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t know what to think about what I’d heard on that tape . . . about Cokey’s allegation that Joseph Carlisle had given the order for my father to be executed.” He hesitated for a moment, seeming unsure of his words. “I know I told you on that night we met in your office lobby—the night you were leaving for Haven Lake—that I was looking for Andy Lancaster, but I was lying.”
Her eyebrows rose on her head in puzzlement. She took a step toward him.
“I was looking for you, Sophie.”
His deep, husky voice seemed to linger in the air around her after he’d spoken. She couldn’t help but think of that first night he’d come to Haven Lake, when he’d been so disoriented and traumatized . . . how he’d told her the same thing.
I came looking for you, Sophie.
“The amount of stress you were under was extraordinary, Thomas. I’m not blaming you for putting the tape in my briefcase. I just . . . I just don’t understand why you did it.”