I conditioned her for you. I taught her to shudder every time she’s touched. To flinch. To cringe.
God damn him.
Tag dropped his hand and shifted away from her. Touching her, even in comfort, might just add to her stress.
“Maybe they recognized it because he was arrested? Maybe that’s how they knew it?”
“Maybe.” But Tag doubted it. According to what Rio had told him over the phone, Rhys Evans and his partner worked in the Major Crimes Unit. Which meant they handled exactly the kind of crimes their unit title indicated. Major crimes. And something told him arresting a fleabag druggie wouldn’t be considered major. It was much more likely the tattoo had been recognized because of something else—something that would fall beneath the Major Crimes’s umbrella. Like a murder.
When the two detectives entered the room again a few minutes later, they did so with rock hard expressions and a single file folder.
Yeah. Not good. Not fucking good at all.
This time, when the urge to wrap his arm around her hit him, he didn’t fight it off. She’d need the comfort. The support.
No doubt she’d been telling herself she was prepared for this eventuality. But she wouldn’t be.
Nobody was ever ready to hear that someone they loved had died.
Her head buzzing, Sarah stared at the photo in front of her, at the narrow white chest, with its underdeveloped musculature and its thin trail of reddish hair. At the barbwire enclosed names.
Rosemary and Robert.
Their mom and dad. The design and names were too specific to be a coincidence.
Too familiar for it to belong to anyone but Sean. The buzzing turned into thick white static.
No…no…no.
Heart palpitations joined the buzzing in her head.
She’d helped him pick that tattoo. Helped him choose the design. He’d been fourteen. It had been six months since their parents had died. He’d been so young…so angry…so determined. She’d known him well enough to realize that if she didn’t allow it and accompany him, he’d find some underground place on his own. Someplace that wouldn’t care that he was underage. Wouldn’t sterilize their needles or wear gloves or clean their equipment.
So she’d locked down her misgivings, found the parlor, made the appointment, and looked through the design books with him. She’d pushed for a heart. He’d sneered at that, called it sissy. The barbwire designs though, they’d appealed to his adolescent sense of masculinity.
Her fingers quaked as she reached out to trace the tattoo.
No….no…no.
“It’s a coincidence.” She rasped out the denial, hearing the shaky, hollow disbelief in her voice. Knowing it for the lie it was.
Too familiar to be a coincidence.
It wasn’t true. Couldn’t be true. That couldn’t be Sean on that icy, gray table. Couldn’t be his lifeless chest in front of her.
She was supposed to protect him. Keep him safe. Keep him alive…
…she’d promised…she’d promised she’d take care of him.
Promised.
“Sarah.” Brett’s voice came from a distance, down a hollow, empty tunnel. Something screeched, like wood against tile, and the warm weight of his arm, which was already wrapped around her waist, tightened.
But that screech echoed in her ears—shrieked in her head—drowned out the buzzing from before. Just went on and on and on…into infinity.
He pulled her closer, until their chairs were side by side and she was tucked against him, his heat burning along her left side like a distant, hot sun.
“That’s the tattoo?”
The question came from a distance. Muffled and warped.
“Yeah.” Brett’s response was tight. “Pretty sure.”
A pause. “But not absolutely certain?”
“I never saw it. But Jesus. From her reaction, it’s pretty obvious it’s him.”
“No.” Sarah pulled back from the table, pulled away from the warm band of strength around her waist, pulled away from the possibility of comfort. She didn’t deserve comfort or solace. “It’s a coincidence. It has to be.”
“Sweetheart, you know it’s him.” Concern rang through Brett’s tone as his arm tightened around her waist, dragging her against him again.
“Okay.” Another silence. Then— “Do you know what her brother looked like? Would you be able to identify him if you saw him?”
“Yeah. I saw him a couple of times,” Brett said, his voice completely flat now.
As though she were watching a movie, or locked in a nightmare, she saw the blond detective ease open the manila envelope in front of him and slide another photo across the table.
Reddish-blond hair. Closed eyes. Narrow shoulders against the icy glitter of stainless steel. And that tattoo. That damn tattoo…
Agony knotted in her chest. Sarah closed her eyes and turned her face away.