have different priorities now. None of us consider them any less important. Do not apologize.”
Colin held his stare for a long, focused moment then nodded, features taut with regret. “I wanted to be a part of this good thing you’re doing.”
“You have been,” Max insisted. “You will be. You’re a keeper of our next generation.” And as he spoke, Max’s fingers laced through Cee Cee’s to squeeze tight. Before she could respond, he let go and stood. “We need to get busy answering your question. Detective, I’ll walk out with you.”
She rose without looking at him to address the now slumped Terriot in a firm tone. He didn’t need her sympathy. “Rest. Keep us posted. You’re part of our family now.”
Eyes shimmering, Colin nodded as the door closed on his worries.
The ride down had Max and Charlotte cautiously separate in more than just distance. Neither knew how to cross that testy space because neither knew the cause.
“Who has the juice to raise the dead?”
Max snuck a glance at the stoic features of the woman standing close but impossibly distant. Business, it is. “Pearl, maybe.” Jacques and Susanna’s daughter, who was raised in the North with her mother and had been subjected to the same sort of scientific tests forced upon Max during his captivity, was a supernova of unknown and untapped power. “Silas and Nica together, perhaps, but they say not.”
“A woman, Colin said. Your aunt?”
Max frowned at the thought. “I don’t have a sense of her being near. Someone else with an agenda we need to discover.”
That thought clearly terrified.
“He’s smart to step back,” she muttered with respect.
Max nodded. “But it’s a loss to our cause. He has the level head his brothers lack, though Cale’s managed to surprise me lately. Several things have, in fact.” Her distant behavior topped that list.
“My snitch was killed last night. Maybe a coincidence.”
After processing news that explained her absence, he asked, “Do you still believe in such things?”
“I think someone is scrambling to cover loose ends that could bite him . . . or her, in the ass.”
“Have you found a common denominator, Detective?”
“One I don’t like to consider. Too soon to share.”
A comprehensive glance assessed her disheveled appearance and sleep-deprived edginess. “First, go home, shower, have a good meal and rest.”
The command produced the expected bristling. “I don’t have time for those things.”
“Do you have time for me, Charlotte?”
Cee Cee froze, wide dark eyes meeting his with a vulnerable confusion. The door dinged open, and she jumped at the chance to escape giving that answer. As she strode away, she called over her shoulder, “I have an interview. Don’t know when I’ll be home.”
“I’ll wait up.”
Whether threat or promise, she nodded. Then, without looking back at what she left behind, long strides carried her briskly away.
Leaving unfinished business.
CHAPTER NINE
Home, sweet home.
Delicious silence greeted Cee Cee as she crossed the black and white tiles of the entry hall and started up the gentle twist of stairs. Everyone in the smoothly run household knew of her presence, but wisely left her alone. She ignored the quiet nudge asking if it was what she truly needed.
After a long shower and a few hours searching for the restorative sleep her complaining feet, back and brain needed, Charlotte gave up her restless tossing for cool mid-afternoon spring air on the main floor veranda, nodding to Helen as the older woman placed sweet tea and a hefty BBQ pulled pork with coleslaw sandwich on the table to feed body if not spirit. Sighing out her troubles, she lost herself in the study of a bright new season determinedly pushing its way out from bare flower beds and tree branches. An apt analogy for her own endeavors.
“My favorite time of year.”
Cee Cee glanced up and smiled at the Terriot queen. She looked deceptively young and fragile in Cale’s black sweatshirt over floral-patterned yoga pants, with hair clipped up in a messy bun.
“Mine, too,” the detective replied. “New beginnings.”
“Rebirth,” the pretty blonde agreed with a rub of her belly. “Or just plain birth. Sooner rather than later, I hope.” When expression turned from wistful to worried, Cee Cee nudged out one of the chairs. Kendra sank into it with a sigh. “This wasn’t where I expected to bring a new life into the world.”
Remembering what the other had endured put Cee Cee’s troubles into perspective. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
Conversation paused as the housekeeper returned with another lunch and a smile for their guest, high praise from the usually stoic female