She almost laughed at the banality of the statement, as if she’d dropped by to say hello and they’d had some tea. But then, he’d always been so stiff, awkward, no idea what to say. In the gaze he had on her, she saw her oldest friend. And yet he was so different. Older. Softer around the eyes, the first gray in his hair, the first wrinkles around his mouth.
She took the crystal heart from her pocket and opened her hand. They both looked at it, every facet of their history glittering in its deep red.
“Does this make us even?” she asked. “Finally.”
He smiled lightly but didn’t look at her. “I suppose it does.”
“How did you know I’d go there and find this?” she asked.
“I know you, Lara,” he said quietly. “I’ve always known you.”
Agent Brower marched toward them, ponytail swinging. She was looking a little worse for wear—hair a bit wild, strands pulled from their tie, wisping around her pale face, shirt wilted, a corner of it untucked, flack vest crooked.
“How did you know these children were here?” she asked Hank.
“A patient I have, a girl named Angel,” he said. “She claimed that there was a boy here, held captive. But she’s troubled, so no one believed her.”
The agent’s expression was unreadable.
“But you did?” she asked. “You believed her?”
“I did.”
“Did you think—I don’t know—about calling the police? Instead of coming out here unsupported in the dead of night. You could have been killed. Both of you.”
He ran it down for her, patiently—how Angel’s claims had been investigated and dismissed, how he’d called a child advocate he knew, the detective working the case of a missing boy matching Billy Martin’s description, how the detective couldn’t come back here again without a warrant that he couldn’t get without more evidence.
She watched him, pale, mouth open slightly. When he was done, she just stared a moment, brow furrowed, eyes stern and angry. Rain was about to tell him to stop talking, that he needed a lawyer, that they probably both did.
“You saved those kids,” Agent Brower said finally. Her voice was soft. “They’re alive because of you.”
“That’s what I do,” he said, rubbing at his eyes with thumb and forefinger, weary. “I try to save kids. Not usually like this, though.”
Agent Brower nodded slowly, folded her arms around her middle.
“And bring justice when you can’t?”
The agent looked back and forth between Hank and Rain, something doing battle on her face. How much did she know? Or was instinct, suspicion all she had? Rain suspected the latter. She averted her eyes, up to the sky.
“Do I need a lawyer?” Hank asked easily.
Agent Brower stared off at some point behind Rain and Hank, declined to answer.
“And you, Ms. Winter? How did you find yourself here? The last time we spoke you told me that you hadn’t seen Dr. Reams in years.”
Rain mustered her journalist self.
“I was planning on interviewing him for my story, the one we discussed,” she said. “He was leaving his place when I arrived. And I followed.”
Agent Brower cocked her head, frowning. It sounded every bit as crazy as it was.
“Why would you do that?” asked the agent.
Rain dipped her head, avoiding the other woman’s intense stare. “I’m—not sure.”
“We have a history,” Hank interjected. “A connection. It’s hard to explain.”
Agent Brower’s gaze continued back and forth between them, scowling, as if they were a puzzle that she couldn’t solve.
“Were you tailing me, Agent Brower?” asked Hank. By the slight smile on his face, Rain thought he already knew the answer.
Brower’s scowl dissolved into a similarly cryptic smile. “I’m the one asking the questions, Doctor.”
Rain realized she was holding her breath, her shoulders hiked high. How was this going to go? Was she going to watch Hank get arrested? Was she going to jail? She made so many promises to her husband, just hours ago. She had broken them all. Would he forgive her this time? Would she lose him?
“Well,” Agent Brower said with a sigh. “Tonight, you’re heroes. Without you, I don’t know what would have happened here.”
Heroes. Villains. The lines were so much grayer than anyone knew, the truth so layered.
Rain saw him then, her husband, half running toward her. She got up and ran to him, fell into his arms and started to cry for the first time. He held her tight.
“Where’s Lily?” she asked through her tears.
“I called your father,” he said. “He came right over. What happened here? Rain, what’s