his fear of water would hopefully keep me safe. I held onto that knowledge with everything I had in me. My walls of water would protect me.
Brody’s lips brushed the shell of my ear. “Are you okay?”
I tipped my face up to his, taking in his strong jaw and his dark eyes, the beauty of him and the reassurance of his presence. I didn’t want to lose this. Him. And that meant I had to fight. But the enemy wasn’t my brother, it was me. The fear I’d let have free rein over my entire life, slowly eating away at my very existence. I’d already begun to battle it back. To reclaim pieces of who I had been so I could find out who I might want to be now. But I’d have to fight harder.
I pressed a kiss to the underside of Brody’s jaw. “Just thinking.”
He studied my face as if he could read every thought swirling in my head. “You’re safe here.”
“I know I am. I’m just trying to figure out a way to trust that.”
Brody brushed the hair back from my face. “It’s going to take time.”
“I know.” And in the interim, I’d simply have to live in the unknown and the uncomfortable. Know that the fear would try and battle me into submission, but that I would have to keep walking forward amidst it all.
My attention snapped back to the larger conversation at the letters, FBI. “What?” I asked.
Parker glanced in my direction. “I’ve got a consult with a profiler at the FBI. She’s looking over the files I sent. If there’s another serial murder, they may send a team. These cases are similar to the ones in New York, but there are differences, too. Printed copies of the paintings left behind to make sure we understood the connection. And the victims were both stabbed instead of strangled.”
I swallowed down the bile at his last words, trying to shove away the memories attempting to take hold. I knew all too well what these victims had gone through. God, I hoped Parker would find some clue that would lead him straight to the killer’s door and soon.
“Brody, she wants to talk to you,” Parker added.
Brody pulled me tighter against him as if sensing my thoughts. “I’ll do whatever I can to help. I’m going to have my tech people take down my website. I know it probably won’t help, but at least it’s something.”
Parker shook his head. “Don’t. Agent Anders said not to change anything about your behavior, publicly or privately. It might provoke the unsub.”
Brody’s jaw worked back and forth. “I feel like I’m being held hostage by this psycho.”
“In a lot of ways, you are,” Parker said.
“The whole island is,” Griffin muttered.
Caelyn turned her gentle gaze to Brody. “But none of that is your fault. Don’t take this on. It’s not yours to carry.”
Brody’s gaze drifted to the porch of The General Store. “Easier said than done.”
31
Brody
I scowled down at my phone as it rang on the counter. It was too early. I let it go right on ringing and took another sip of my coffee. I was in a foul mood, and I knew it. But waking up alone, the other side of the bed completely cold, did that to a man.
I’d gotten used to waking wrapped around Shay, starting my days by losing myself in her. And today I’d been robbed of that routine. She hadn’t been in the kitchen when I came down either. I’d poked my head out the door and heard the chickens’ happy squawks, which meant they’d been fed, but I didn’t see any sign of the woman who’d turned my life upside down.
I took another pull of coffee when my phone started ringing again. I flipped it over to see Carson’s name. I groaned and hit accept.
His face filled the screen. “What the hell, man? You ignoring my calls?”
“It’s seven a.m., cut me some slack.”
He grinned. “I know. Ask me how I know, Brody.”
“Because you can do the simple math required to figure out a time difference?”
Carson gave an exaggerated pout. “Just because you’re hung up on the caretaker and aren’t getting any doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole.”
I hadn’t talked to Carson in weeks, maybe a month, only trading texts here and there. He had no idea that things had changed for me and Shay, and I wasn’t about to let him in on that fact. But I should’ve known that he would ferret it