Ryan huffed, frustrated. “The night in your father’s office. You said I couldn’t tell anyone about our plan because Jared would find out. I thought he was in the F.B.I. or something, but it’s bigger than that, isn’t it?”
I touched his arm. “You’re seeing someone professional, right? About what happened to you over there?” The words had to be said to protect those I loved, but the guilt was overwhelming. Ryan didn’t deserve that from me—he had come to me for a reason: because he trusted me to believe him. If the consequences were different, I would have been the friend he’d always been to me, but my choice was clear.
He paused. Anger made the skin around his eye twitch. “What makes you think anything happened to me over there?”
“I uh…,” I swallowed. “I really should be going,” I said, reaching for the door handle.
Ryan grabbed my arm. “I saw her eyes. The day she saved my life, I saw her. No one has eyes like her, and no woman that size could have carried me out of there. Tell me where Claire is, Nina.”
My door flew open, and Jared pulled me to my feet. Ryan scrambled out of his cruiser, desperate. “I just want to talk to her,” he yelled over the rain. “I don’t need to know how she did it. I just…need to see her again.”
Jared glanced at me, and then back to Ryan. “Unless you’re charging us with something, we’re leaving. Good to see you again, Ryan.”
“I’m not crazy!” Ryan said, desperate. The rain was more of a downpour, but he was unfazed.
My steps were small and quick, trying to keep up with Jared as he led me by the arm to the Escalade. Once inside, I turned around, holding the seat with both hands as I watched the stand off between the two men I loved in such opposite ways. Ryan, in his puffy, standard-issue policeman’s coat simply watched Jared glower at him. It was a new side of him, as I half-expected a nasty exchange of words.
Jared slammed the car door behind him before shoving the shifter into gear. The speedometer passed the point of speeding before we were out of Ryan’s radar range, as if Jared dared him to stop us again.
“Okay. Jared? Jared!” I said, fumbling with my seat belt.
“He knows.”
“It certainly seems that way,” I said, bracing myself as Jared weaved through the traffic. “Claire will lay low for a while like you said to. It will be fine.”
“You heard him, Nina. He’s been holding onto this for months. He’s not going to let it go.”
“Okay…so we figure it out. It’s not the worst thing that could happen right now. You told me, and the world didn’t come to an end.”
“Yours did.”
I winced. Jared feeling that way had never occurred to me. “That’s not true,” I said, shaking my head. I rested my hand on his. “Everything before that night was make-believe. This is what’s real.”
Jared pulled into the drive of my parent’s home, and then waited for the garage door to open. “You don’t work for the police department, Nina. The same one that Claire meticulously picked off a year ago.”
“He just wants to know why he saw her in the desert, Jared. It has nothing to do with Graham.”
Jared closed his eyes, exasperated. “Maybe not to Ryan, but for someone that can’t pass his psych eval and is still in physical therapy, he was accepted into the the Providence P.D. without a hitch. It wouldn’t be hard for someone to connect Ryan to you, and anyone who could pose a problem knows you are a direct connection to me, and Claire…and Graham. This is not an innocent oops, Nina. This is a potential threat.”
“Everything is a potential threat to you people,” I grumbled.
“You people? Since when are we not on the same side?” Jared said, taken aback. He shook his head, and then headed to the house without waiting.
I followed in silence, cursing myself. An hour before, we had set the date of our wedding. Now I was getting the cold shoulder.
Bex sat the top of the stairs, cleaning his fingernails with a large knife, nodding to us as we passed. He was less of the boy I knew, and more like his older sister. Even Lillian’s unparalleled goodness couldn’t prevent Bex from losing his innocence.
Jared rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll er…I’ll see you in the morning. I’ve got some things to do.”
“You’re going to find Claire?”
“We need to talk.”
“Okay,” I nodded, wrapping my arms around him. He shifted, uncomfortable in my arms. “I didn’t mean it. I suppose I’m just surprised at your reaction. He’s not in love with me, anymore. I thought you’d be relieved.”
I gripped his t-shirt in my fists, bracing for him to pull away. Instead, he paused in thought, considering my words. “That means Ryan being Claire’s Taleh means something else, and we don’t know what that is.”
I sighed, irritated at his negativity. “Maybe it just means that they are supposed to be together. Like us.”
Several emotions scrolled across Jared’s face, finally settling on a mixture of relief and delight. He tightened his arms around my back. “You think so?”
“What other explanation is there?”
A wide grin spread across Jared’s face. “It doesn’t matter. I like that one.”
Chapter Twelve