“Go fuck yourself,” I spit.
“There are far too many other people trying to fuck me right now. So either join the queue, or get your ass over here and help me find something—anything—to help this.” His mouth sets in a grim line. “That email is all over the internet already. Carson says there’s no point trying to gag.”
The scratch along my side begins to throb again. I want to press down on it, apply pressure, but there’s no compress now and it would just sting like a bitch. “But the connection, it’s all complete conjecture—”
“Oh, it is.” He laughs bitterly. “In theory. But it’s also damn interesting, especially when you throw in the ridiculous serial killer connection. You know, a couple days ago, Posner told me to stay away from this story. On a personal level, he said, stay away.”
“And he didn’t care to elaborate on that?”
“I thought it might be genuine, like they were aware I was some sort of target…but now it’s obvious he’s messing with me. The police are messing with me, and now some nameless shithead in Russia is messing with me.”
“That FBI agent called earlier,” I say quietly.
“About the SilentWitn3ss clip?”
Despite my better judgment, I step closer. After the hospital report, I feel like I don’t know him anymore, and yet there’s a raspy little voice that says I know all the parts that matter. It sounds like something from a horror movie—exactly the sort of voice you shouldn’t listen to—but it tastes sweet at the edges, and I can’t pull away. “No. He offered information about that in exchange for a DNA sample. From Ash.”
A beat.
His fury pulls the atmosphere tight enough to burst.
“What the fuck would they want that for?” Rage turns the corners of his mouth white, simmers in the raised tendons along his neck. “Now they’re screwing with me as well. You’d think they’d just drag me in for questioning again, but no, that’s too fucking easy.” He heaves forward, strong elbows plunging on to his knees, his face smacking in his hands. “I can’t deal with this shit.”
I drop to my knees beside him. “Aeron…?”
He swallows hard—his whole body shudders with the effort.
Perhaps this macabre little show is all for my benefit. If he truly fears losing my loyalty, the obvious tactic is to feign despair. Perhaps the salt-sweet scent of his panic is all imagined; the anxious sweat across his collarbone an illusion, born of malice and sadistic glee.
I don’t think that it is, though. I’ve seen this man weak only once before—in a pool of his own blood, no less—and I know what fear looks like on his mask of a face.
Do I want to keep him? Ah, can you ever keep anything? Don’t we all have to open our fists eventually, to stretch tired fingers, to allow our palms a taste of new things…? Nothing is simple here; there’s no clichéd duel between heart and mind. My mind has never told me to run from this man—on the contrary, I’ve followed him for my own vengeful gains, and as for my heart…it doesn’t speak. It just bleeds.
“Something very wrong is happening,” Aeron says through gritted teeth, “and I can’t…I can’t actually see a way out.”
“Hey.” Despite the panic searing my veins, my voice softens, and my body feels lighter the minute I climb into his lap. He tenses at first, but I wrap his stubborn arms around me; he feels like a rag doll stuffed with rocks. “Let’s reason our way through this. We can do that. Right?”
He gives a cynical bleat of a laugh. “My lawyer doesn’t think so.”
“Screw lawyers. Listen to me, Aeron.” I take his jaw in my palms, resting my lips between his ear and his damp cheek. A valley of soothing murmurs for my troubled, troubled sinner. “Who could have known about the hospital?”
“My mother. Who’s dead, and would have hung willingly from a cross before admitting what I’d done,” he mutters.
“Rachel’s parents. They knew, obviously.”