“Aeron.” I swallow. “Is there absolutely no chance your dad survived?”
“She. Buried. Him,” he says through his teeth.
“But did you see that part? I know this is hard…I’m sorry.”
“I saw her drag his body into the woods, and she came back covered in dirt. The police investigated when she reported him missing a while later. They found nothing and suspected he was dead.” He exhales slowly. “There was a plastic bag on his head, but I know it was still him. I saw.”
I breathe with him. Try to calm myself. “Okay. Okay.”
“The guy in that photograph looks nothing like my dad, Leo.”
“But he looks like you.” My heartbeat skitters. “And he looks like Ash. That’s who they wanted the sample from. Did your mother have siblings?”
“No.” He gives a jerk of a shrug. “Not that I knew of. She had parents, but we hardly ever saw them…it was all fucked up. I don’t know.”
He does feel powerless. He knows how to shape the future, but he’s helpless to manipulate the past.
“If the second guy on the pictures is Blood Honey, then he’s related to you. That, or he’s made an effort to look like you. He wasn’t at the airport by chance. And the email…well. We don’t know about that. But there have been no more murders.” I run my tongue along the sharp edge of my canine tooth. “He could’ve easily left for Russia.”
“And the FBI wondered if I’d go find him, so they gave me a little push.”
“They think you’re in cahoots, somehow. Or at least that you know each other.” I pause. “Because that email seemed to contain a secret.”
“It did.” He fingers the matted scar of his bullet hole absent-mindedly; heat rushes along my inner thighs, tightening swollen flesh. “They just have no evidence.”
“So…so what do we do now?”
“We stay put. We’re safe here. Even if they decide I’m somehow guilty, they can’t extradite me if they can’t find me.”
“And what about him?” I reach over and cover his fingers with mine, grazing my nails over the faint pink line bisecting his belly. We’re scar petting. I should probably be more worried about this. “We just…we just do nothing?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.” He caresses my wrist. Squeezes it. “He kills three times in three weeks. Then…nothing. Maybe he realized the FBI had an ID on him, and ran off before they could catch him. Maybe this is all part of something bigger. Or maybe we’re wrong about everything and he’s never going to be caught.”
I have a theory, of course.
I just can’t share it with him until I’m sure.
“You still want to take that shower?” I ask. Our luggage arrived as Gwen left, and clean clothes call to me.
“Only if you promise to spend most of it on your knees.”
I push along his scars in rough patterns; he arches up to my touch, his eyes falling closed. Such therapy. The more I stroke him, the wetter I get. “That can be arranged.”
Feels like we’re on borrowed time. The blows keep coming, the bruises keep baulking, and eventually, the skin of us will break. Until then…I’ll indulge him.
Indulge sounds so much better than love.
***
I can’t remember the last time I did absolutely nothing for days on end. On the island, there’s so little to do, you’re forced to relax and just…be.