"But you're exposing your?—"
He laid his finger over her lips. "Boots is good at her job, but she's tied to the station. We’ll let her handle all that. I trust Jag. I trust your family." He dropped his hand. "Telling them can't be the worst thing in the world."
"You know they won't care." She smoothed her hand against his cheek. "No one will."
“That might have been true when I started my career, but I chose to hide who I was. If the truth gets out, we both know it will bury me.”
“It doesn’t have to get out.” She reached across the counter and snagged her cell. “Jag won’t tell anyone. Not unless he has to.”
“That’s funny considering his wife writes true crime novels for a living and his name appears in the notes from the author as somewhat of a co-writer and procedural source.” Wonderful. He’d spent twenty-five years dreading what was about to happen. He’d never imagined it would take place in the kitchen of the woman who meant more to him than anything, and he hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell her how he felt yet.
Ziggy's kitchen had suddenly shrunk. And it smelled like a mix of delicate spring freshness, sweet sugar, and a heady, intoxicating perfume that emerged during Seattle's damp winter months.
She hated that smell, and it stared back at her in the form of pink and white flowers.
Noah sat at the far end of the island, fingers curling around a tumbler filled with more tequila than she should've poured, but under the circumstances, the man had a right to a good buzz.
Leaning against the counter next to her stood Jag. He wore jeans, boots—which she hadn't made him take off—a dark button-down shirt with his police chief badge still clipped to the pocket. And around his waist was his gun belt, weapon and all.
He held the card that came with the flowers between his fingers and stared at it, as if he were studying it and there would be a quiz later. He hadn't said a word since Noah had spilled his guts.
Ziggy shouldn't have been surprised. While both her brothers could be loud, neither was when it came to their work or when they were contemplating how to respond to news that wasn’t what they’d expected.
"Are you going to say anything?" she asked.
"He's calculating the fastest way to get me out of your house," Noah said. "Now that he knows I'm the son of a serial killer."
"I can't with you right now." Ziggy glared.
Noah held up his glass and shrugged. "That's what I'd be doing if I were him and you were my sister."
"Well, you're not me." Jag placed the card down on the counter as if it were a fine piece of jewelry. He glanced between Ziggy and Noah. "I'm not quite sure how to tell either of you this." He rubbed the back of his neck.
"How about you just spit it out," Noah said. "Because I don't know which is worse. You coming into this house with a gun and a badge, or your lack of reaction to what I just confessed."
Jag unclipped his badge, set it on the counter, then removed his gun belt and set it there as well.
"Oh shit," Ziggy whispered. "It's never good when you waffle between brother and cop."
"I'm not waffling." Jag turned, snagged a glass from the cupboard, and poured himself some tequila. "I just have a weird aversion to drinking while having either of those things on my body." He downed a good gulp. "Callie and I have suspected you were Angel Salazar for about two years."
Noah's hand dropped to the counter with more of a slap than a thud. His lips parted, and he made a weird noise that was somewhere between a high-pitched gasp and a groan.
"I'm sorry? What did you say?" Ziggy’s heart pushed painfully against her ribs with each beat. The noise of it thumping echoed in her ears like someone yelling into a cave.
"How? Why? And you didn't say anything?" The words tumbled out of Noah's mouth in a stutter.
Ziggy wasn't sure she'd ever heard him stammer.
"Callie started researching Matias Salazar about three years ago." Jag kept his voice level. He always did that when he knew the words were going to hit hard, and he wanted to make sure he softened the blow. He’d always been good at that. "The case fascinated her. It wasn't just about the killer."
"She likes to dive into the victims. Give them a voice." Ziggy had always loved that about Callie, and the last two books she'd published gave her a reputation for not idolizing or even sensationalizing a monster, but for giving humanity back to those the killer destroyed.
"That's one of the reasons." Jag nodded.
"But in this case, I bet it was the family angle," Noah said softly. "The double life. The wife. The son. How a killer managed to live a lie for so long. Be so ingrained in the community, and how on earth could his own family not know?”
"Callie wasn't overly interested in how Matias managed that, but she did want to hear Angel's story. To hear what was going on with the teenage boy that sat in that courtroom every day and never said a single word—to anyone.” Jag pulled out one of the stools and sat down. “The images. The video clips. She couldn’t stop looking at them. How composed you were as reporters shoved microphones in your face and shouted questions. Even your mother broke down.”