"It didn't. Not right away." Jag reached over and picked up the card again, turning it in his fingers. "Callie saw pictures. Angel, as a kid with a crooked nose, a couple of scars, but different enough from the man sitting in your kitchen, most wouldn’t make the connection.” He glanced at Noah. "But she saw something. Spent a few more months watching courtroom footage, interviewing anyone who'd sit with her. And then she found his high school English teacher on the East Coast. Said Angel was one of the brightest kids he'd ever taught. Had this obsession with journalism, with getting to the truth of things. With uncovering stuff.” He set the card back down. “This teachersaid that one day Angel was doing everything right, keeping his head down, and the next he'd turned into a little asshole who got bad grades. And a few months after graduation, he'd disappeared. Something about getting hooked on drugs, and this teacher just had a really hard time believing that."
Ziggy poked Jag in the chest, which she hadn't done since they were teenagers, and he'd told their parents she'd dented the car. "You used your contacts after that. Didn't you? You put him at risk, and you know that."
Jag didn't step back. "I didn't use any contacts. I want you to hear me on that." His voice had that steady ring that meant the subject was closed. "Callie made the connection and we sat on it. And even then, even if we were wrong, even if Noah wasn't Angel, it was possible the kid didn't want to be found. That he'd gone to great lengths to vanish. Callie decided to respect that."
"But you know how she got there," Noah said quietly as he reached for his drink. "Which means the trail exists. Which means someone else could follow it."
"You mean someone else already did." Jag pointed to the flowers. "I don't want to turn this into a circus. That's not going to help you or protect my sister. But we need to do something, so I want your permission to bring Troy and Reid in on this."
"I don't have a problem with that." Noah lifted his finger. "Though, I’m a little concerned about this new organization that Troy is opening an office for in the next few months."
"Don't be," Jag said. "Only a couple of the Aegis Network operatives have moved here, and they are all ex-military, cops, CIA, that kind of thing. Whatever they find will be locked up like Fort Knox. But I do want to keep one looking out for both you and my sister. Discreetly, of course."
"I won't say no to that." Noah pushed the stool back and stood.
"Seriously?" Ziggy just stood there and stared.
"I'm not messing around with your safety. If exposing my dirty secret is the price I have to pay for that, then I'll gladly pay it." Noah looked at Jag. "I'll walk you out."
Both men headed for the front door, leaving her there alone.
She looked at the flowers.
White and pale pink and sitting on her island in the quiet of her kitchen, and the only thought she could land on was that somewhere between the hockey puck and the forged card and her brother unclipping his badge and Noah offering up twenty-five years of carefully protected silence to keep her safe, tonight was supposed to have been about a kiss.
She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry, so she poured herself a drink instead.
5
The guest room at Ziggy's house smelled like lavender and lilies. He would forever associate that scent with the specific awkwardness of him and Ziggy dancing around each other for forty minutes last evening, because neither one of them knew how to be together in the same house for an entire night.
He'd slept in fits. An hour here, forty minutes there, staring at the ceiling in the dark while the house settled around him, and he tried to convince himself that the person on the other side of the wall was fine. That she was sleeping. That three texts from Jag and one from Troy and one from Reid—all sent within twenty minutes of each other—hadn't settled deep in his gut. Each message was some version of don't leave her alone. For some reason he couldn't fathom, the people who loved her had decided he was the only thing standing between her and whatever was coming next.
No pressure there.
He'd gone back to his place for clothes around eight, when Ried and Darcie came over with their kids under the pretense of dessert. That had been right after Ziggy had stood in her kitchen with a glass of tequila and that look she got—jaw loose,eyes somewhere past the middle distance—when she was done processing and she just needed everything to stop for a minute. Her sister and her family had been a good distraction.
By the time he’d returned, Darcie and her family were packing up to head home. Shortly after, Ziggy had shown him to the guest room, which he’d seen a thousand times before, handed him a towel, and said goodnight without quite meeting his eyes. He'd stood in the hallway and watched her door close. Five years of careful professional distance had led him to sleeping six feet away from her in a bed with a quilt that had little anchors on it.
It was so Ziggy.
He smelled the coffee before he was fully down the hall. And underneath the coffee, something warm and sweet and specific—vanilla and cinnamon—that pulled him the rest of the way out of the fog he'd been walking around in since the moment Jag had said, “Callie and I have suspected who you were for about two years.”
He stopped at the opening to the kitchen with his heart stuck in his throat.
Ziggy stood at the counter with her back to him, hair piled into a ponytail, pieces escaping and dangling down her neck in a way she would be irritated about if she could see them. She was wearing cotton shorts and a shirt that he took a second to place. One of his dress shirts. The pale blue button-down designer one that he hadn't seen in at least three years and had assumed was lost to the general entropy of his closet. It hit her mid-thigh. She had it half-tucked on one side, not the other, and the sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, as she moved around the kitchen with the kind of efficiency she brought to everything.
He loved watching her, and he did it often at the station. Sometimes, he would stand at his glass wall, look over the bullpen, and see her in her office. She’d be focused on a taskwhile he’d admired her from a distance. He’d been admiring her like that for five long fucking years.
On the counter was a fresh pan of cinnamon rolls. Next to it—frosting in a bowl. They were his favorite, and she knew it. That had to mean something.
He leaned against the doorframe and said nothing. He just stared while his pulse raced, reminding him that he’d spent years watching the woman he loved with other men while he pretended it didn’t bother him.
She pulled the pan toward her, picked up a spoon, and started spreading frosting across the top of the rolls with the same level of concentration she gave to a live broadcast.
She turned.
The spoon went one direction, and two cinnamon rolls went the other, hitting the side of the cabinets, one of them landing frosting-side down on the floor with a finality that seemed to surprise both of them.