I go to the first Mercedes and get behind the wheel. It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any fucking sense! I reach for my temple, applying pressure, forcing the relentless flashbacks away. They’re unstoppable.

  She hangs up, and I see Beau standing in front of the car. Frozen. No! I sprint across the car park, my heart booming, and round the front of the car, charging at her, taking her down.

  We both hit the tarmac with force. She yelps, startled, as I jump up to get to Jaz.

  Break out in a run.

  And get blown back by the explosion.

  43

  BEAU

  The clouds are being kind today. They roll and tumble through the sky, blending and molding into various shapes. I see a Union Jack. Handcuffs. A gun. A flame.

  A face.

  The ground is wet and cold beneath my back, the mud in my closed fists squelching. My heart hurts. My mind is twisted. I’ve never needed James so much. But never been so scared of him either. I close my eyes, escaping the cruel clouds.

  I see Mom’s eyes widen. See her fear as I near the car.

  The impact from my side is brutal, taking me down, and I crash to the ground. I drag myself up, disorientated. The spark. The boom. I raise my arm protectively, feeling the heat hit me, take me, and my body leaves the ground, the force flinging me skyward.

  “Beau Bear,” she says from beside me. I keep my eyes closed, waiting for the endless darkness to swallow me. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  Neither can I.

  I open my eyes and drop my head. Funny. The emotions I expected to kill me are . . . absent. “Why?” I just need answers. I just need to move on and make the life I deserve with James. I need to stop living for the ghosts.

  Here she is. My mom. A ghost.

  “All I had to do was take down Spencer James.” Her voice. Like in the bank, it’s a comfort and a complete mindfuck. My heart is racing as fast now as it did when I read the letter my dad left for me. A letter apologizing for not being there for me. For keeping me in the dark. For trying to protect me from the unbelievable truth.

  “Your father wasn’t so flush back then, and us weak women not as handsomely compensated for our service.” Mom shrugs, quite nonchalant. “It was the payday we needed toward our retirements.” She looks at me, and her eyes on mine hit me like a brick to my face. It’s like she’s here but not, like my brain can’t compute her presence. “Spencer James didn’t just front the biggest cocaine syndicate in the UK. His last deal involved the U.S. I had enough drug runners to deal with. He was a greedy fucker. Sold everything, was happy to slip into retirement and leave the rest of the world to deal with the consequences of his shit. No. I saw an opportunity, I took it. The Irish wanted him dead. I wanted him dead. I made it worth their while, they made it worth mine. I really wasn’t expecting the backlash. No one on the estate was supposed to be left alive.”

  James. She’s talking about James. Kellen James, the boy she turned into The Enigma.

  She returns her eyes to the sky, and I’m so grateful. “It spiraled from there. I spent five years after the Irish ended Spencer James trying to scratch back my conscience and be the best cop. But your father started making money, and with his success came the ego. And extramarital activities. I knew I had to look out for myself. Taking backhanders was easy money.” Her head tilts, almost reminiscent. “Being bent was easy. Being in control was easy. Then The Enigma showed up.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to squeeze away the bombardment of flashbacks. “He was on his own personal mission. That personal mission was screwing up everything. People were paying me to keep them out of cuffs and your boyfriend was killing them left and right.”

  “He wasn’t my boyfriend then,” I say flatly, feeling her studying me. “I was engaged. Had a great career. A mom and a dad.”

  “It’s all his fault, Beau Bear,” she whispers. “He fucked it all up.”

  “How?”

  “I couldn’t catch him,” she grates. “I knew who he was, but I couldn’t catch him. He was getting so close to finding out who killed his family. Who I was. I had to make sure that never happened.”

  “So you blew me up.”

  “No, Beau. God, no.” She takes my hand, and I snatch it away on a sharp inhale, feeling like I’m being burned all over again. “I planted The Snake. Planted the message on the burner phone that said I was in danger. He was supposed to come to me first. But he came for you instead.”

  My God, what am I hearing? I close my eyes, trying to replay that tragic, unbearable night that’s haunted me for years. What I was so sure happened is suddenly fuzzy. Unclear.

  “In that moment,” Mom says. “When you got too close to the car and he saved you, I had no choice but to die.”

  And as a result, my entire world went up in smoke. Literally. Didn’t she consider the consequences for me? The pain and hurt? I feel a lump building in my throat, and it infuriates me. I sit up in an attempt to dislodge it, staring at her grave. “Who the hell have I been talking to for all these years?” I ask, staring at the empty hole in the ground where I had what was left of her buried.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I paid someone to make sure there was something to find in the car and make sure it wasn’t identifiable.” I close my eyes, breathing in, praying that when I open them, I won’t be here. I open my eyes. I’m still in the cemetery. “I was so fucking angry he forced my hand,” she goes on, sounding like a fucking victim. I can’t bear it. “He made me die. Took you away from me. And the corruption and power spiraled and spiraled.” She laughs, and that makes me want to hit her. “And the money came. And the need for revenge grew.”

  I look at her, vacant, but on the inside, I’m gawking at her like she’s lost her mind. James took me away from her?

  “But then he started pursuing you. Using you to get to me.”

  “There was no name in the safety deposit box, was there? Only James’s name. You emptied the box.”

  “I needed to make it look legit.”

  “Have you any idea what you’ve done?” I ask. “Truly? The lives you’ve ruined?” Including mine. Your daughter’s.

  “He couldn’t have you if I couldn’t.”

  I exhale on a suppressed whimper. “He fixed what you broke.” I stand and move away from her, unable to process this endless barrage of shitty facts. “You have blackmailed, murdered, blown up buildings. All just to get James?”

  “Just? He destroyed my life. Our lives!”

  “You destroyed his first!” I scream. She flinches. But she doesn’t see what I see. “You blew up a restaurant when I was inside.”

  “You were not inside, Beau. You were on the sidewalk, I made sure of it.”

  “You drugged me in the bank, Mom.” Mom. It feels like an inadequate word. Monster. “Why would you drug me? Take me to Ollies?” My hands find my hair and clench, trying to suppress the pain building in my head.

  “God damn it, Beau, it was all for you! For us, so we can be together again.”

  I inhale, standing back. “You left my tracker on so James would know where to find me.” My God. “You were going to kill Ollie and frame James. Because Ollie worked out you killed Dad and Cartwright.” That’s why Ollie was apologizing. His last words to me. I’m sorry. He was sorry for not telling me. For hiding it. For trying to shield me from the shitty truths. She was going to have James killed by lethal injection.

  “Your Dad was a disgusting sack of shit. A stupid man.” She throws a heavy hand up, angry by the mention of my father. It’s ironic. His name used to spike the same reaction from me. Now? I don’t know how I feel about him now. His last move was to try and protect me from the truth like Ollie. Does that make him a hero?

  Mom looks away, like she could be ashamed. It’s a joke. “I always said you were a talented cop.”

  “I take after my mother,” I say, and she looks at me. “Unfortunately. How did Dad find out you were alive?”

  “His piece of ass stumbled upon some files while she was making herself at home in my home. Files your father found.”

  “Files on what?”

  “My deals with the previous mayor and my purchase of Danny Black’s boatyard.”

  I laugh, feeling a little unhinged. “Not such a fucking good cop now, huh? Or is it not such a good criminal?”

  “Beau…”

  “And Amber’s been running for her life because she knew Dad had been murdered.”

  “I had no choice, Beau Bear.” She comes to me, taking my arms, shaking me like it’s me who needs some sense knocking into them. “We can go. I have enough money for us. We can disappear together, me and my girl.”

  I shake her off and step back, hearing Ollie’s words over and over. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I hear him apologizing over and over for so much. “Ollie didn’t deserve to die.” My mind gives me a cruel flashback of the moment I disarmed him in his apartment. The moment I saw my mother behind him with a gun aimed at his back. The moment she fired, a window smashed, and James crashed in.

  The moment she ran away like a coward.

  I couldn’t utter her name. Couldn’t tell James what I’d seen. Was hoping I would wake up and find the whole awful thing had been a nightmare.

  No.

  It’s all real.

  And I’m done.

  “I’m going home now,” I say, passing her, raising my eyes, my heart in shards of grief. I feel like it could fall out of my chest. Break in two. But I mustn’t let it. I have to keep this heart together.

  For James.

  For me.

  I look up, and I breathe in when I see him standing a few feet away, his face wet with sweat, his hair in disarray, his stubbled face tortured. I know in this moment he’s heard everything. I look back to Mom. She’s staring at him. Staring like a wild animal with their eyes set on their prey.

  “It’s over,” I say, my voice shaky. “It ends now, Mom.” I hear sirens in the background, getting louder. It’s over.

  But then she moves, gunning for James, drawing her gun, and before I can register a thing, I’m moving too, with no direction or instruction. Just moving.

  “Beau!” James’s booming voice saturates my hearing as I crash into Mom, taking her down to the mud. We hit the ground, and I quickly get my bearings, spinning, getting Mom underneath me. I straddle her, pulling her arms back. “Jasmin Hayley, you are under arrest,” I say over a sob. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

  “Beau!” she yells, wriggling, forcing me to yank her arms back more.

  “You have the right to speak to an attorney now, and to have an attorney present during any questioning.” Justice isn’t served by death. It’s served by being locked up until death. It was served by being in fear of your life on the inside. I watch as one fat teardrop after another hits Mom’s jacket and splashes up as I hold her arms in place, while she continues to struggle, the sirens close.

  I look up at James. He looks traumatized. Out of his mind. I start shaking my head, my tears streaming. “I’m not okay,” I whisper, making him move immediately, coming to me. I need him so fucking badly, it makes me resent my mom more, hate her harder, for being the reason I can’t crawl into him now and hide from this shit.

  I release her wrists for James to take over as he lowers to his knee.

  It’s just a fraction of time.

  But it’s enough.

  She throws her body up, knocking me back, and spins over.

  Bang!

  James flies back, his chest concaving.

  “No!” I pull my gun, trembling, and aim it at Mom. But my finger refuses to squeeze the trigger. I scream as she stands, pushing past me, and goes at James, firing again. His body jerks, his head snapping back. “Mom, no!”

  I look at James.

  All I see is love. Devotion.

  Light.

  I turn my eyes onto my mother.

  I inhale, re-aim the gun at her back, and pull the trigger. She flies forward, her arms shooting skyward, and falls face first into the dirt. I don’t need to check. The hole in the back of her head tells me. I drop my gun, screaming to the sky, my emotions pouring out of me harder than they ever have before, jacking my body. My fists hit the ground, smash into the mud, over and over.

  “Beau, baby,” James wheezes, on his knee next to me, one hand wedged into the ground to hold himself up. I look up. All I see is blood. Blood and light. My lip trembles as I crawl to him, desperate, sobbing, trying to assess him, trying to find the bullet holes.

  How many? Where?

  “Someone help!” I scream as he drops to his shoulder and rolls to his back, struggling to breathe. “Someone help me!”

  I hear screeching tires, sirens, screams.

  Danny and Otto are sprinting toward us.

  I hate their expressions.

  Hate the crippling grief taking hold.

  It’s beyond excruciating, more powerful than any grief I’ve ever felt before.

  A loss I will never get over.

  44

  JAMES

  It has to be said, the light was blinding. And it was really fucking tempting to walk toward it. But . . .

  Beau.

  I could hear her need.

  Feel her love.

  The light on this occasion can fuck off. I didn’t go through the past few months to let death take me so pathetically.

  “Stop moving,” she orders, flapping around the bed, pulling at the covers, throwing me filthy looks left and right.

  “I’m stiff.” And not in the best way.

  “Doc said strict bedrest for four weeks.” She gently pushes me back down, and I sigh, exhausted, unwilling, and unable to fight her.

  “It’s been three weeks and six days.”

  “Yes, and look at you,” she breathes, exasperated, waving her hands up and down my broken body. “You need at least another four weeks. I’ll go get Doc.” She pivots, and I just catch her wrist, stopping her. I won’t lie, it’s fucking agony straining even that much. I grit my teeth and tug her back.

  “Just lie with me for a while.” I need her close. To have her near and know there is literally nothing in this world that can tear us apart.

  Only each other.

  She settles, though hesitantly, and I feel her slight body soften beautifully against me. “Are you okay?” I ask quietly.

  She’s quiet for a few moments, her hands stroking gently over the dressing on the side of my stomach. “I’m okay,” she whispers.

  I smile. Okay. It’s ironic. Twenty years’ worth of therapy shouldn’t cure the kind of shit we’ve experienced, both together and alone. It probably couldn’t. But I have Beau, and Beau has me.

  So we’re going to be okay . . . once this pain has fucked off and I’ve healed. I nod to myself, letting my broken body meld into the mattress, let my eyes close and know nothing will take her from me while I’m asleep.

  “I love you, Beau.”

  “I won’t ever question that.”

  I dose off, knowing it to be true. Peace. I’ve thought I’ve had it. When I met Beau, it teased the peripheral of my existence, tormented me, because it would never truly be mine until I’d fixed her.

  I accept now, she will never be fixed. But she is most definitely mine. All mine. Her hate, her love, every broken piece of her, and that makes her as fixed as she’ll ever be.

  My dreams are light. My heart is so fucking heavy with love.

  Peace.

  Even amid the excruciating pain.

  * * *

  A stab of pain gets me, and I grunt, curling my body in protectively to stem it. “Fuck.”

  “Sorry!”

  I open my eyes, groaning, not knowing whether to clench my stomach or my shoulder.

  “God dammit, Brad!” Beau yells, slipping off the bed with as little disruption to me as possible.

  “Do you two ever stop?” he asks, appearing at the end of the bed, looking me up and down with a scowl. “Even crippled you’re insatiable.”

  I fucking wish. I return his scowl and try to sit up some more. And fail.

  “Be still,” Beau warns, her stern words making me go limp again. She takes some water from the nightstand and holds the straw at my lips. I’m in no position to contest her help. This is hideous. I latch on and slurp, noticing Brad’s sling has gone.

  “Fighting fit,” he declares, obviously noticing I’ve noticed, gingerly lowering to the end of the bed. “Jerking off’s still off the menu though.”

  I cough, and water shoots out of my nose, spraying my chest. “Fuck!” I yelp, as a tidal wave of pain rolls through me. Beau glares at Brad, who raises his hands in surrender.

  “No jerking off? No jokes?” He pouts. “What kind of life is this?”

  I hold on to my laughter—the pain just isn’t worth the lightness. “She’ll kill you,” I say seriously, making him smirk at Beau as she holds him in place with a look of pure filth.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks. “Or is that a stupid question?”

  “It’s a stupid question,” Beau says, collecting the bowl of water and wash cloth off the nightstand and heading to the bathroom. “But you’re stupid so it figures.”

  I smile at her back as Brad rolls his eyes, keeping his attention pointing my way. “What—”

  “If you’re here to talk about work you can leave,” she calls.

  Brad drops his chin to his chest, exasperated. “I’m—”

  “Or I’ll happily walk you out.”

  He hitches a brow. “I should probably just leave, right?”

  I nod. “Probably.”

  He doesn’t move, the daredevil. “So, how are you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been shot.” I grimace as I shift a fraction. “Twice.” I huff, my neck hurting. “Can you just . . .” I lift my head, trying to find a firmer part of the pillow.

  “What?”

  “I can’t . . .” I nestle into it, huffing, my neck stiff. “It’s . . .”