Page 64 of Proof

Finding Cass ended up being a lot easier than I would’ve thought, and I wanted to kick myself for not having figured it out sooner.

While my brother was using every resource at his disposal to locate Cass, I’d had this strange feeling in my gut just after the sun had fallen and instead of ignoring it, I’d followed it. Sully had told me countless times to stay inside our house and had even posted several of his men all around our block so they could keep an eye on things, but I’d been going stir-crazy for days. Luckily, my brother had chosen tonight to call all the men who were watching the house inside for a quick briefing. I’d used the opportunity to quietly make my own escape.

Learning that either Cass or I had been the target of the shootings and not just an afterthought to the other murders had broken me. I didn’t remember my brother taking me home from the motel, nor did I remember the twenty-four hours that had followed. Fortunately, when I’d finally let the grief and guilt take a back seat to what was happening, I’d been able to start looking at all the evidence Sully had collected—and thankfully remembered to grab from the cabin—with a fresh perspective.

I’d also been waiting for the phone to ring.

Any phone. Sully’s cell, mine, the landline we still had in the house for some reason. I’d been desperate to hear Cass’s voice, even if it hadn’t been directed at me.

There’d been no call and as each hour had passed, I’d grown more and more restless. Even though I’d told Cass to leave, I was pretty sure he hadn’t. Not the area, at least. Cass was probably doing the same thing that Sully and I were.

Trying to identify the murderer and anyone who might have been linked to him.

Cass wouldn’t be searching to finally prove to the world that he’d been innocent all along—no, he wouldn’t be thinking about himself at all. He’d be focused on finding the person or people who’d killed a little girl, her mother, and a federal agent.

And me.

He’d be trying to find out who’d hurt me.

Who’d takenhisJJ from him.

That wouldn’t be all, though. Cass had been protecting me from pretty much the moment he’d been released from prison, and he wouldn’t stop doing that just because I wasn’t the same JJ he’d cared so much for. He’d protect me because that was what Cass did.

What he’d always done.

It had been more than a week since Sully had picked me up from the motel. My brother and I hadn’t talked about anything other than the evidence he’d dug up in his own effort to find the suspect. Unfortunately, my memory loss hadn’t been limited to just the nights before and of the shooting. I hadn’t been able to remember anything from several months prior to that night. My last memory had been of Sully’s birthday shortly after the death of our father.

Despite our loss, Sully and I had upheld the tradition of celebrating special events by going to the same shitty Scottishpub our father had practically lived at during the final years of his life, and we’d drunk ourselves senseless. We’d even rehashed many of the stories our father had told us over and over as we’d grown up. They included the tale of how our parents had met and while it had brought up the painful memory of losing both our mother and father, the alcohol had given us the same loose tongues it’d given our father when he’d wanted to talk about his beloved wife.

As I grew closer to my destination, my heart began to pound even harder in my chest. The farther I left the safety of the house behind me, the more worried I became that my hunch wouldn’t pan out. I’d have a pissed-off Sully to deal with either way, so that part didn’t matter to me. I just needed to see Cass.

Just one more time.

This time, there would be nothing—no bullet, no assassin, no well-meaning family member—that would be able to take that time away from me.

As for my brother, I loved him to death for everything he had and was still trying to do to keep me safe, but there was no way I could make him understand that my world made even less sense now than it had before Cass’s return. Sully couldn’t fix that for me. Cass couldn’t fix it for me, either. I had to fix it, and I had to start at the place where only one thingdidmake sense.

I wanted Cass.

I wanted him to want me. The me that I was now. I didn’t deserve it, but now that I understood what had been truth and what had been lies, I wanted to try living the truth.

With Cass.

And if he didn’t want me, if he’d come to his senses and accepted I wasn’t the JJ he’d lost, I’d find a way to live with that. But if there was even a chance…

I reminded myself that I needed to stay focused on my surroundings. I’d understood everything Sully had drilled intome about not letting anyone in on the fact that I knew the truth about the night of the shooting, and I hadn’t disagreed with him.

Problem was, Sully had no understanding of Cass’s true suffering. How could he? I’d seen only a few shreds of the true suffering Cass had either allowed me to see or had inadvertently revealed. Sully was right in that Cass could take care of himself, but that was when it came to the physical stuff. What about all the rest of the shit that was locked away in his mind? The shit Sully and I had played a role in putting there. I’d never understood what needing to protect someone you cared about had really meant until I’d come face to face with Cass and watched him protect me time and time again despite the hatred he should have had for me.

Ironically, it was that understanding which had made it possible to forgive my big brother for everything that had happened. He’d had to choose my life over his best friend’s freedom, and it had been a decision he’d had to make entirely on his own. Sully had admitted that he’d never even considered the idea that Cass’s own family would abandon him. Even if Cass’s father had hated his own son, why hadn’t he protected the Ashby name by getting Cass the high-priced lawyers who would have been able to get the charges dropped altogether? From there, it would have just been a matter of putting Cass on a private flight to a country with no extradition agreement with the United States, and Cass and his piece-of-shit father would have happily parted ways for the rest of their lives.

I couldn’t say what I would have done in Sully’s shoes, but I was glad he’d managed to get Cass out sooner rather than later. Had I not spent the past year being a selfish prick who attended his very own pity party night after night, I could have been helping Sully come up with the cash to get Cass out sooner. I could have been working the case as well. Instead, I’d spent mydays passed out in bed and my nights letting guys use me so I could escape my so-called terrible life.

What about Cass’s life? When would it be his turn to play the pity card? Even though a man like Cass would never go that route, he’d earned the right to feel sorry for himself and be pissed about everything that had been stolen from him.

Although I’d forgiven Sully for his deception and for literally keeping me in the dark for so long after I’d been deemed fully recovered, I wasn’t a kid anymore, and even though I didn’t officially carry a badge, I still knew how to be a cop. I cared about my safety, but I didn’t need Sully checking under my bed for monsters anymore. I didn’t need ice cube wake-up calls, either, and Tank’s was no longer even on my radar.

I wasn’tthatman anymore.

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