Page 96 of Shadow Dance

Besides that, I have a broken nose and so much swelling due to cuts and bruises that from the abdomen up I look like a blueberry. Cal’s crazy ass really did a number on me. If Maeve hadn’t offed him, I would have died for sure.

The doctors say it’s a miracle I survived all that, but I know survival has less to do with miracles and more to do with sheer, stubborn will. And I’ve got that in spades. It’s what keeps me going even now as I heal.

My aching chest aches even more whenever I think about Maeve … which is a lot. I was too messed up in the moment to really get a feel for how severely she’d been hurt, but I know it was bad. Lewis was the one that told me she’d made it, that her injuries would heal. The physical ones, anyway. I know from experience it’s going to take a lot for her to come to grips with killing Cal. I had a hard time sleeping for weeks after the first time I took a life, even though it was justified. It never gets any easier. It just becomes manageable. I’m better at compartmentalizing so I can keep going.

And then there’s all the other stuff. He hurt her physically and emotionally for a long time. He threatened her.

I want more than anything to see Maeve, but I can’t. After a few days in the hospital, I was transported to an undisclosed medical facility in the Bay Area. Once I’m stable enough, they’ll bring me back to Southern California where I’ll walk the team through the evidence I’ve collected over the years. I’ll do my part to make sure the people we’ve been investigating go down, do my exit interviews, and then leave.

The next fewweeks are a blur. I meet every day with Lewis and the other agents that comprise our Organized Task Crime Force, which are FBI, DEA, and local law enforcement put together especially for this operation. We compiled a timeline of each syndicate’s activities, starting with when I first began running with Wolf back in Santa Barbara and culminating in the shootout at Cal’s. We discuss when certain crimes took place and who was involved. A lot of this information is backed up by camera footage and conversations collected via wiretap, as well as pictures like the ones I took of Cal’s safe, but explaining it helps gel everything together.

Meanwhile, my involvement with Maeve Kelly is everything from water-cooler gossip to potential cause for disciplinary action. I’m not too worried, though. Not only am I leaving the force anyway, but I was supremely successful in my assignment.

Thing is, in our world, undercovers have to blend in by any means possible barring extremes like murder. Drugs, sex, and petty crimes are often considered necessary evils. I’ve never been toldnotto get physical, and I know for a fact that by the time the reports start coming in, who the agent is sleeping with is the last on any list of concerns.

What’s never okay is falling in love with these people. It’s highly unprofessional and could compromise operations that are often several years and many thousands of dollars underway. I knew all of this. I was aware of it every step of the way.

I was physically attracted to Maeve from the beginning, but that didn’t mean much.

There are always going to be pretty girls around and I’d gotten used to ignoring them.

But then I started feeling protective over Maeve, as if I really was her bodyguard. It was nearly impossible not to be when she was so unlike the people around her. I’d seen what Cal and his idiot friends were capable of—kidnapping, false imprisonment, buying and selling drugs, assault … murder. He cheated on Maeve constantly, plied her with drugs, and wouldn’t let her leave. And that was before the physical abuse began.

My second mistake was allowing the attraction to take root: hers and then mine. Once she got in my head, she stayed like a virus, attacking my rationale and sensibility. Everything snowballed after that. The flirting, the kissing, the sex. Promising I’d help her flee, admitting the truth to her, that I wasn’t who I said I was. Once I started being vulnerable with Maeve, falling in love with her, I couldn’t stop.

I hate being away from her now, but it’s for the best. At least, for now. And it’s not like I have much of a choice. My survival depends on the De Leon and Oliveras families thinking that Jaime is dead, for one thing. But also, the case takes precedent. We have to finish what we started.

I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been thinking about ways to contact her, though. If she really does love me like she said she did, then thinking I’m dead must be traumatizing. I have to figure out a way to get a message to her, even if it means putting myself in danger.

It might take time, but I’m good at waiting. Maeve once told me that her family could protect her better than anyone else, and I believe her. She won’t choose WitSec. She’ll go back to Boston and lie low.

So, for now, I lie low too as my body stitches itself back together. Every breath hurts like hell, but the pain is good. It means I’m alive.

“They decided not to press charges,”Lewis says, resting a bag of bagels on the counter.

We’re in the kitchen of my rental in LA, a furnished, nondescript apartment conveniently close to the District Attorney’s office a few blocksaway. I’ve become quite familiar with the prosecutors there, seeing they’re the ones indicting the syndicates’ key players.

I look up from my laptop. “On Maeve?”

“Yeah.” He nods, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the half-full carafe. It’s probably his fifth of the day and it’s only ten a.m. I don’t know how this guy gets to sleep at night. “She’s good to go.”

“I could’ve told you that,” I mutter, taking a sip of cafecito. I get it every morning from a Cuban place a couple streets over. I miss my espresso machine, which was lost to the chaos at Cal’s, but I’ll get another one once I’m in Puerto Rico.

“You did tell me that. Repeatedly.” Dumping creamer and sugar into his cup, Lewis returns to the counter with a smirk. “Anyway, now you can move on.”

Maeve’s been under investigation without charges for the past two months. Cal’s security cameras, along with my written testimony, all but assured that she’d walk without any issues, but there still needed to be a formal investigation. She was asked to stay local, but apparently neither Maeve nor her family take kindly to the law telling them what to do because she spent the last eight weeks in Boston, traveling back to the Bay Area only when she was required to.

She always comes with one or both of her brothers and a small group of guys that I assume are members of Saoirse. They’re Boston’s equivalent to the Oliveras family but what they do is none of my business, legally. Not like Maeve. She’ll be my business, whether she knows it or not, until I’m in a casket.

One afternoon back in January, I broke down and reached out to her. I sent a note to the Ritz-Carlton she was staying at in San Francisco, asking her to meet me at the hotel’s concierge lounge the following afternoon. Normally only special guests have access to lounges like that but given our circumstances, I’d been able to pull some strings.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when four men showed up instead. The off-duty police officers that’d accompanied me to the hotel stopped them by the lounge entrance, but I recognized Lucky and Tristan Kelly from a photo Maeve had once shown me.

Lucky nodded at me. “Cruz?”

“Yeah. Lucky, right?” I looked past him, into the hall. “Where’s Maeve?”

“In her room.” Hands tucked into the pockets of his expensive-looking dress slacks, he walked over to the window. Tristan followed, hanging back a little. “We intercepted your message.”

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