Page 28 of The Shadowed Oracle
“He’s gone now, yes,” Dean rasped, then quickly changed the subject. “He’d wanted me to join his cause since I was old enough to make my own decisions. Especially when I got my job. He thought it would be useful to have someone in law enforcement.”
Ingrid couldn’t help but laugh. “The otherworldly supergroup army wanted a crime scene photographer in San Bruno on their team?”
“Believe it or not, back then, I had a lot more pull.” He dragged a hand along his thigh in a self-soothing stroke. “I was with a special division with the FBI.”
Ingrid leaned softly against the window. That strange, combative way Dean had spoken about the FBI agent investigating her case—it made sense now.
“So how did you end up here?” she asked.
“Got demoted when I started—well, started talking to my superiors about what we’re talking about right now.”
Can’t imagine why, Ingrid thought.
“A few psych evaluations, a few meetings with the board of my supervisors, and that was it. I had the choice between freezing my ass off in North Dakota or to come back here, back home. And I chose home. Thought that maybe if I was back where it all started, some epiphany would hit me. That I’d know what to do.” His fingers tapped an erratic rhythm on the steering wheel as he peeked in his rearview mirror.
“But, of course, it didn’t,” Dean said. “After just a few days, I told Karis I was out. I didn’t think it was worth my sanity to try and see it to the end. It was becoming an obsession again. The nightmares and paranoia were worse than ever. I needed to pretend, go back to the way I was before—blind and somewhat sane.”
“Until?” Ingrid thought she knew the answer already, but wanted to keep him talking.
“That second body we found,” Dean said. “It was Karis. He’d come back here to find me when the murders started. There had been more in other jurisdictions weeks before. All of them scattered, but with a clear upward path toward San Francisco, toward here.”
The scope widening, Ingrid could only listen.
“That’s when he asked me to help again,” Dean said. “Or, I should saydemandedmy help. It was unlike him. He was always so calm, as unbothered as a person could be. Except for that day he came to see me. It was surreal, seeing him like that. Sofrantic, so fear-driven to recruit me all over again. Even after I’d abandonedhim… again.”
A deep, stifling sadness draped over them both at that moment, like Ingrid had utterly tapped into exactly what Dean was feeling. “I’m sorry,” she muttered without thinking.
“It’s my own fault. I should’ve gone with him then. I should’ve been at his side. But seeing him like that, seeing him so changed, so lost. I just froze. I couldn’t do it.” He cursed under his breath, gripping the wheel. With quivering lips, his speech patterns became terse, choking on the words. “I had to examine the body. That’s how I found out. How I knew he was gone, that I’d never see those wild red eyes staring back at me ever again.” A heavy exhale, still keeping the surge of emotion at bay. “But when I drove by your bar that very same night. When I decided for reasons beyond me to go in. And to find you, Ingrid. To find those same eyes looking back at me, fiery and beautiful and alive, it felt like fate. Like I’d gotten the epiphany I’d hoped for.”
Ingrid’s face went into an involuntary twist.
The same night? Finding out his friend was dead and meeting her happened on the same night? She must’ve misheard him. His adrenaline-powered speech was erratic, choppy, so she must’ve misheard him. He’d acted strange that night they met, sure, but not distraught, not grieving.
“You don’t believe me,” Dean said in a sad whisper. “Do you?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t know what to believe. Didn’t know what to think. “It’s just, you didn’t seem like you were grieving.”
“I was. In my own way, I was devastated. And I still am.” He adjusted himself in his seat, correcting the curved posture he’d slumped into. “See, in between those awful moments of my childhood, between my nightmares, the training, Karis would somehow pop up at the perfect time. One day he’d just… be there. I told you what my mom was like, but Karis filled thatemotional absence as best he could. He taught me so much. And I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget him. It’s just, when I saw him like that, saw all that life he had was suddenly drained out of him, it was too much. I thought that reality and my new reality couldn’t coexist. So, yes, I chose to focus on you that night, on your eyes. Karis’s eyes. If I stared at you for long enough, it was like a little part of him was still here with me.”
Ingrid winced, overwhelming guilt seizing her. She should’ve known better than anyone that grief could take years to fully settle in. That a person vanishing from one’s life often felt like a dream, unreal and fleeting.
Quickly, but not so abruptly as to make him feel rushed to move on from the complex reverie, she tried to avert Dean’s attention. “You said he’d randomly show up? Does that mean he lived nearby?”
A limp, exhausted smile started to form on Dean’s face. “Karis never settled in one spot, but he was never far.”
“You make him sound like he’s from an old fairy tale or something.”
“In a way, he was.” A grunt not dissimilar to a chuckle bellowed deep in Dean’s throat. “He always had a kind of mysterious quality about him. Honestly, I probably would’ve left home a lot sooner if it weren’t for him. How he’d come and go, it always felt like a reward for all my hard work. He’d take me fishing, to the movies, to Giants games, to the park to play with kids my age. He showed me how important it was to find normalcy. To realize how many other people there were in the world, and how beautiful and fun that world could be.Find something bigger than yourself to fight for, he always said,and your victories will never be small.”
“Did you find it?” Ingrid asked. “Something to fight for?”
“I did.” Dean snapped his head to her, giving her a revitalized grin. “I found something more. Someone who can do what I couldn’t.” He paused. “I found you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
This man, Ingrid thought—this man whom she thought she’d read like a book after those first few meetings of theirs. Cocky, too smart for his own good, a little nerdy. She never expected this tortured, gravely earnest side of him to surface.
