Page 115 of After All The Wreckage
Maybe I’d get lucky and she’d have left the list here. I went back to the office, headed straight to the desk, moved papers around, and eyed the empty computer cord. Kora emerged in the doorway, and as I glanced up, my gaze froze on the wall next to her. A huge corkboard was covered in paper and pins and evenstrings. It looked a bit like something you might find in a serial killer’s house… or maybe the conference room of a police station.
I made my way over to the board, staring at all the information she’d gathered. Jesus. There was so much. It looked like chaos to me, but Rory would have seen exactly how it overlapped.
Kora came to stand by me, inhaling sharply. “She… she had to have just put this together. It wasn’t in here last week.”
I was more impressed than I’d ever been. Rory had gathered all this intel in a matter of days. Hours, even. I had no doubt that, given time, she would have solved her mother’s case one way or another and found Demi in the process. Or vice versa. She knew exactly what she was doing. She’d been made for taking down criminals.
My hand landed on a couple of pushpins with addresses near the river. They were in the center of pink highlighter marks drawn in circles like a Venn diagram. The circles overlapped with the Argento Skies building where Monte had been taken and the Metropolitan PD headquarters. The warehouses. She had to have narrowed them down to these two.
I snapped a picture of their locations with my phone and turned back to Kora. She had her face in her hands, and her shoulders were moving. Silent tears. Fuck. My throat closed, and I squeezed her arm gently. “It’s going to be okay.”
She looked up at me with a bone-weary expression. “I can’t lose her too.”
“I’m going after her, but she’s smart, Kora. And she knows how to take care of herself. You should have seen her today…”My throat grew thick with emotions as I thought of Rory all week. The confidence with which she’d walked into the Rayburn Building. The way her fingers had sped over the keyboards. The lack of fear she’d shown as she’d stuck a stun gun to Casada’s neck when the man was three times her size. The way she’dtaken Walden down with a sweep of a foot and an elbow to his back.
She was strong and intelligent and so much more than her television heroine had ever been. Pride and love welled through my chest.
Any man would be lucky to have Rory at his side. A partner. A lover. A friend.
I ached to be that person. I ached to be the one she came home to at night and lost herself in so she could forget the horrors of her day or the burdens of the case she was working. I wanted to be the one to kiss her and touch her until the only thing she experienced was love that washed away the ugly she’d seen.
I’d been worried that Ivy and Monte would see someone always leaving. Someone we might lose in a brutally painful way. But I hadn’t thought about what they’d see and learn and feel while she was with us.
The strength of Rory’s character. The goodness that vibrated from her like a light. The determination and ferocity with which she protected the people she loved. Having my siblings see that… feel that… have it as a role model… It could only be a good thing.
I’d shielded us for way too long. I’d tucked our love for each other into a cave and sealed the door, letting only Audrey and River sneak in the back entrance. River was right. My family deserved more than that. A full life, including the heartache that came with fully loving others.
“You love her.” Kora’s voice brought me back to the cottage and the corkboard and the danger Rory had just driven into.
“I do.”
She smiled. It was a weak smile but real.
“She adored you from the moment she met you. We all saw the teenage crush and were grateful you were always kind to her when you could have been cruel.”
My heart tightened and loosened at the same time. A strange dichotomy.
“She was a force of nature that even a dumb teen like me could appreciate.”
Before I knew it, Kora had wrapped me in a hug. She squeezed tight. “Go get her. Tell her. Give her something to feel other than the guilt she’s drowning in. When life throws our girl a curveball, she thinks she was supposed to see it coming. She thinks this is her fault.”
I hugged her back. “I promise I’ll find her.”
Kora stepped away, and we shared one more look. This one was full of things neither one of us wanted to speak about. Fear and sadness and worry.
I made my way down the hall, but at the door, I looked back. “It’s going to be okay, Kora.”
And I felt it. In my bones. This woman was getting her granddaughter back.
I didn’t know if it was Demi’s abilities she’d passed to me or just my love for Rory that made me feel that way. But it was like being in the eye of a twister. Calm and quiet. I could feel the storm whirling viciously around the hollow core, danger in any direction, but I also knew it was going to lift. It would evaporate into nothing but wind and rain.
I’d always been saddened by the debris left behind after a tornado—the wreckage strewn about as nature took homes and businesses and lives. But this time, after the storm, there would be something new waiting for me.
Love. Hope.
Rory.
I just had to find her and make sure she saw it too. That she didn’t dive off the cliff thinking there was no other way. To show her the only way we would survive the catastrophic events that had ripped apart our lives was if we did it together.
