Page 17 of Ace
Yet her eyes glowed for reasons Keller couldn’t fathom. She looked stronger. More confident. He didn’t understand why. It had taken him more than a few years to be civil after Carol Marie’s sudden death. For too long he’d been hateful and mean, surviving on booze, smokes, and venom. There were still days he couldn’t bear to think about all he’d lost when she’d passed. Didn’t want to. Her death had taken everything good from him.
Yet Miss Church seemed to have already processed her great grandmother’s death. She was sad, but no longer undone. She knew something Keller didn’t. Yes, her eyes were rimmed with red, and there was a tender vulnerability to her. But there was also strength and conviction. She had every right to break down, but she hadn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone with RJ. Like Gran Mere’s spirit, Keller lingered, wondering if thisMizz Churchwould share her secret.
His inner suit pocket buzzed with an incoming call. Probably Tucker. Keller made a mental note to set his alarm for thirty-minute intervals from now on. Fingering his cell up and out of his pocket, he nodded politely to Miss Church. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I have to take this.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she replied.
Turning his back on Dr. John, Keller faced the kitchen altar with all its mystical paraphernalia still on display. There was a time he’d thought all voodoo, magic, and witchcraft was evil like his mother, but Miss Church’s half-magic, half-Christian ritual had changed his mind. Maybe there was some good to it after all.
“Boniface.”
“He died,” Tucker ground out, the pain in his voice raw and overpowering.
WTF? No!
But, WTF, yes. The clear image of Tucker Chase breaking down in a bright hospital corridor overwhelmed Keller. Stumbling with a searing dose of empathy for this hard man still miles away, he took a chair before Tucker’s angst billowing through the connection dropped him to his knees. “But Boss, I thought… I honestly thought…”God, what have I done?
All at once, Keller was a thousand miles north, inside the prestigious George Washington University Hospital west of DC, hovering over a bed, and watching Isaiah struggle to breathe through the oxygen mask strapped to his face. Isaiah was gray, his lips blue, as Roxy, his adoring wife, clung to him, her face buried in his chest. Dressed in jeans and a light gray hoodie, the bottomless grief that racked her pregnant body overwhelmed Keller. Every shudder and sob was another breath-stealing stiletto stab to his chest.
Miss Church was wrong? No. She couldn’t be...
Like an angry Navy SEAL, Tucker stood stock-still at the end of that bed with both fists clenched, primedto jump into action. But there was nothing to be done. His rumpled dress slacks and white dress shirt looked like he hadn’t slept since yesterday. His jaw flexed forward and back as he ground his teeth, fighting the same emotions as Roxy, but forcing a brave face for her sake. But so damned sick at heart.
For the first time, Keller really saw Tucker. He saw the man under the gutsy bravado. Tucker honestly thought of Isaiah as a kid brother. He adored Isaiah, and losing him hollowed Tucker’s heart. This hard, brash man was crying inside like a child, great gulping sobs he’d never let surface.
Fighting the image—Please let this be Tucker’s memory. Please let this be the past, not the present!—Keller tried again. “But Boss…”
“You did it,” Tucker choked. He could barely get the words out. “You… you saved him. It was all you. He flatlined, but all at once… Then you...” His voice turned incredibly tender. “You saved my boy, Kell. I owe you.”
My boy? Kell?
Keller swallowed hard as Tucker’s unvarnished love for Isaiah poured over him like a sweet, warm baptism instead of the wrath he’d expected. Not that the rest of the Deuces Wild team didn’t also know that Tucker and Isaiah were close. Whatever battles Tucker and Isaiah had been through, it had welded them into the unlikeliest of brothers—a flaming asshole and a genius, a hard-as-nails SEAL and a genuine guardian angel.
But Keller had also heard what no one had uttered in years, Carol Marie’s endearment for a kid who’d never known gentleness or love before she’d comealong. He’d been someone back when he’d been hers. Back when he was—Kell.
But how the hell could Tucker have known? By then Keller could barely manage a hoarse, “Hey, Boss?”
“Yeah?” Tucker’s voice was the same trembling baritone, so low and so deep that only the barest murmur came over the connection.
“I’m taking a couple personal days.”
“Take a week.”
“Thanks. I might just do that.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Keller locked eyes with Savannah. Her eyes glowed with something other than sadness. But it wasn’t pity, either. Almost looked like compassion, as if she and Keller shared the same connection Tucker and Isaiah did. Which was true. Savannah and Keller had saved a life today. But they’d lost one, too. At least, she’d lost one. In Keller’s mind, the negative canceled the positive, and he was back to zero. Wasn’t that Nature’s way, to strive for a net sum of nothing? Yet Keller also felt as if he’d found more than that net sum of zero.
He just wasn’t sure what.
Chapter Eight
They ended up at the nearest Waffle House. Savannah wouldn’t have accepted Agent Boniface’s offer, but she needed a break after watching RJ manhandle her beloved great grandmother’s remains into a body bag. But when he’d dusted his hands on his pants when he’d finished as if he’d taken out the trash? She could’ve cried all over again.
It hadn’t taken long for Agent Boniface to catch onto Dr. John. RJ’d always given Savannah the creeps, but today he’d outdone himself. After he’d left and the professional, polite, and sensitive mortuary attendants had taken Gran Mere away, Savannah slipped into a pair of her great grandmother’s sandals, locked the houseboat, and forced her thoughts away from all she’d lost.
There was nothing she could do for Gran Mere now, and at some level, Gran Mere had been preparing herfor this day for years. A deep sigh eased out of Savannah’s heart. She was tired, but rest was better left for another time. There were still things to be done.
She’d been on her feet since before sunrise. Kennels didn’t clean themselves, and while she’d hosed and disinfected Sanctuary, the dogs had free run of her portion of Gran Mere’s property. Only now it was Savannah’s property, all one hundred-plus acres of the swampland Gran Mere had loved. Savannah didn’t want to think about that, either.
