Chapter Eighteen
Ana
Fifteen minutes after Luke has left me in a rush of adrenaline, emotion, and confusion, I fight the urge to follow him downstairs.
He won’t be alone. I can’t say what I need to say to him in the middle of a gaggle of Walker men, and I need to get my head on straight anyway. The truth is, my reaction to what he said was neither rational, considering Kurt trained killers for a living, nor professional, considering I’m an FBI agent.
Luke came to me with a difficult topic to present, but he did so focused on saving lives. As Kurt would say, kill or be killed. We are living those words right here, right now. Feeling anxious, I walk to the laundry to change our clothes. All the while I’m finding my calm spot where I can think, and exclude emotion. All of which delivers me to images of Darius dying right in front of me, but Darius is dead because he was dirty. He played. He paid. That is just how the rules work. I need to call my boss and tell him Darius is dead before his body is found. Actually, I’m sure his body has to have been found already. He died in a pretty public place.
I shove aside thoughts of Darius right now. He’s dead. I can’t change that fact. What I can change is how I think about Kurt and Kasey. It’s hard for me to see them anyway but through the eyes of a person who loved them.
I start to pace. It’s how I solve my cases. In the process, I replay events at the ranch, think about conversations, and unravel one moment after the next but I struggle to find answers. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I wash Luke’s clothes and dry my own. That domestic task is what shakes me to my senses. I think better with Luke. I figure things out better with Luke. I’ve spent two years wanting the chance to tell him those things.
I hurry toward the stairs, then down them, and just when I reach the bottom, I catch the voices of Adam and Luke talking. The idea of seeing Luke, of telling him I love him, speeds my pace, but just as I’m about to round the corner, Luke’s voice grows louder, his words halting me in my steps.
“She went down that rabbit hole, man, and yeah, she apologized but she went there. And who the fuck am I to blame her? After what happened with Kasey, it was inevitable. It’s part of why I left. I knew she’d have to call me a killer, in every way possible. I’d make her worse for the wear in every way. I can’t be with her if every time she looks at me, she sees her brother’s killer. Nothing has changed. The story is still the same.” can’t be with her. I have to settle for saving her life.”
I sink down on the step and hug myself. I did go there and it was a mistake. Another mistake would be confronting him about this with Adam present. Luke is an inherently private person. The fact that he’s talking to Adam at all about this tells me that Adam is a good friend, someone he trusts, and therefore, someone I should trust. It also tells me that I did damage tonight to what was already a fragile shell of what we once were.
It takes all I have in me, but I force myself to push to my feet and walk back up the stairs.