His tight smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’d make a good profiler. Yeah, my dad. I come from a family of lawyers. I’m the middle son, and when I changed course to the FBI, my dad wasn’t too thrilled.”
“You have to be in the field.” I can’t picture Rhys in a courtroom.
“The getting shot part didn’t go over too well with him, either. It was like I proved him right; that I wouldn’t make it as a field agent. I even thought about returning to the law during my rehabilitation leave.”
I rest my hand on his forearm. A foreign show of emotion, of empathy, but with Rhys, it feels natural. I want to offer him comfort.
“Why didn’t you?”
He looks at me, covers my hand with his. “You.”
A gust of wind steals my breath. I inhale deeply, filling my lungs. “Rhys…”
“You wouldn’t leave me alone,” he says with a curt laugh. “So I told myself I’d take one more case, then retire. But we know how that actually turned out.”
I recall how moody he was when I
first spoke with him. At times, I still see a glimpse of the sullen anger that lurks within him over his injury, over being taken out of the field. But… “I needed you. I couldn’t have gotten this far without you,” I say honestly.
There is no hesitancy in his gaze as he searches my face. Whether it’s my admission of needing him that’s shocked him silent, or something else…
He glances down at our hands, still touching. Then he turns mine over, exposing the rubber band. His thumb probes the delicate skin beneath the band, the rough pad of his thumb an arousing friction against the red, sensitized skin.
“I wish you wouldn’t cause yourself pain,” he says.
The urge to pull my wrist away thrums through me with violent need, but I don’t move. “It was part of my therapy,” I admit. “I just became conditioned to it, I guess.”
“Dr. Lauren?” he asks. He had to interview her while he was in Silver Lake working my cold case. She couldn’t divulge anything that would break patient-doctor confidentiality, but she confirmed my memory loss, my battle with physical recovery.
I nod in confirmation. “It distracted me from the pain. Whenever the rehabilitation therapy would become too much, she said to snap the band. My mind would focus on that sudden, sharp pain, giving my body a reprieve. If only for a moment.”
Something flashes in his eyes; a realization. Maybe Rhys understands more than most about needing an interruption from the pain.
He’s still holding my hand, his thumb absently tracing my wrist. Another blast of wind sends my hair across my face and, as I pull away to clear it from my eyes, he reaches up and tucks the strands behind my ear.
His hand lingers there, the tips of his fingers lightly touching my jaw. I think again of that moment at the lake, when he kissed my forehead. And of last night, when the question of us charged the air—when all I had to do was move closer.
His tie flaps against his arm in the breeze, and I imagine a braver version of myself grabbing hold of it and bringing his mouth crashing against mine. As his gaze settles on my lips, I part my mouth in anticipation, wondering if he’s envisioning the same.
If time would just slow down long enough to let me make a choice…
Before I can will my body to act, he blinks and turns toward the ocean. Drops his hand from my face. He breaks the connection, and a knot tightens in my stomach.
“A reprieve,” he says, picking up the thin shoot again. “Like an intermission.” He draws a diagonal line in the sand.
“What?”
“What is that psychology term you always talk about? When the mind can’t harbor two beliefs at once?”
I blink against the wind, willing my brain to transition. “Cognitive dissonance?”
“Right. What if the killer is experiencing something like that?” He now draws three vertical lines off the main line. “Let’s imagine there are no other victims out there. That our guy isn’t a serial killer. His victimology has purpose. Maybe he’s feeling some form of guilt; that’s why he spared Cam’s baby. You were targeted first—” he breaks off as he scrawls my name along one line “—then Joanna. Then Cameron. If the cases are linked, then Joanna had to have had some connection to the both of you.”
If the cases are linked. With everything we’ve discovered, with all the similarities, we still have to be objective. “I didn’t know her. She was younger than me. We didn’t grow up in the same area or attend the same school.” I contemplate this for a moment. “And I don’t think Cam would’ve known her, either.”
Rhys scores out five more lines. Then, along each writes: Torrance, Mike, Kohen, Drew, Chelsea. He’s created a murder board in the sand.
All suspects, but the last name gives me pause. “How is Chelsea factored in?”