“What happened to him?”
“The day I met him at the bar, he was planning to take me to the house he bought for us and ask me to marry him. I pulled my gun on him and got him to his knees. The rest of the team came in and arrested him. One of his men had tried to warn him. In the last seconds, his lieutenant had figured out who I was and tried to get him out of there. But Dragon wouldn't go. He chose me over his man. He just wanted to be with me. Or who he thought I was. He was taken to jail, tried, and convicted. Sentenced to multiple life sentences. I had done my job.”
“And then?” Sam asks.
“And then, several years later, he was being transferred to a different prison. There was a horrific crash, and when it was all said and done, a corpse was found in the prison transport vehicle. Crushed and burned beyond recognition. He was the only prisoner being transported that day. He was declared dead, and that part of my life was closed,” I say.
“It wasn't closed before that?” Sam asks.
“It's hard knowing there's somebody in the world who feels about you the way I knew Darren Blackwell felt about me.”
Chapter Eight
“I have to go to work,” Sam whispers in my ear and kisses me on the temple.
Groaning my protest, I roll onto my back, then onto my other side to swing my arm over him.
“No,” I whine. “Not yet.”
“That's what you've been saying for the last hour,” he chuckles. “I really have to go. But I promise I will be back this evening. As soon as I get off work.”
I pull myself up so I can press my nose against his and look into his eyes.
“Come home early?” I ask.
“If I can,” he says. “Sherwood does still need a sheriff, you know.”
I let out a dramatic huff, and he laughs, giving me a sharp, playful smack on my butt. He pulls himself out from under me, and I flop onto the mattress.
“So dramatic,” he says with a laugh and heads into the bathroom. "I'm going to take your car into the shop this morning. See if they can figure out why it's making those weird sounds."
"Thank you," I call back.
I reluctantly throw on a bathrobe and shuffle into the kitchen so I can at least make him a travel mug of coffee before he heads out into the chilly autumn morning. I fully intend on spending my day in a sweatsuit and thick socks. Possibly up to my eyeballs in pumpkin tea.
My plan is to go over all of Greg's papers and the pile of stuff in the attic again. I'm not exactly optimistic about getting anything out of that, but it will at least be a warmup for the next part of the plan. That involves pulling out my laptop and opening up the file of old archived emails I never really thought I would look at again.
I kept them because that's what I do. There's really no other explanation than that. Sam hates that my inbox is overflowing. It makes him twitchy. But it's part of my routine. Every couple of weeks, I sit down and organize the countless messages that fill up the inbox day after day. Most of them get deleted, but others are sifted into individual folders and tucked away, where I can't see them, but I know they're there.
These are the emails from my friends and family. Details about cases that I've worked or even just the ridiculous memes Dean insists on sending to me. Some of them, I have to admit, are funny. Others are confusing, and I don't really understand what they're supposed to mean. And then there's that third category, where I can only hope he didn't actually mean to include me in the email list.
What matters is I don't need the vast majority of them; there's really no point in their existing other than the fact that they exist. I don't go back in and read them or revisit them. But I know they're there in case there ever seems to be a reason I would need to read them again.
Like now. I open the folder labeled “Greg” and stare at the pages of communication between us that span the years we worked together. There's a point somewhere in those pages of messages, a fault line, where our relationship shifted. It was never deeply sexy and passionate or even playful and silly. It wasn't like Sam and me.
But it was steady and comfortable. We knew each other well and had fun together. I felt secure around him and knew if there was a future for us to have, it would be just as steady and comfortable. Maybe nothing that would move mountains, but enough to keep moving forward if the ground moved under us.
A strange kind of emotion settles over me as I scroll back to the very first messages we exchanged. Most of them are brief. Some just a couple of words. Some nothing more than attachments. But there are others that chronicle our slowly growing relationship.
Those are the messages I'm after. I'm several months into our knowing each other when my phone rings. I reach over to it without taking my eyes off the screen and answer.
“Hello?”
“Emma?” Bellamy says.
“Hey, B,” I say. “How are you doing?”
“Doing okay. What are you up to?” she asks.
“Believe it or not, I am sitting in my living room reading through all the emails Greg and I ever sent to each other,” I say.
“Greg?” she asks. “Greg Bailey?”
“Do I know any other Gregs?” I ask, laughing despite the sadness.
“It's just that…”
“There's a reason behind it,” I reassure her. “I'm not just wallowing, and I haven't snapped and started up an email correspondence with myself. He left me this key; there has to be a reason for it. I've gone through every one of his possessions that had a lock on it, but the key doesn't fit any of them. I know it's not to his apartment because it doesn't look like a regular house key. So, I'm at a loss. I figured maybe if I went back through and read all of our emails, maybe I would find something he mentioned.”
“Like what?” she asks.
“I'm not sure. Just something. Maybe a property he owns that he forgot to leave a deed for with his lawyer, or a locker in an airport somewhere. I really don't know. But the thing is, there has to be a very important reason he wanted to make sure Lydia gave me this key. He said, “just in case”. That meant he was expecting something bad to happen. Or, at least thought it was a strong possibility,” I say.
“Do you think he was going to meet with Jonah?” she asked.
“No,” I say. “I don't think so. He would tell me about that. There would be no reason for him to go meet with Jonah without letting me or some of the other members of the task force know. The notes that Lydia sent are pretty vague. They just say that she was tracking somebody once referred to as the Dragon and that he might have been responsible for a cold case murder she was looking into.”
“What murder? Someone you investigated?" she asks.
"No. Somebody named William Chappell. I never even heard the name. But obviously, she found out something about him that interested her and was looking into it. She stumbled on some association with the Dragon and kept digging. She found out enough to catch Greg's attention and for him to tell her not to get any closer," I say.
"Did he tell her why?" Bellamy asks.
"Not according to her or her notes. She said they were planning to get together later, and she figured they would talk more about it then. Obviously, he never got a chance," I say.