“You might want to go wait in the car,” I tell him.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” he says, shoves his gun into the back of his pants and heads toward the exit.

“Jesus!” I hear him say to himself as he gets farther away. “I’ve got to get a reassignment.”

The tall metal door closes behind him and I look back at Bennings and Emerson who know that this night has just taken an unfortunate turn.

I waste no time and get right to work.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Fredrik


“How is she?” I ask Greta over the phone, sitting in my car at the airport after just arriving back in Baltimore.

“Well, from the video feed,” Greta says, “she’s doing just fine. But I don’t feel right about this, Mr. Gustavsson. Cassia knows I’m here and it must be confusing to her why I haven’t been down to see her yet.”

“She’ll understand.”

Greta hesitates, likely rearranging the words she had been about to say, and says instead, “Will you be returning soon?”

“Yes. I’m already back in town. I have a few things I need to take care of and then I’ll head that way. Expect me no later than midnight.”

“Yes, sir.”

This is it.

This is the moment in which I have to make a decision. I can’t go back to that house until I figure it out. I can’t because one look at her and my mind and emotions and decisions will be dictated by her and all my reason will leave me.

My hands tighten around the steering wheel as I stare out the windshield at the cold evening where exhaust swirls chaotically from the tailpipes of running cars. I watch people come and go from the airport parking lot, dragging their wheeled suitcases behind them through a lightly dusted snow-covered sidewalk. Businessmen. Couples returning from vacation or arriving here to spend the holidays with family. All normal rituals catered to by normal people. I’ve never dreamed of being like they are. You have to know a normal life before you can miss it and dream about having it again.

The only life I miss is the one I lived with Seraphina.

I leave the airport and find myself in the same diner I was in a few nights ago, and for the same reason—I can’t go home. And the very same waitress who served me that night is also here on this night. She steps up to my table with a bright white smile and average-sized breasts and long, dark hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of her head.

“Back again so soon?” she says, holding an order pad in the palm of her hand. “Can I start you off with some coffee?”

“Yes, thank you.” I smile slimly and lay my arms across the table.

Watching her walk away, I study the perfect shape of her body—the curve of her hourglass hips, the roundness of her ass, the naked skin on the back of her neck where little strands of chocolate-colored hair have broken free from the ponytail holder.

But all I can see is Cassia.

Before the waitress comes back with the coffee, I’ve already left the diner and am heading straight for my house.

It’s just after ten o’clock at night. There are two lights burning on the upstairs floor—the kitchen and likely the television in the den. I stare at the house for a long time, thinking about Cassia. About Seraphina. About how any of this could’ve ever happened.

I’ve made a decision.

I’m going to help Cassia. No matter what it takes, I’m going to help her get better. I remembered on the drive home what I had read in the files Izabel gave me:

The treatment to help Carrington cannot be successful if Carrington is not the personality that I’m treating.

But Cassia is here now and she has been for a year—more than a year because she’s been living as her true self for a while, made a life for herself in New York. That has to mean something. That has to be good news. I will get her the best care in the world.

I’m going to help her.

I step out of the car and into the cold air, walking briskly up the sidewalk toward the front porch. But before I put my key in the doorknob, my instincts start going haywire. Greta never once peeked through any of the curtains while I sat in the driveway in the running car. I’ve not seen her shadow moving through the lights in the house. She’s not eager to open the door for me.

The pit of my stomach grows into a heavy knot.

My mouth has run dry of saliva.

My heart is heavy.

I open the door carefully and peer inside the dimly-lit house finding it eerie how quiet it is; only the low volume of the television in the den making any kind of noise.

“Greta?” I call out carefully.

No answer.

Then I hear the pipes squeaking and I recognize it right away as the shower being turned off. Letting out a heavy sigh of relief, I finally close the front door behind me and make my way into the kitchen, dropping my car keys on the counter. Slipping off my long black coat, I drape it across the seat of a barstool. Then I prop my hands on the counter and drop my head in-between my rigid shoulders, looking down at the black marble counter.

“I thought you’d never come back,” I hear Cassia’s voice behind me.

Raising my head slowly, I turn it to see her standing there where the hallway wall and kitchen meet, dressed only in one of my button-up dress shirts. Her long blonde hair is wet, laying against her back.

But something’s very wrong with this picture. Everything is wrong with this picture and that voice in the back of my head is roaring in my brain.

Leery of her—confused, shocked, concerned—a gamut of emotions keep me stone-still, with my hands still braced against the bar, my shoulders as stiff as rock.

She walks toward me and I still can’t will myself to move, and then she passes me up and moves around the bar.

“Where’s Greta?” I ask carefully.

Cassia opens the fridge and peers inside, but I get the feeling it has nothing to do with any real interest in anything that’s in it.

“Was that her name?” she says so casually that it sets my nerves on edge.

Then she closes the fridge with a beer in her hand and looks right at me. Popping the cap off on the edge of the counter, she places the bottle to her lips and takes a small drink, never taking her eyes away from mine.

“Where is Greta, Seraphina?” I ask once more and inhale a deep breath, trying to contain my calm façade.

Seraphina smiles, but it’s a casual, innocent smile and not one of malice.

She sets the beer on the counter.

I finally straighten my back and let my hands fall away from the bar and down at my sides.

“I’ve missed you so much, love,” she says and it wrenches my heart. “I’m not sure how you found me, or what I was doing downstairs with a chain around my ankle, but you found me fair and square and I always knew you would.”

She walks back around the counter and steps right up to me—the scent of her skin intoxicating and familiar, her closeness even though still a few feet away, enough to make me relent, to want to push her violently against the wall and bury myself inside of her.

My heart is breaking.

I swallow hard and say, “Yes, I found you,” but it’s all I can get out.

Seraphina steps closer, placing the palms of her hands against my chest and her warmth sinks through my shirt and right into my skin.

“I was going to run,” she says softly as her head slowly descends toward my heart. “I was going to leave, but I’m tired of running, Fredrik. I just want to be with you again. Where I belong.”

My arms have collapsed around her body and I didn’t even know it until looking down and seeing them there.

I shut my eyes softly and take her in, all of her, because it’s been so long since I’ve felt her this close to me, was able to inhale her scent and feel the heat of her body against mine.

But I force myself quickly back into reality.

I pull away from her gently.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, looking up at me with a slightly tilted head.

“Where is Greta?” I repeat.

“She’s in the basement,” she says as if it really doesn’t matter. Then she smiles and grabs me by the hand. “Come with me, love.” She pulls me along and reluctantly I follow her past the den where the television is glowing against the dark walls and then toward my bedroom.

That voice inside is screaming, but I continue to shut it out, my mind too perplexed and excited and regretful and relieved to do anything else.

Seraphina practically dances into my room.

She stops at the bed where she looks back at me while fitting her fingers around the buttons of my shirt she’s wearing, breaking them apart. Then she stands before me naked, the dress shirt pooling around her bare feet.

I shake my head. “No,” I say, taking a step back. I want her. I want her more than anything right now, but my conscience is beating the shit out of me. “I’m not doing this with you, Seraphina.”

“Why not?” She approaches me, her slim, shapely hips swishing seductively as she moves, snake-like, the way only Seraphina could ever move.

Dragging her fingertips down my chest, she searches for my buttons next, but I carefully place my hands on top of hers and push them away.

“You can cut me, love,” she whispers, turning her back to me so that I can see the scars I put there, and just imagining it makes me hard. “I know it’s been a long time. How have you managed?”

I step away from her when really what I want to do is give in, to feel her underneath me again, to taste her love for me again.

But I can’t. All I see in front of me is Cassia. Maybe it’s the long, blonde hair, or that she’s wearing no makeup, I don’t know, but all I see is Cassia. And I could never hurt her like that.