Trail of Dead (Scarlett Bernard #2)(76)

Just then the doors to the emergency room exam area began to open on their hydraulic controls, and Runa herself walked through them, her left forearm wrapped in a bandage. Her eyes were unfocused, distracted, and she nearly ran straight into Jesse.

“Oh. Hey.” Her voice was uncertain and almost afraid.

Jesse looked her over. Even now, she was beautiful, with corn-silk hair falling out of her braids and sadness in her blue eyes. Jesse felt a sudden rush of grief for the person he had thought she was. He had been so wrong. “You got a second?” he asked. “I think you owe me a conversation.”

She nodded, and they trudged over to the ER waiting room. Runa sat down first, looking exhausted, and Jesse took the seat opposite her, half-afraid that if he sat too close she’d somehow…what? Lure him back?

Once they were seated, though, he didn’t know where to begin. “It’s been over an hour,” he said finally. “It took this long just for stitches?”

“I wouldn’t let them stitch me until I knew what was happening with Kirsten,” Runa explained. “She’s my cousin.”

“Oh.” Jesse leaned back, digesting this. “Is she gonna be okay?” he asked.

Runa nodded cautiously. “They think so. The bullet didn’t hit anything major, kidneys or lungs or whatever, but she’ll probably lose her spleen. Which I guess you can live without. She’s in surgery.”

She added, “I called her husband. He was at a Christmas party in the Valley. He’s probably with her by now.”

“Good.” Jesse felt his left knee jiggling up and down and made an effort to stop it. “So it’s true? She sent you to spy on me?”

Runa looked around with concern, but the only other people in the waiting room were two young men discussing something feverishly in the opposite corner. They wouldn’t be listening in. Runa relaxed an inch and met Jesse’s eyes, her voice even. “Yes. At first.”

“Did she tell you to sleep with me?”

Runa looked away, her strength already crumpled. Different from Scarlett, he thought.

“I deserve that,” she said. “But no. I was just supposed to get a job as a police photographer and keep an eye on you. Be your friend.”

“Explain to me, then, how you ended up being my girlfriend.” How you made me fall for you was what he wanted to say, but he had a little bit of dignity left.

Runa smiled ruefully at Jesse, wrinkling her nose in that way that he loved. Had loved. “Kirsten actually thought you were too in love with Scarlett to make a pass at me. We were both surprised when you first asked me out.” She began to lift her hands to gesture, but winced and settled her injured arm back onto her lap. “I wasn’t, like, this evil Bond girl out to seduce away your soul and betray you, or anything like that. I was just supposed to keep an eye on who you talked to, whether you seemed to be investigating the Old World on your own, if you were keeping lists of us, stuff like that. It was clear to me a while ago that you weren’t interested in exposing or arresting us, and I sort of…relaxed into our relationship.”

Jesse thought that over for a moment. “Then why didn’t Kirsten come to me right away when the witches began dying?”

She shook her head. “I trusted you, but Kirsten didn’t. She could tell that I was…that I was falling for you.” Runa took another deep breath. “We argued about it. Scarlett said something that helped convince her, and then she and I set up a little test for you, at the Jeep crime scene.”

“Wait,” Jesse said, confused. “What happened at the crime scene?”

She waved her good hand in front of her face, as if shooing a fly. “Not at the crime scene itself, but the next day. I had all those incriminating pictures of vampire activity, just right there for the taking. Kirsten thought you’d steal those shots, keep them as some kind of leverage against Dashiell.” She beamed at him. “But you erased them. You helped cover up an Old World secret. I knew I could trust you.”

“You could trust me,” Jesse said flatly, “but I couldn’t trust you, could I?”

She frowned, uncomfortable. “You have to understand what was at stake,” she began, “what the witches have worried about for centuries…”

Jesse held up his hand. “Runa, I just spent the last hour helping a vampire control the minds of my brother officers. It’s killing me, but I also know it was the right thing to do. I think I’m capable of some big-picture perspective.”

She was silent for a moment, and then she said very quietly, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Jesse was at a loss. He had loved this girl. And he was supposed to be a detective. How had he been so oblivious? How was it possible to love someone when you didn’t really know them at all? He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m sorry too,” he said. “But you understand why I can’t see you anymore, right?”

Tears filled her eyes. She would be one of those women who cried beautifully, he saw. When she nodded, they leaked down onto her cheeks. She lifted her good arm to wipe them off with the back of her hand. “Yes.”

He stood up. “I should get going. I think Scarlett is missing, and we haven’t caught Olivia or Mallory yet.”

Runa frowned. “Scarlett is missing?” she asked.