The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(16)

“I didn’t get a single call from another agency about you three starting a blood feud with other teams,” he replies, and it’s sort of an acknowledgment. As much as he’s going to give, anyway, when the conversation pains her so.

“You don’t say?” She drifts over to the table and sits on top of it, where she can see over the counter into the kitchen. “Nice to know they didn’t snitch.”

“Don’t scare them at all, or scare them so much they’re afraid to talk.” He flips the bacon, reaching for a turkey baster to siphon off some of the extra grease. “Anything in the middle is asking for trouble.”

Sterling may or may not realize that he’s purposefully distracting her, giving her something to say without making it have weight. Ordinarily she would, but Vic does this for all of us when we’re hurting. It’s one of his gifts: let me distract you, let me fill the silence for you, until you decide there’s something you need to say.

We eat brunch, and when Vic heads back home to work on some chores around the house, the three of us go for a run and then take turns in the shower, using up all the hot water. We kidnapped Sterling straight from work on Wednesday, so she’s not surprised when we grab our bags and chivvy her out to Eddison’s car.

During the drive, my phone buzzes with a text, and I flinch. Fortunately, the message is from Priya, not Holmes. You’ve got Eliza?

Yeah, we’ve got her.

Thank you.

Three years ago, when Priya was being stalked by the bastard who murdered her sister, Sterling was on the team from the Denver field office—along with Vic’s old partner, Finney, and the third member of their team, Agent Archer—that checked in on Priya and pursued the stalker. Partly because of choices made during that sequence of events, mostly because of repeating those mistakes in another case, Archer is no longer an agent with the FBI. In spite of Archer, maybe even because of him, Priya and Sterling bonded and kept in touch after the case was resolved.

Priya was delighted when Vic and Finney conspired to steal Sterling for our team. It doesn’t shock me that she knows what it cost, or that she’s worried today. As Sterling said, Priya’s a good kid.

Sterling gives us a lopsided smile when the car pulls up in front of a bar a few minutes after it opens for the day. It’s one of the quieter bars in town, the kind where groups of friends gather to nurse a drink or two over hours of laughter and conversation, rather than have to shout over pulsing music or the din of crowds of other people. I steer Sterling to a semi-private booth in a corner while Eddison goes up to order the first round and let the bartenders know that we’ll be driving her home.

“I don’t even know why I’m sad,” she says suddenly, somewhere into hour three. “I wasn’t even happy with him.”

“Then why were you going to marry him?” Eddison asks, picking at the damp, peeling label of his beer.

“My mom was over the moon when he asked. He did it in front of both sets of parents, the whole restaurant looking on because it was this giant spectacle . . .” She scowls at the bright blue shot in her hand, and knocks it back without a wince. “I didn’t feel like I could say no that publicly, you know? And then our mothers were so happy, and so full of plans, and every time I tried to talk about it, they said it was just nerves, that it was natural for a bride to be anxious, and I just . . . Everyone else seemed so happy, and I thought maybe I was just wrong.”

The next round of shots and beers comes with three glasses of water, too, because we’re trying to get her drunk, not dead.

“He said if I came to Virginia, I was coming alone, and I was so relieved,” she continues a little while later, like twenty or so minutes of companionable silence didn’t happen. “Like there was finally this tangible thing that I could point to and say this, this is why, and no one could tell me it was in my head.”

“But then they thought you should stay and make it work?” I surmise, and she nods miserably.

“But why am I sad?”

Because the first time the price is high—the first time this job asks for too large a piece of ourselves and we feel the bleed for weeks and months—is always sad. “Because doors close,” I say instead, “and we can still miss what was on the other side even if we choose to walk away.”

“I still have the dress. He insisted I had to get it right away.”

“If you’ve already spent thousands of dollars on a dress, you’re less likely to call it off,” Eddison offers quietly. “He knew you weren’t happy.”

“Do I burn it?”

Eddison scratches at his scalp, the curls in his dark hair more obvious than usual. He really needs to get them trimmed. “I think you do whatever you want with it. Burn it, throw it away, keep it for the real deal.”

Sterling gapes at him, looking properly scandalized for the first time since I’ve known her. “You don’t keep a dress for another wedding!” she tries to whisper. The bartender looks over at us with raised eyebrows, so clearly that attempt didn’t work.

“But isn’t that one of the things you’re supposed to look for? Making sure everyone can wear it again?”

“That’s for bridesmaids’ dresses!”

He lifts his fresh beer, the foam licking at his upper lip, and winks at me. That clever bastard. “Aren’t those just identical to the wedding dress?”