Risking it All (Crossing the Line, #1)(54)

Please God, he just wanted one more day with her.

His hand went to the guest room doorknob without any conscious thought.

The sudden need to see her sleeping peacefully, unharmed, wouldn’t leave him. As quietly as possible, he turned the knob and pushed open the door.

Gone.

Bowen’s knees buckled under him. He grabbed the doorframe for balance as denial went off like firecrackers in his already-pounding head. The bed was unmade; her clothes were still there. She hadn’t planned on leaving for good. Had someone come in and taken her while he lay passed out on the floor, unable to intervene? No, please. No.

Calm down. She could still be here.

He stomped toward the bathroom and nearly ripped the door off the hinges to get a look inside. Lights off. Empty. He spun in a circle, searching through the apartment, seeing no sign of her.

Commanding himself to focus, he dialed Troy’s Manhattan cell phone number. He answered on the first ring, the sounds of the precinct behind him.

“What is it?”

“Did you take her? ” he shouted. “Did you take her from me? ”

A long pause on the other end had Bowen pulling his hair out. Finally, Troy spoke. “Calm down and explain yourself. Sera’s gone?”

Red danced in front of his eyes.

“Don’t play dumb with me, you *.

Where the hell is she? No cops. I told you no cops…that it had to be on my terms.” He couldn’t swallow, couldn’t get a decent breath. “She wouldn’t just leave. I told her. I told her there was no going back.”

“You’re not making any sense, man.”

Troy blew out a breath. “Look, I have no reason to lie. We’ve heard nothing from her.”

Bowen barely registered Troy’s assurances over the buzzing in his brain.

She hadn’t called in. She wasn’t here.

He hadn’t kept her safe. Failed. Oh, God, he’d failed her.

“Mr. Driscol. ”

Not Troy’s voice. Someone else’s.

Newsom? Based on the impatience in his tone, he’d been trying to get his attention for a while. Bowen almost felt too numb to respond. “What.”

“I have an idea where she might have gone.”

Sera stared blankly across the empty field, watching a plastic Ziploc bag float around in the wind. She pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt and drew her knees up to her chest, ignoring the creaking of the ancient bench beneath her. She’d come here before, but there had always been families, teenagers playing soccer, senior citizens walking in groups.

That hum of activity had made the park where Colin had been shot seem less desolate, more redeemable. Possibly because of the slight chill in the air, the only thing inhabiting the field today was garbage. A forgotten sweatshirt. A cracked Frisbee. It made the park, the last place where her brother had drawn breath, unbearable.

Black spots winked inside her vision, a product of her lack of sleep. Bowen had left. Just…left. She had no recollection of how long she’d sat on his bed feeling raw and exposed, convinced he would come back and hold her, before dragging herself to the guest room. No. He’d chosen retaliation. The pipe dream that she could save him had cracked and flooded her insides.

Eventually, the flood turned to a block of ice so thick she wasn’t sure it would ever thaw.

Around three in the morning, Bowen had crashed into the apartment. She’d heard him come into her room but pretended to be asleep, terrified to see the evidence of what he’d done in her name. Hours later, she’d heard him through the door, mumbling her name, saying it like a curse, a prayer, accompanied by the disctinct sound of a glass bottle clinking on the floor. The healer inside her had still wanted to go to him. Hold him. By morning, though, she’d managed to steel herself against the urge, stepping over him and his empty liquor bottle in the darkness, and leaving before she broke down and indulged the impulse.

No longer.

Her brother would have been twenty-nine today, and what gift had she given him? She’d allowed herself to get swept up in a man and forgotten about his justice. The future he’d been denied.

Selfish. She’d been selfish. Worse, she’d been wrong about the man who caused the lapse. After last night, even thinking his name hurt. She’d let him distract her from the needs of her family, she’d trusted him, given him a part of herself, and he’d disappointed her.

Honestly, she deserved it. She deserved to feel as though her chest had been chiseled into and ripped wide open. Her uncle hadn’t trusted her to do this job, to avenge Colin, and she’d proven him right.

Not anymore. She would do whatever it took to make up for her lapse in judgment. With so many eyes on her, it would be risky, but no other options existed. She would not be the failure her uncle expected her to be. Her brother’s death would not be in vain, no matter what mistakes he’d made or payouts he’d taken. She had to believe if he were still alive, he would have corrected his mistakes. Now she had to do it for him.

Tonight’s waitressing shift at Rush would be her final chance, and she wouldn’t waste it.

Right now, she needed to go back to…

Bowen’s, much as it would kill her to be around him when her feelings still existed. They more than existed, they crowded her insides, making it hard to breath. She thought she’d known him, swore a different man lived beneath the violent facade, but he’d proved her wrong. No longer could she trust him or let herself be sucked in by the magnetic pull in his direction.