His sigh holds a hint of annoyance that doesn’t come through in his voice. “I’m aware.”

“But you did it anyway?” My temper begins to spiral, an uncomfortable pressure in my chest that climbs up my throat like some clawed animal. I know at least part of what I’m feeling is because I’m sleep deprived and frustrated with my case. But the bigger part of me is angry because this man I love doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that his actions no longer affect just him.

Taking a deep breath, I reel myself in, focus on keeping my voice level. “Tomasetti, I know this thing with Ferguson is difficult. And I know you’ve suffered. I get that. But you have to let this go.”

“In a perfect world—” He cuts off the rest of the statement, but the words hover between us, so tangible I could reach out and snatch them from the air with my fist.

In a perfect world, my wife and children would still be alive.

While I hate it that he was hurt so horribly, that three people he loved were stolen from him by violence, another part of me wants to remind him that he has me now. My heart. My love. And that if his family were here now, he and I would never have met.

After setting the plate in the sink, I go back to the table and sit across from him. “Tomasetti, if something happens to Ferguson—”

“If anything happens to Ferguson, it’ll be his own doing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I stare at him, refusing to acknowledge the pinpricks of unease on the back of my neck.

“It doesn’t mean anything.” He picks up the tumbler of whiskey sitting beside his laptop and sips. “I’m not going to do anything, so you can stop worrying. All right?”

“You’re going to his house. You’re talking to him. What do you call that?”

He doesn’t look up from his laptop. I see his eyes moving and I realize he’s reading, and that only pisses me off more. “I mean it, Tomasetti. This isn’t just about you anymore. The things you do affect me, too. It’s incredibly selfish of you not to consider that.”

He closes the laptop and looks at me. “Joey Ferguson is a piece of shit. He’s a murderer and a rapist and he’s going to continue fucking up people’s lives until someone stops him.”

“It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Who else is there, Kate? The Cleveland PD? BCI? A jury of his peers? Here’s a newsflash for you: They didn’t get the job done. The law failed me. It failed my family. My children.” Up until this point, he hasn’t raised his voice, but that final word is fraught with emotion, and I know that’s the heart of the matter here. That he lost his children. That they’d suffered before they died, and he hadn’t been there to protect them.…

“Your kids loved you,” I tell him. “They wouldn’t want you to sacrifice yourself in the name of revenge.”

“You don’t know anything about them.”

“For God’s sake, Tomasetti, you know better than anyone that sometimes terrible things happen to good people. The people we love get hurt. Sometimes we lose them.”

“Not like that!” His shout is so abrupt, so loud and filled with emotion that I jump. “They didn’t deserve what he did to them. He didn’t just murder them, Kate. He tortured them. He raped and terrorized them. And then he burned them alive. I couldn’t even bury them, because there was nothing left.”

“I know what they did!” I shout back. “And yes, it was the most horrible thing imaginable. But you survived—”

“Did I, Kate? Did I really?”

“Yes! Damn it, you’re just getting your life back on track. Tomasetti, you’ve got a lot to lose. We’ve got a lot to lose if you do something stupid.”

“Should I just let it go, Kate? Let that son of a bitch go on with his perfectly happy life while those caskets full of bone and ash rot in the ground?”

“Don’t go there. Don’t do this to yourself.”

He rises and approaches me. His nostrils are flared, teeth clenched. When he speaks, his voice is deadly and soft. “Do you know what he was doing earlier this evening?”

“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t—”

“It matters, damn it. It matters to me.” His hand shakes when he scrubs it over his jaw. “Ferguson threw a party at his mansion on the lake. To celebrate his freedom, evidently. He hired a band and caterers and invited all of his sleazy friends.” I see him pulling himself back, but he’s having a difficult time of it because some vital part of him has already gone over the brink. “There were kids there,” he grinds out. “I saw them. Playing in the yard. Oblivious to the fact that their host is a monster.”

“I know. And I’m sorry, but—”

“All of us are sorry. But you know what, Kate? Sorry doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t help. Being sorry doesn’t erase the fact that my kids suffered. I can’t get that out of my head. You know what makes all of this even worse? They died because of me. Because of what I do. Because of who I am. The same laws I devoted my life to enforcing failed me, Kate. Failed them. How the fuck am I supposed to live with that?”

“I don’t know,” I say, stepping toward him. “I don’t have the answers. But you can’t let Ferguson destroy you, too.”

“He already has.”

“No!” I shout. “I don’t accept that.”

For the span of a full minute, we stand silent, listening to the water pouring off the roof and the wind whistling around the eaves outside the window above the sink. I can feel my nerves zinging just beneath my skin. My breaths coming short and fast. My thoughts ricocheting inside my head so that I can’t focus on a single one.

After a moment, he says, “Living in a fantasy world won’t keep your nightmares from coming true.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“I’m not going to do anything.”

I stare at him, my heart pounding. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that.”

A little voice of reason tells me to go upstairs, take a shower, and go to bed. Let it go. But I’m angry with him. Worse, I’m scared. I’m terrified he’s going to do something that will jeopardize this precious thing we’ve built.

“I can’t compete with them.” In the periphery of my consciousness, I hear myself say the words, hating them the instant they’re out because they sound jealous and shallow and petty, three things I’ve never been.

The air around me feels fragile, like if I move, something will shatter and I’ll never be able to pick up the pieces. For an instant, I’m frozen in place, undecided, unable to breathe.

But I can’t stay. Not like this. Rising, I snag my coat and keys and then head for the door.

“Kate.”

I open the door. His voice follows me into the night, but he doesn’t come after me.

CHAPTER 12

She dreamed of that night. Even after all this time, and so many years spent trying to forget, it was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. The absolute dark of an Amish farm. A drug-fueled plot that had gone horribly wrong. The spill of innocent blood. It was a night in which a series of bad decisions had led to more bad decisions and culminated in a nightmare. People she thought she’d known turned into strangers she wished she’d never met.

Six people had died because of them. An Amish mother and father. Four innocent children. A teenaged boy had been left alone, to fend for himself. But those weren’t the only tragedies that night. Four other lives had been irrevocably changed. Promising young lives wrecked by unfathomable guilt and secrets they would have to live with forever.

Those secrets had destroyed her life, stolen her innocence, and any semblance of happiness or hope for the future. In the weeks that followed, she’d even found herself questioning whether she wanted to remain on this earth. But somehow she’d gotten through those dark days. She’d graduated from high school. Gone to college. Gotten married and had children. After the divorce and with the kids grown, she’d thrown herself into her art and opened the gallery. Through it all, Jules had never found happiness. She knew something about herself she couldn’t live with. It was like living with a person you hated—someone you could never trust nor leave.