“Aye, but death isn’t an option for me.”
She stared into his tormented eyes and cupped his cheek. “It’s not death that I’m worried about.”
“One problem at a time.” He covered her hand with his and closed his eyes for a moment, as if he wanted to absorb the comfort she was offering. A warm feeling bloomed in her chest, right until he said, “Flynn is convinced your sister is the leader of the Digi Robins thievery ring on the dark web.”
“The Digi what?”
Drake opened his eyes and raised a brow. “Agent Bale didn’t tell you about them?”
She lowered her hand from his face and settled back into the couch. “Our relationship is…complicated.”
A muscle flexed in Drake’s cheek, and his voice took on a gruff tone. “Complicated is a bullshit term. He used you when it was convenient for him and shut you out when it wasn’t. Call a spade a spade. He’s an arse, and he never deserved you.”
His blunt, but right on point, assessment made her smile. She’d spent most of her life as a loner. Having someone stick up for her was new.
She nodded slowly. “You’re probably right.”
“Damn straight.” He relaxed a little. “I’m the least qualified of my crew to explain this, but as I understand it, the Digi Robins are thieves on the internet who steal and then sell the stolen goods on some kind of dark web to pay for medical care for folks who can’t afford the treatments. I can introduce you to Harmony. She used to work for them, but after the mess with Pandora’s Box, our boatswain coaxed her into joining our crew and leaving the digital pirates behind.”
Heather smiled at his terminology. Drake was rough, exhausted, and out of his element, but he already trusted her more than David ever had. Until now, she hadn’t realized how many excuses she’d made for David’s behavior.
National security, the less you know the better. Bullshit. Drake was right. Whether intentional or not, David had been using her.
“My sister is super busy running an internet security firm. It’d be too risky. If anyone discovered this side business, selling stolen items on the dark web, she’d lose everything.”
Drake shrugged a shoulder. “Or, since her company needs to monitor threats anyway, she’s the perfect person to use the dark webs without anyone detecting it.”
God, he was sexy and so damned cute when he tried to talk about virtual tech. Her heart threatened to thump out of her chest like a cartoon. She forced herself to focus again. “Okay, even if that were true, what’s that got to do with the serpent ring on her finger?”
“Flynn believes she must’ve been in the Bonaventure Cemetery the same night we were there, watching from the shadows.”
Heather struggled to picture Ashley, in her Ferragamo shoes and matching bag, hiding in the shadows of a cemetery while shots were fired. It couldn’t be true. No, if Ashley had witnessed a murder she would’ve called the police, not twisted the ring off a dead man’s finger.
She shook her head. “Even if she was, which…seriously, I can’t even imagine that, but if she was there, how did she get past the Department 13 cleanup crew? I can’t see my sister going to that much trouble to steal an antique ring.”
“Aye.” Drake nodded. “Maybe she figured the ring was payment for Pandora’s Box, since we returned it to Department 13.”
“That still doesn’t answer how she got past David’s team.”
A vague memory fluttered through her head. High school. Heather had come home to find her grandmother frantic. “Your sister is toying with things better left alone.”
Grandmother had already been teaching Heather to use her gift and develop her skills in communicating with the dead. In the beginning, she’d worked with both sisters, but Ashley didn’t have a talent for it. She couldn’t hear them like Heather did.
Heather asked her grandmother to explain, but instead she’d opened her weathered hand to show Heather a tiny doll with wiry hair and a blue disc made of glass. “She’s dabbling in dark magic.”
At the time, Heather had defended her sister. They were fifteen, and Ashley was rebellious.
“These are not toys.” Her grandmother spat on the ground, making the sign of Archangel Michael with the toe of her boot as she pocketed the trinkets. She lifted her gaze to Heather’s face. “Not in my house.”
Heather frowned, pushing the memory aside. She’d always thought it was a phase. Growing up, Ashley had frowned on Heather’s psychic gift. Her sister was firmly rooted in the material world, building her fortune in money, not spirituality or magic.
But what if Heather was wrong? What if there was a side of her twin sister she’d never seen?
She cleared her suddenly dry throat. “I need to talk to Ashley.”
“Not yet.” Drake shook his head and laid a blue piece of glass on the table. “Greyson found this on the north side of your house.”
She stared at the evil eye and back up at him. “They sell those in all kinds of tourist shops around town. Someone could have dropped it during a ghost tour.”
“Not much chance it fell right onto your property, facing your house. It might’ve landed near your place. Maybe.” The intensity in his eyes had her on edge. “The other option is that someone placed it there with bad intentions.”
She pulled her long silver hair over her shoulder. “Why would you think it has anything to do with my sister?”
“Because she wants your house.”
Now that sounded more like her sister. “I can handle Ashley.”
She reached for his hand. Touching him, even this simple threading of their fingers, centered her. It seemed natural, like breathing, like she’d found the missing piece of her soul. And when she looked into his exhausted, tormented blue eyes, her desire to heal him swamped her, blotting out her mental warnings to protect her heart.
Drake had eternity. She did not. And no amount of love or passion would change that fundamental difference.
She squeezed his
