Chapter 22

"I moved in here when I was ten," Em said as she unlocked the front door. She stepped across the threshold and inhaled the familiar scent of eucalyptus and raspberry.

"Were you and your aunt close before that?"

"No. We almost never saw her. I found out later that my mom tried to keep her away from us."

"Why would she do that?"

"I think she was afraid we'd like Carla better."

"And she lost you to your aunt in the end anyway."

"She didn't have to." Em lead him past a cozy living room and into a small kitchen. "Carla tried to bring us back together. When she took us in, it was only meant to be temporary. Just to give my mom time to get her life sorted out."

"She never did?"

"She fell deeper into depression, ended up addicted to painkillers. I visited her once when I was sixteen. She was living in a tiny studio apartment. I barely recognized her. After neither one of us said much over thirty minutes, I left knowing it was the last time I'd see her. She died a year later of a stroke. A small mercy, I think."

"I'm sorry."

"God knew what he was doing bringing me to Carla. She's the reason I found my faith. She started bringing me to church, and I never looked back— I'm sorry, but have you seen yourself in the mirror?"

He raked his hand through his hair, yanking at the end to get his fingers through. "I'm avoiding it as long as I can."

"Why don't you go into the bathroom and clean up. I can't concentrate with you looking like that."

"It's that bad?"

"You look like a corpse."

"That's what Pearce said when he found me. All right. I'll go make myself presentable. Through there?" He pointed down the hall.

"Yeah. Second door on the left. There are fresh towels in the closet across the hall."

"Thanks."

She took the creamer from the fridge and pulled the coffee machine from a cupboard, plugging in on the counter before retrieving a couple of pods from a drawer.

The pipes groaned for a couple of seconds as the shower started. They always had. She hugged the pods to her chest and smiled. There was something cozy and safe about being here with Jep. It was normal. Easy.

Once the water turned off, she popped the first pod into the machine and started it. She was leaning against the counter when he emerged with damp hair and a clean face, and she almost sighed. "Coffee?"

"Yes, please."

She focused on the drink as she handed it to him, afraid the look on her face would give her away.

He took the cup and breathed in the steam. "This is exactly what I needed. So was that shower."

"Here's the creamer and sugar." She set them up on the counter next to where he sat on a stool.

He added a splash of cream. "You'll have to show me where Carla keeps the vacuum. I shook out my clothes without thinking, and now there's a thin film covering the floor."

"Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it." She put in another pod and waited while it hummed and gurgled. "I got this coffee maker for my aunt for Christmas, but she never uses it."

"Why did you get her a coffee machine if she doesn't drink coffee?"

"She drinks instant. Always has. I thought I could convert her, but she insists it tastes better."

Jep snorted. "To each his own."

"So…I'm curious."

"About?"

" Your faith."

"You want more stories?"

"Yeah. I'm interested to know where it began. After growing up the way you did, how'd you find God?"

"It was messy."

"Too messy to share? It's okay if you don't want to."

"No. It's not a secret. I was hallucinating and stepped off the roof of a five-story building."

"What? Are you being serious?"

"Yeah."

"Wh—how?"

"A girl dumped me, and I was not handling it well. A friend of mine had access to the roof of this building where we used to hang out and get high. I went up there to stew and…maybe it was the drugs or maybe it was the devil—probably both—but a black fog settled around me and whispered seductive darkness into my ear."

Em leaned on the counter. "What was it saying?"

"I couldn't hear words, exactly. It was more the sense of despair that soaked into my pores. Then it felt like I was lifted off the ground and carried to the edge of the roof. When I looked over, I saw a pool of black, and all I wanted to do was fall in. Swim around in it."

She shook her head. "You must have been in a very dark place to want more darkness."

"I think we all do it now and then. Something gets you down, and you let your thoughts spiral. It's an odd comfort wallowing in self-pity and misery."

"That's true. I've never been that low, but there have been times when I've been down, and there is a pull to go deeper into the mire. It's almost like if you can justify your pain, then circumstances will have to change. But then they don't, and you've got to climb out again. Or you jump off a roof— So what happened? You obviously didn't jump."

"I did."

She jerked upright. "Wait—so?—"

"I leaned forward. Let all my weight drag me into the abyss, but someone yanked me back onto the roof."

"Who was it? Did your friend turn up?"

Jep took a sip. "I have no idea. Next thing I knew, I was on my back looking up at the cloudy sky. No one else was there. I watched the clouds for a minute. They moved slowly, but then…they just parted, and a ray of sun pierced through. I stared at it, somehow knowing that it was for me, and this voice, deep inside, said, ‘My son—'" He pressed his lips together against his emotion and took another sip. "He said, ‘My son, if you ask the darkness to hide you, if the surrounding light became night, even in the darkness you cannot hide from me. I will always find you.'"

Em sniffed against her own tears. "Psalm 139."

"Yeah. I didn't know that at the time, but I knew who it was speaking to me. When I got up from that roof, I was a changed man. I left my old life behind and started a new one."

"That's incredible."

"And imagine my surprise when I started reading the Bible and came across Psalm 139."

"What did you think? That must have been—amazing."

"I read it over and over and over, not because I was surprised, exactly. I knew by then what God was capable of, but even now—telling that story—it gives me goosebumps."

Em rubbed her arm. "Me too."

"Does that mean you've accepted me into the fold? No longer confounded by my being a Christian?" he teased.

"I was never confounded."

"You were too. You should have seen the look on your face."

"Okay, maybe a little. And I'm sorry. I did judge you. On more than one occasion, you've surprised me. Whereas you seem to know me very well."

"My background puts me in a better position to not judge others."

"It shouldn't matter. There's no excuse for it."

He shrugged. "None of us is perfect."

"You're a good man, Jep. Whatever anyone says. I'm glad they brought you back to the team." She held her mug in two hands while she gulped too fast against a rising feeling she was unprepared for. She welcomed the scalding heat as it pulled her feet back to the earth.

"That caffeine kicking in yet?" Jep said.

"Almost. Give me another couple of minutes and I'll be ready."

"A few minutes it is." He touched the back of his head and winced.

"Is that where you got hit?" She walked over to him. "Let me see."

"There's nothing to see."

She pulled him toward her so she could get a better look. When she touched the lump, he flinched but didn't pull away. "That's a nasty bump you've got there."

"Yeah."

"Maybe we should have stopped by the hospital."

"Me? What about you? You refused to get checked out first."

"That's different."

"Why?"

"Because my legs are fine."

He pulled back. "And so is my head."

"Let me see your pupils."

"Em." He got off the stool and went to the sink to rinse his cup.

"Show me."

He rested the mug upside down in the sink and turned to face her. "You do know you can't tell anything just by looking, right?"

"Technically, yes." She searched his eyes. "But I was hoping it would be obvious you have head trauma, and you'd let me take you to the hospital." She looked a second too long and almost got lost. "They look normal." She frowned.

"You were hoping I'd have a bad concussion?"

"I know you have a bad concussion. You were knocked out. I was hoping I could detect it and convince you to let a doctor look at you."

He stepped forward, so she had to lift her head to look at him. "I feel fine." His words were rough around the edges and made her aware of every breath she took as silence engulfed them.

His hand reached for her face, and he ran the side of his thumb along her jaw. She inhaled slowly, smelling her aunt's lavender shampoo he'd used. It smelled musky on him. He was close now. Too close. A cold fear snaked up her spine, and she stepped back, clearing her throat.

"We should get to work," she said, lifting her drink to create a barrier between them. She'd felt that anxiety before, when she'd first found herself wanting more from him than she had any right to. She'd blamed it on his lack of faith, but that excuse was gone, and it left a hole she couldn't understand. "We don't have much time."

He nodded, looking sad and confused, but it passed. "Yeah. We should get started."

He took her cup and put it in the sink.

"We can sit in the garden. It will be nicer out there."

"Whatever you want." He turned and glanced at the fridge as he passed it. "What's this?"

He tugged a postcard from under the magnet holding it and turned it to read the back.

" Arcul de Triumf , Bucharest, Romania."

"They must not have taken that one," Em said. "It was one of her earlier cards."

" The world is so big. I wish you could see it, " he read. "This was from Jade?"

"Yeah. I thought Carla had given Lawson all the postcards, but I guess he let her keep one. She always wrote that. Same thing every time."

"I hadn't had a chance to look at them. Where was the most recent one from?"

"Uh, I think it was a temple in Cambodia, if I'm remembering correctly."

"You were always good with the details," he said. "I wonder if that's where the statue came from."

"What statue?"

"In the bedroom at the apartment. You probably didn't see because I knocked it over when I pushed the bed off the wall to block the door."

Em's head cocked to the side, and her eyes narrowed, picturing the room. "I do remember. I reached for it in reflex as it fell, then thought how ridiculous that was because we were about to die."

"You thought all of that?"

"Yeah, in like, a split second. You know how your brain slows everything down when you're in crisis. It was a figure of some kind."

"Yeah. A monkey man holding a knife up like this." He demonstrated.

"It was white." Her eyes roamed the room, looking at nothing as her mind put the details together, then she stared back at Jep.

"I know that look," he said. "You've thought of something."

"You got a good look at it?"

"Yeah. When I first cleared the room."

"Did it have flames coming up in front of the figure?"

"Yeah."

She swallowed. "I've seen that same statue before."

"Where?"

She didn't respond as her mind began going back over every conversation she'd had with Gardener.

"Em. What is it?"

"It could be nothing. Maybe I've got this all wrong. We can't jump to conclusions."

"Em."

"We need to get back to the office."

"Em, where have you seen it?"

"Sylvia Gardener has one just like it. Or, at least, I think it is."

"Your supervisor?"

"Yeah. I didn't really get a good look at the one in the apartment, but Gardener brought it back from a trip to Cambodia."

"She spent time there? Recently?"

"Yes, but it could be a coincidence."

"It could be. But it would explain a lot."

Em shook her head. "We need more. We can't accuse her of treason when all we have is a statue someone could probably buy at any market."

"We need to bring it to Lawson."

"Do you think he'll listen?"

"You're afraid he won't?"

"You two don't have the best track record. And we did just visit the apartment without telling him. Not to mention the last time I brought him something, he wasn't interested."

"You said information was missing from the files."

"I remembered wrong. Or…"

"Is that what Gardener said? That you must have remembered it wrong?"

"No, that was me but…I don't know."

"Is there anything else in her behavior that was suspicious?"

"She wanted me to report back to her and tell her everything we found. She was excited about me being involved. I thought it was because she was proud of me." Her voice trailed off at the end, and her face fell. But then she remembered. "Jep. She was the only other one who knew we were going to the apartment."

Jep shifted into gear immediately. "We need to move on this now. I'm sorry, Em, but this doesn't sound good for Gardener."

"I know."

"We'll go back to the office, and I'll get a look at her statue. Confirm it's the same one. Then we'll go see Lawson. He'll listen. He's not a fool."