Traitor (16 page)

I pushed up off the bed and walked over to my dresser as through in a daze.

“What are you doing?” Sean asked, his voice filled with concern.

“Getting ready for work,” I lied hollowly. There was nothing real in my world anymore, nothing right. There was only deceit and the bitter tang of betrayal on my tongue as it dripped traitorous words.

“What? Claudia, you are not going to work. You’re staying here with me.”

“I’m going, Sean,” I informed him, my tone even and unwavering. I couldn’t summon up the energy to sound angry at him bossing me around. “I don’t want to be in this house right now.”

“Then I’ll take you somewhere,” he insisted.

I said nothing, pulling on my clothes in silence.

“God damn it, Claudia, I don’t want you to be alone with this. Don’t leave me.” It was a command, but there was a thread of pleading laced through it.

It was what I had asked of him the night before, and I could feel a new fissure crackling across my ravaged heart as I realized that I would have to deny him. I didn’t look at him as I finished buttoning up my blouse. “I’m going now, Sean,” I said simply.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shove himself out of bed, a frustrated sound escaping him. “I know what you’re doing, Claudia,” he said angrily as he began tugging on his own clothes. “You’re locking it away, putting your walls back up. You’re going to destroy yourself.”

It’s too late for that. I’ve already destroyed both of us. You just don’t know it yet.

Still avoiding his eyes, I moved for the door, stepping around him. His hand closed around my forearm, squeezing hard. “I won’t let you do this. Don’t shut me out. Please.” On the last word, his demanding tone melted to a desperate whisper.

I glanced up into his pain-filled eyes, and my gut twisted. “I’ll see you later, Sean. I promise. I just need to do something normal right now. Can you understand that?”

His grip on me tightened, vice-like. He clearly didn’t want to let me go. So I held his gaze steadily, praying that he would let me go before I lost the will to leave him. Finally, he released me, and this time he was the one to look away.

“Alright,” he said, his voice detached as he pulled up his own walls. “Let’s go then.”

He followed me down the stairs and out the front door in silence. I paused on the stoop, turning to him.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, resolutely staring at a spot over his shoulder so that I didn’t have to meet his turbulent gaze.

“I’ll order a cab. You go on.” His tone was hard, cold. I hated the sound of it.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded and walked away. My gait was awkward and stilted as I forced my legs to carry me away from him. It was as though iron encased my body and I was struggling to pull away from an incredibly strong magnet. Even once I was in my car and driving away, the sensation didn’t dissipate. The strain grew and grew until I felt stretched thin. I did my best to ignore the horrible feeling as I drove to the FBI offices. Every once in a while I glanced in my rearview mirror and caught sight of the black sedan tailing me three cars back. I braced myself for the ordeal of interrogation.

When I got out of my car in the parking garage, Clayton was at my side almost instantly; he had been in the car behind me. Just as he had promised, he had spent the entire night outside my house, watching over me. His hair was a mess, and his eyes were tired and bloodshot. It looked like Sean wasn’t the only one who hadn’t gotten any sleep. He pushed his hand lightly against the small of my back, providing me with support as he guided me to the elevator. The act was tender, and the heat of his skin permeating my shirt was comforting. I found that I was grateful for the bolstering contact.

“I’m going to have to ask you some difficult questions, Claudia,” he informed me, his voice a low rumble. “I’m sorry.”

I closed my eyes and pushed back into his touch ever so slightly, allowing it to ground me. “I know. It’s okay.”

He walked alongside me as he ushered me to the grey-walled room. The red light on the hated video camera came on, and I was left bereft of his touch as he settled down across from me.

“I need you to tell me what happened last night, Claudia.”

A part of me noticed that he hadn’t called me “Dr. Ellers,” and it occurred to me that what I had done might be weighing on him as well. I took a deep breath, readying myself for the plunge into icy, agonizing waters. One by one, I forced the words out, trying my best to keep my voice steady as I recounted what had happened: how I had found the man waiting for me, how we had struggled, how I had shot him.

Clayton interrupted every once in a while, pressing me for more details. Every time he did, it was that much harder for me to go on. But his clear blue eyes helped to tether me to the present, keeping me safe in the small room with him rather than allowing me to be consumed by the gut-wrenching memories of what I had been forced to do.

After a while, I stopped talking; there was nothing more to tell.

“Okay,” Clayton said, standing to turn off the camera. His hand was at my elbow, and he guided me to the privacy of his office. He sat me down in my usual chair before crouching in front of me. He rested on hand on my knee, as though unwilling to stop touching me. I was glad about that; I didn’t want him to stop.

“You were very brave in there,” he said gently. “I know how hard this is for you.”

“Do you?” I whispered.

He pierced me with a sad, solemn look. “Yes,” he said. “Because I had to do the same thing once. And I’m so sorry that it’s happened to you too.”

My breath caught in my throat. I recalled the day that he had told me to use the gun if I had to, how I had realized that he must have killed someone.

“Please,” I said. “Tell me how it happened.” I needed to understand how Clayton was able to live with himself now. I could plainly see that he still carried the guilt around with him, but he seemed to be able to function normally on a day to day basis. Would that ever be possible for me?

He took a deep breath, but he didn’t close his eyes. The bright blue orbs stayed locked on me, full of empathy and earnestness and understanding. “It was seven years ago, and I had barely been with the FBI for a year. We were raiding a place, and I had been told that it might be dangerous. But I was eager to help, and I didn’t really seriously contemplate the potential fallout. I was one of the first in. The men had weapons, and one of them aimed at me. It was a spit-second decision. In fact, it wasn’t even a decision; it was instinct. I fired, and he was dead. And there was nothing I could do to take it back. There will never be anything I can do to take it back.”

“I know,” I breathed. “How do you deal with it? I don’t feel like
me
anymore. How do I get that back?”

He was looking at me sadly. “You don’t,” he said bluntly, and I flinched. He reached out to cup my face in his palm. “I’m not saying this to hurt you, Claudia, but I won’t lie to you. You will never be the same. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be okay. The weight of what you’ve done will follow you; you wouldn’t be human – you wouldn’t be
you
– if it didn’t. What you have to let go of is the blame. What happened wasn’t your fault, Claudia. You have to accept that.” He was so close to me that I could feel his warm breath fanning over my face.

“Tell me you won’t blame yourself. Promise me.”

The sense of his words pierced me to the core, reaching some deep part of my mind that recognized the truth, chipping away at the feeling of self-loathing that had filled my entire being.

“I promise.”

His hand moved from my knee to lightly touch the other side of my face. I was barely breathing, caught up in his hold and the intensity of his glowing eyes.

“Do you have any idea how remarkable you are?” He asked, his tone colored with something akin to reverence. My lips parted at his words. I was completely thunderstruck.

He didn’t wait for me to answer. He closed the short distance between us and cautiously, tenderly pressed his lips to mine.

Chapter 12

Clayton’s kiss was warm and tender and comforting. It was sweet and slow, tentative even. Nothing at all like Sean’s dominant, demanding mouth that branded me with its scorching heat.

Sean.

What the fuck was I doing? I pressed my hands against Clayton’s chest for leverage and jerked away from him. And unlike Sean, who would have held me to him until he was good and ready to let me go, Clayton released me instantly.

His eyes were wide, as though he was as stunned by his own actions as I was.

“Claudia,” he said, sounding slightly horrified. “I’m so sorry. That was way out of line. I -”

But whatever he was going to say was cut off abruptly by a sharp knock on the office door. Clayton stood and quickly backed away from me. I just sat there dumbly, my overloaded brain tripping over itself, as he put several feet of space between us.

“Yes,” he said loudly, inviting the person to enter.

“Agent Vaughn?” The man with thick-rimmed glasses poked his head through the open door. “Ballistics just came back on Garcia. We rushed it like you asked. When we ran it through the database, there were, ah…” He paused, glancing over at me significantly. “A few hits.”

Clayton took the file that the man proffered and flicked it open. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open slightly. He looked up at the man. “You’re sure?” He asked.

He nodded. “I double-checked it myself.” He shot another glance in my direction, looking somewhat nervous and apologetic at the same time. “I’ll just leave you alone, then.” He turned quickly, as though he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

“What is it?” I asked, my hands twisting anxiously in my lap. What else could have possibly happened?

Clayton didn’t look at me as he walked around the desk and sat down heavily in his chair.

“Clayton?” My voice wavered as I said his name questioningly.

He sighed and set the file down before him, staring at it for a long moment. When he did finally look up at me, his expression was enigmatic.

“The man you shot last night was named Hector Garcia. This is the ballistics report on the slug we pulled from him. They ran it through the database, and it matches bullets found at several other crime scenes.”

“Oh?” I asked, a feeling of foreboding creeping over me.

“Do you remember the day that Sean got shot? I told you that he and Bradley had fired on one of our undercover agents. The marks on this slug match that one.”

I nodded. That only made sense. It was Bradley’s gun, and he had used it that day against Santiago.

Clayton paused then. He was looking at me warily. “It also matches the bullets that were recovered from your parents’ bodies.”

My heart stopped in my chest. I couldn’t have heard him right. “What?” I asked faintly. My mind was whirring. How could this be true? It just wasn’t possible. I refused to believe that I had killed someone with the same gun that had ended my parents’ lives. “You’re wrong,” I insisted.

“Ballistics is not as exact a science as they make it seem on TV, Claudia, but the evidence is here.”

What did it mean? Bradley had killed my parents? No, there was no way that that was possible. He wouldn’t have been much older than I was when it happened. So where had he gotten the gun?

A feeling of keen, sharp clarity came over me as I realized what I had to do.

“I have to go,” I said, standing quickly.

“Where are you going?” Clayton asked. “Claudia, we should talk about this.”

I didn’t look back at him as I strode towards the door. “We’ve done enough
talking.
” I imbued my tone with as much venom as I could muster. Maybe if he thought I was livid with him for kissing me, then he would back off. I knew that my words would hurt him, but right then I didn’t care. It worked; he didn’t follow me.

I moved as though in a dream, feeling oddly detached from the world around me as I passed through it. It seemed a matter of seconds before I was parking my car in the garage beneath Bradley and Sean’s apartment. My breathing was normal and my heartbeat steady as I walked down the short hall. My mind was completely focused on my task. Nothing else existed.

I knocked on the door and waited patiently. It only took a few seconds for Sean to fling it open.

“Claudia!” He reached for me, but I sidestepped his embrace, pushing past him into the apartment.

“Where’s Bradley?” I asked, nothing more than mild curiosity in my tone.

Sean eyed me worriedly. “Are you okay? I thought you were going to work.”

“I came to see Bradley,” I said firmly.

Sean moved towards me, gripping my upper arms before I could move out of his reach this time. “Claudia, what’s happened?”

I glared up at him, my anger rising. He was getting in my way. And I was so close…

“Where is he, Sean?” I snapped at him this time.

He frowned at me. “He’s not here. And I’m not going to let you stay here long enough for him to come back. Something’s going on with you, Claudia, and you’re going to tell me what it is. And you can tell me in the car. Come on. I’m taking you home.”

He kept his hold on one of my arms and started pulling me towards the door.

“No!” I half-shouted, panicking. I couldn’t let him take me away. I had to talk to Bradley, had to find out where he had gotten that gun. I twisted in Sean’s grip, but all I earned were bruises as his fingers dug into my flesh harshly. He turned to me, glaring.

“Don’t argue with me, Claudia. We’re not staying here, and you aren’t going to see Bradley.”

Hot, desperate fury rose up in me, and I acted before I thought. I raised my fist, and in the space of a second it connected squarely with his mouth. He cursed loudly and clutched at the injury with his free hand, but still he didn’t release me.

“I’m not leaving!” I shrieked.

Sean was staring down at me as though I had gone insane. And maybe I had. But I wasn’t about to let him stand in the way of me finding the man who had murdered my parents. He lowered his hand from his mouth, and I felt a twinge of guilt when I saw his bleeding lip. I shoved it back, unwilling to let it distract me from getting what I wanted.