Page 59 of Forged in Secrets

He filled his brother in quickly on the latest developments in the case, trying to keep his mind from going to terrible places as they sped down the highway.

“I know there’s more going on, man,” Asher said when he’d finished. “I can tell. You may as well just spill it.”

Ben looked down at his lap, trying to hide the frustration on his face. No matter how hard he tried to put up walls around himself, his twin was the one person in the world who could see right through him.

“I’m falling in love with her,” he said at last. There was no point in lying about it now. “I should have told her by now, but I wussed out. And this morning, she figured that fact out for herself. I’ve ruined everything, and I don’t know if I can fix it. Assuming she’s not lying in a ditch somewhere.”

Asher blew out a breath. “Well, step one, cool it with the self-loathing. You can’t go back in time. Step two, calm down. I said it wasn’t like her to ignore us, not that she was necessarily in danger. She’s almost certainly just sitting in her room at the resort, just like she promised shewould be. Or maybe she snuck out to the lobby for a coffee.”

Ben said nothing. Despite his twin’s light tone, he knew what Asher was going to say next, and he didn’t have the energy nor the conviction to argue.

“Mikayla and Josiah betraying you wasn’t your fault,” he continued after a long pause. “I don’t know why you can’t stop blaming yourself.”

Ben recoiled at the mention of his former partner on the San Antonio police force and his ex-girlfriend. He tried to think about Josiah as little as possible, but he found Mikayla invading his thoughts more often than he’d like to admit.

He was no longer in love with her, so why did her betrayal continue to hurt? Why did he spend so much time digging through his past actions, wondering what he could have done to make her stay?

“I don’t blame myself.”

“You know,” Asher started, ignoring his obvious lie, “in a healthy relationship, you don’t have to be perfect to be loved. You get to screw up and you still get to be forgiven.”

Ben considered his words for several more minutes until they pulled up to the Mistflower’s front entrance.

It was similar to what their father often said about the mercy of Christ and his special love for those who carried a heavy burden of serious sin. He met them where they were, but He didn’t leave them there. Jesus knew all of their brokenness and chose to love them anyway.

Was it possible Grace could reflect some of that love toward him, even though he didn’t deserve it?

“You go park the car and check in,” Ben ordered. “I’ll head upstairs and make sure Grace is okay.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

GRACE

Grace opened her eyes, but saw nothing.

She felt her heart beginning to race as she blinked, trying to make something–anything–come into focus, but the effort was futile. She was in the dark, and so far as she could tell, she was alone.

She reached down and felt for her phone. It was gone.

Worse, so was her gun.

“Okay, breathe,” she told herself in a whisper as she climbed up from the bed she’d woken up on. “Think. Just think.”

She stretched out her tired limbs, and as she did so, several details began to solidify in her memory. She’d visited the Christ of the Fisherman statue. She’d been angry with Ben and stormed off.

He’d followed her, and convinced her to let him take her back to the Mistflower.

All at once, she reached up to her shoulder, a shiverrunning across her back as she felt a small piece of tape holding what seemed to be a piece of cotton.

Someone had waited in the hotel room’s bathroom, injected her with something, and had brought her somewhere else once she passed out. Clearly, whoever had taken Katie Fairman had more power and resources than she had anticipated having to deal with.

She stretched out her hands in front of her in the dark, trying to feel around until the room made sense. Just as she found one of the walls, she heard the sound of nearby voices.

She froze, sitting back down slowly on the bed as she tried to listen.

It sounded like a man and a woman, and they were arguing about something. As they moved closer, Grace caught something the man said about a ‘third option’.

---