Page 62 of Bay of Plenty

He squeezed me tighter and eased me back against the bed, one arm around me.

“After Janey died, something else happened…” I told him about the bullying and how my clothes were cut up. I had to stare straight ahead, humiliated.

“Thanks for telling me all this,” he said after I’d finished. He took a deep breath. “This is a horrifying thing you’ve been through. You’re brave to come back here and investigate.”

“This is why I don’t trust anyone,” I said. “I’m a mess. I’ve built up all these walls, and I don’t know how to start pulling them down… Sometimes I look at myself and see this person I’ve become, and I don’t know her.” I ran my hands down my face. “I don’t even know if I like her.”

He put a finger under my chin and turned my face to him. “I like her.”

His words were so simple and sweet that I burst into tears again. I never cried, but now I’d started, I couldn’t stop. After a while, I pointed out how wet and slimy I’d made his T-shirt, and we ended up laughing.

Finally, it was quiet, except for my intermittent hiccups.

“Anyone would have put up a fortress of walls after what you’ve been through,” he said. Declan held my gaze, and his forehead creased with concern. “I wish you’d told me from the beginning. I’m sorry that you felt you couldn’t. But what I don’t understand is, why is this happening again twenty years later?”

He went into the bathroom and came back with a box of tissues.

“Snow. It’s him,” I took the tissues and wiped my face. “He’s sending me a message.”

Nodding, he rubbed his forehead. “Maybe it’s the heroin case. We’re getting too close.” He took the balled-up tissues from my fist and handed me fresh ones. “And he knows this will undermine your confidence.”

“Whatever I’ve achieved in London,” I said with gritted teeth, “once I’m back here, I’m that loser at school who no one took seriously.” I tossed my head to get my hair out of my face, but it dripped down still.

Declan pushed a strand of my hair, almost completely wet from tears, away from my face and behind my ear. He cupped my face tenderly.

I melted into his touch, and my hand reached up to his. His eyes burned into mine, drawing me closer. His throat moved with a swallow, pulling me out of the moment. No. We couldn’t jeopardize the case. And he had someone. I jolted away.

“Hey, listen, I have walls of my own,” he said. He dropped his hand, as if reading my thoughts. He clasped his knees and his gaze sought out mine. “The person who texted me last night? You’ve been open and trusting and vulnerable with me. I trust you, too, and I want to tell you.”

I braced myself. Here was the truth about the woman he loved.

“It was my daughter. Her name is Sephy—Seraphim. She’s thirteen.” He pushed his hands through his hair. “I don’t tell anyone about her because, in one case, someone turned up to her school saying I’d asked them to pick her up. Could have been…” He let out a long breath. “It terrified me.”

The room whirled and tipped.

He had a daughter. He was a dad. I could barely take it in. I’d felt like I was getting to know who he was, but I didn’t know him at all. I’d wanted to define him, as I did everyone I came across. In London, after my birthday night, I’d written him off. Then I’d resented him for being inactive, blocking me from investigating the way I wanted to. And even when I’d started to feel something for him, I still hadn’t thought about him as a three-dimensional person who had a life beyond this investigation.

“Her mother died.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “We weren’t together long. She was on the periphery of one of my cases, a relative of the guy we were targeting, and she had drug and alcohol issues. She quit while she was pregnant, but after the birth, she went back to it.”

“So sad for you and your daughter.” I touched his arm. With a rush of understanding and compassion, I saw the connection to his statements to Snow about addiction.

“Sephy can’t remember anything of her mother. My two sisters are like mothers to her now.” He gave a wry smile. “Which sometimes is a bit much.”

“Who looks after her when you’re away?”

“She’s at boarding school. That’s another thing about this job, that I have to send her there. I hated boarding school, as you know, but she loves it—which, bizarrely, makes itworse. She’s spent a few holidays with my sisters while I’ve worked, too.”

I pulled my legs from under me. “It must be so hard to be away from her during holidays.”

“It is. And to be honest, I’ve been having reservations about the job for a while. I mentioned a case where I put myself in the shit?”

“What happened?”

He took a breath. “I lived with some villagers for months, and I could see they were only growing poppies because they were farmers, and it was a crop they could sell to feed their children.” He threw up his hands. “Who would benefit from arresting any of them? So I tipped them off, and they all left town. Still devastating for them because they were homeless and running, but alive. Time and again, it was the same story. The workers got punished, and the bigwigs at the top escaped somehow, or their lawyer got them off, and they started again somewhere else. I’ve been questioning not only what I do, but the whole system.”

I leaned toward him. “I can see how it would start to feel dispiriting.”

“It’s such a relief to tell someone.” He held my eyes. “As you can imagine, I can’t talk about this at work because I’m up for a promotion. Clearly, they’re not going to promote someone who doesn’t toe the party line that we’re making impressive inroads into the war on drugs.”

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