Page 26 of Philly
“Callie,” he said, his voice barely recognizable as both anger on her behalf and horror flooded his body.
She shook her head and held up a hand to stop whatever he was about to say. “I always envied you. You were you. You did what you wanted, made friends like no one I’d ever met, or have still ever met. You moved through the world without apology.” She paused, then shook her head again. “When you asked me to prom, I was, it was the happiest moment of my life. I wanted it. God, did I want it. Wanted you. I knew my parents would punish me, but I was willing to accept it if it meant that we could be more than best friends.
“But then it hit me. You were almost eighteen. My dad was good friends with the police chief. I was worried about what he’ddo to me, but I was terrified about what he’d do to you. I always knew you’d do something with your life, make something good out of the hand you’d been dealt. I wanted that for you. I needed that for you. You were my best friend. I needed you to be happy, to stay the amazing person you were. If I’d said yes.” She paused and took a deep breath, “If I’d said yes, the way I desperately wanted to, the chance you had, the opportunities, would be at risk. Almost certainly taken away. I couldn’t let that happen.” Another tear trailed down her cheek, but she still held his gaze.
“If I could turn back time, I would still say no. I wouldn’t say all the horrible, hurtful things I said, things I heard my dad say about you after the one time he caught us together when he picked me up at my grandparents’. But I would still say no. I’d rather break both our hearts than have your choices taken away from you, and everything I knew told me that would happen if I said yes.”
Silence fell heavy between them, and his heart thudded slow and resonant through his body. He believed her. He recognized the trauma in her eyes, in her voice. In her words.
“I didn’t know,” he said.
A wan smile touched her lips. “Did you ever notice that we never talked about our families? It was like some unwritten pact between us. Of all the subjects we talked about, that was never one of them.”
He thought back to those years and to his dismay, he realized she was right. He never talked about his family, period, so it hadn’t seemed unusual to him. That she’d never said a word about hers either seemed normal back then. But in hindsight, he recognized how unnatural that was—what teenagers didn’t at least complain about their parents on occasion?
“Maybe we needed that, though,” she said. He looked at her in question. “Maybe I needed to believe that you were free and unafraid and that one day, I could be like that, too.”
Slowly, he nodded. “And I needed to believe that good families existed. That maybe one day, I could have one, build one, myself.”
Another sad smile touched her eyes more than her lips. “And you’ve done that. It may be a bit unorthodox, but you have a family, Gabriel. A good one.”
He did. “I know. But what about you? Have you found what you needed? Or do you still live in your parents’ shadow?”
The walls around his heart had cracked as she spoke, and when she answered, they crumbled altogether.
“It’s still a work in progress,” she said, another tear tracking down her cheek as she shrugged.
They stared at each other for a good long while. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to try. Not while his brain, and heart, processed what she’d revealed. The reality that her life had not been what he’d thought gutted him. Not because he’d been wrong, but because she’d grown up in fear, and he’d had no idea. He’d been her best friend, and still, he’d known nothing of the horror she lived.
Emotions too powerful for him to deal with in that moment overwhelmed him, and he took several deep breaths to soothe the rawness scraping at his soul. Looking closely at Callie, for the first time in years, he could see her ravaged, unguarded emotions written on her face. The conversation had been a long time coming, but they both needed time to process.
“Tell me why it’s so important to talk with Laura Nolan,” he said.
She didn’t seem surprised by the change of subject. Using the sleeve of her sweater, she wiped the dampness from her cheeks as she looked around. “Mind if I sit?”
He shook his head, and she sank onto an upholstered chair. “Want anything to drink? Water? Orange juice? Whiskey?” he offered, only half joking.
She let out a soft chuckle. When she shook her head, he took a seat on the sofa.
“Four years ago, Elizabeth Lightfoot was killed in the bombing of the Paris bar. Do you remember that?”
He nodded. Leo had told him this much, but he wanted her to talk.
“She was my best friend. My only real friend other than you and my sister. We went to the academy together, became roommates when we graduated, and were assigned to the same office. She was like a sister to me.
“I knew she was working on something. She told me she had a few leads she was following about US companies potentially influencing foreign government contracts. She asked for permission to follow one specific lead in Paris, but the Bureau turned her down. She took personal time and flew over. She told me she was meeting an informant but nothing else. The next thing I know, she’s dead. One of the many victims from that night.”
“You think the informant lured Elizabeth there?”
She nodded. “Liza was onto something, and I believe she was killed for it. I do think her informant lured her there. But whether that informant knew what she was doing, I haven’t figured out. It’s possible she intentionally led Liza to her death, that she knew about the bomb. But it’s also possible she was a pawn in a move made by the ON. Either way, the Bureau doesn’t believe me. I have files, though. Ones Liza left me. It took me months to identify two names: Quayle and Nolan. It wasn’t until recently that I was able to decode the rest.
“Based on that and what little she’d told me, I narrowed the search down to Michael Quayle?—”
“The arms dealer?”
She nodded. “And the Nolan family. Both had contracts in negotiations with the French government when the bombing happened. When Liza was killed.”
“And you think Laura might know something about the Nolans’ business?”
