Page 75 of Courier of Death
“It was impulsive, I admit,” she said.
“Impulsive?” Jasper thundered. He shot off the sofa and paced away, running a hand through his golden hair, the strands already mussed. “How many times must I tell you before you understand: Eddie Bloom is a criminal. He is dangerous.”
Leo braced herself against his anger and got to her feet, hitching her chin in defiance. “I agree. But I believe he tried to help me.”
He slowly came back toward her. “Help you how?”
“He wouldn’t let me finish my questions,” she answered. “We were being observed, he claimed, and so he…showed me the door, so to speak.”
“Observed by whom?” Jasper bellowed.
“He didn’t explicitly say, but he indicated that my presence there could be noted by those who see me as a…” She took a jagged breath. “As a loose thread.”
He swore under his breath, and a muscle ticked along his clenched jaw.
“Is Mr. Bloom correct?” she asked. “Am I a loose thread?”
He met her gaze, his temper still simmering. “After the article that bloody idiot wrote, drawing attention to your past, and now, with you beginning to ask questions, then yes. I worry they won’t like it.”
“They? You mean the Carters?” she asked to clarify.
Jasper gave a barely perceptible nod. “In certain circles, it must be known who was responsible for the Spencer murders. The East Rips won’t like that their past failures are being brought up.”
“Is that why you always hated that the Inspector kept digging into my family’s deaths?” she asked. He’d been disapproving of Gregory Reid’s dogged pursuit of the truth. A sudden thought numbed her. “Tell me you didn’t interfere with his file.”
The folder the Inspector had given to Leo shortly before his death was at least two inches thick, with interview notes, reports, photographs, documented theories, and leads.
Jasper jerked back his head. “You’re asking me if I sabotaged his investigation?”
“You couldn’t have wanted him to solve their murders, not if his answers led him to you and your family.”
He let out a chuff of air as if she’d pummeled him in the stomach. Insult filled his stare, softening it just enough to send a coil of regret through her. She didn’t want to believe he willfully would have done such a thing, knowing how important it was to the Inspector.
She faced the fire and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to think anymore.”
Staring into the low flames in the grate, she sensed him coming up behind her. He then joined her at her side. Leo glanced over, but he was staring into the fire too. The glow from it shimmered on the brass buttons of his tweed waistcoat. Jasper scrubbed his jaw and knit his brow, frustrated. As he ran the back of a knuckle gently over his swollen bottom lip, her attention was drawn there in unexpected interest. Though, only until he began to speak.
“When we were first here in this house, I didn’t sleep a full night for months. I thought they would come in the middle of the night to finish the job they’d left undone.”
Leo held her breath.They. His family. Even though she now knew the truth, it still boggled her mind that Jasper’s past wasn’t the one she’d always assumed and envisioned. And that it was so closely linked to her own.
“I’d sit in the hallway in the dark, pinching myself to stay awake,” he went on, his gaze fixed on the flickering, red-gold flames. “I believed they would come, but the only person I ever saw was the Inspector. He found me a few times. He didn’t say anything. Just clapped me on the shoulder.” He touched the spot lightly, as if it helped him to remember and feel, once again, the affection of the man he’d come to call Father. “I think he knew what I was doing there, even if he didn’t understand why I was doing it.”
Her heart swelled at the image of a young Jasper, sitting sentry outside her bedroom door, ready to stand up to the people he’d run away from. What had he been feeling to do such a thing? Shame? Or had he, too, felt wronged by his family?
Tears pricked the backs of her eyes.
Jasper met her watery gaze. “I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you then, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you now.”
The vow shot through her, straight into the center of her chest. A sense of safety wrapped itself around her, but it was nothing new. It had always been there, inherent between them. He would protect her, and she would do the same for him. Even so, the reason why troubled her.
“I don’t want to be your responsibility,” she said. “I don’t want to be your punishment.”
The idea that he might have stayed a part of her life all these years because he felt the need toatone—and not because he wanted to be there—utterly speared her.
Jasper shifted his footing toward her. “You aren’t either of those things to me.”
“Aren’t I? I can’t help but think that if you didn’t feel guilty, you wouldn’t still be here.” She’d been tamping down that thought for months. Only now did she recognize how much it pained her.
