Page 101 of Sacrifice the Knight (Checkmate 6)

“Yes. I do.” I run my fingertip over the rim of my glass and think back two decades. “We were the same age, our birthdays were just a couple months apart. We were each other’s firsts. Everything. Kiss. Virginity. Date. Everything we did, we did it together, we experienced it together.”

I sit back against the couch and blow out a deep breath. It’s time to tell her everything, because it was selfish to keep it to myself. It’ll scare her, but she deserves the truth.

“What Gemma and I had was special. And it was different than what I feel for you.”

I hate that she scoots away from my words. It hurts her to place that foot of space between us, but she rejects me anyway. And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. It’s not about my feelings anymore. It’s not about my fears. It’s about telling her the truth, and letting her make her own decisions.

“Um…” I clear my throat. “Gemma and I were young; we were naïve, and we were never given a reason to be scared of what may become of us. We literally never considered a life where we wouldn’t be together. Dating. College. Marriage.” I pause. “Baby.”

I close my eyes and absorb her strangled cry.

“It was straight out of a ‘How To’ book, ya know? And we did it all in the exact right order. If anyone wanted to create a course on perfect relationships, they could have used us for a case study, and we would have graciously accepted the role, farting rainbows all over the place without a care for the people who didn’t have what we did.”

I’m going to apply to work for the feds. I really think I can make a difference.

Oh cool!she’d reply.I think that’s a great idea. It’s noble, and…she’d blush.And kinda sexy, too.

“She supported me when I said I wanted to become a federal agent.” I chuckle. “She told me it was sexy. And it was…” I shrug. “For a little while. It was sexy while I studied. It was sexy while I spent time in weapons training. It was even sexy when I was working cases and making the difference I was so determined to make. But as I worked my way up the chain and the types of cases I was given changed, sexy becameyou work too much. It becamewe never see you. It becamewhy can’t you tell me about your work?”

“Did you…” Katrina’s voice cracks. “Did you divorce first? Were you separated when she died?”

She knows the answer already, but it doesn’t stop her from asking.

“No. We never divorced. Gemma knew I couldn’t talk to her about my work; she knew why. She knew all that, and even if she got lonely, we were still very much in love. We were living and working through the stress, the exhaustion, even the time apart. It hurt us, but still, we worked at our relationship, and when I was at home, Gem and Callie received my undivided focus.”

“Oh God,” she chokes. “Callie? Hurry and say it fast. Tell me quick.”

“Callie was my daughter.” I climb to my feet and leave Katrina to take her moment in private, while I move to the TV cabinet and bring back yet another photo of the three of us. We were vacationing in the mountains that year; all three of us had red noses and bright eyes. Callie had frozen boogers under her nose and a lost pink unicorn glove. So she wore one of mine. “Callaghan DeWhit, named for both of us, was my greatest accomplishment in life. She was wild and silly. She was beautiful and brave.”

Katrina can’t stop sobbing. If you’d told me an hour ago Katrina would cry beside me and I’d do nothing about it, I would have called bullshit. But that’s what I do. Nothing. Because she needs to be able to process without my interference. She needs to process without worrying about me.

“I can admit now, long after the fact, that I was a great husband. I was the perfect father. And I was a dedicated agent. I excelled at everything I did. But…” I pause. “Not all at the same time. I couldn’t be all of those things at the same time.” I sit back and stare at the ceiling while Katrina holds my framed photos and her thumb strokes my daughter’s chubby cheeks. They’ll never not be chubby. She’ll never outgrow her baby fat. “Most of my work kept me close to home, which meant I got to live a kind of nine-to-five work day. Sometimes I worked overtime, but everyone does that, even regular guys with regular jobs. But the harder I worked and earned better titles and pay, the harder my cases became.”

“They got more dangerous,” she chokes out. “The higher you go, the more secret it becomes.”

“Yes. Some cases were easy, open and closed, and still allowed me to eat with my family at seven. But some others required I change my name; they required I pretend to be someone else, and for the girls’ safety, I was to pretend they didn’t exist.” I continue to stare at the ceiling, because I don’t want to see Katrina’s face when I admit my faults. “According to Gem, I did that a little too well. But according to those who ruined my life, I fucked it up and left too many clues.”

I glance down when I feel Katrina move on the couch. Climbing to her feet, she tucks my photographs under her arm and starts walking my living room. I have a dozen or so images framed and displayed. To remind me what I had. To remind me what I lost. She leans closer to some, strokes others, cries at the photo of my baby just days old when she had her first bath.

“Go on. Finish it, please.”

I drop my head back and nod. “Derrick Ireland was a bad dude who liked to sell drugs to pay his bills. He was middle management, similar to Abel Hayes – another case we worked not so long ago. But even middle management makes a fuck load of money when you’re selling blow, and when that income is threatened, dudes tend to get pissed.” I brush a hand over my stubbled chin. “I was working inside Derrick’s club, placed as a goon. I did nothing more than watch doors, then report back to my people with the information I’d gathered or overheard. I thought I was careful. Well,” I scoff, “I thought I was smarter than them. I thought my marriage was more important than my work or Derrick’s, so I’d call home all the time, even though I wasn’t supposed to. I had no clue I was found out, so when I was called into Derrick’s office, I figured he was asking for an update, like he’d done a bunch of times before. I stood opposite Kane Bishop.”

Katrina turns to me with a wildness in her eyes. “Kane was there?”

“Yes. He was undercover too. We’d known each other for a couple years already, but in that club, Kane and I didn’t know each other. He was smarter than me, better at his job, faster, sleeker, whatever. But we both started as door boys, and he sailed ahead of me and became an inside soldier.”

“Was he a bad guy?” she whispers. “Was he arealbad guy?”

“No. He was never dirty. He was never not on my side. He was just that good at his work. I walked into that office and kept my eyes off him, since we were supposed to be strangers, and since I figured it was a regular meet, I started spouting off my shit like it was a normal day.”

Carefully placing Callie’s baby picture back down, then the other two beside it, Katrina comes back with red-rimmed eyes and shaking hands. She sits on the coffee table in front of me so her legs wedge between mine. “What happened?”

“Kane was ordered to grab me.”

Her eyes widen. “Did he?”

“Of course. The barrel of his gun rested against my temple, and I swear, I nearly dropped a load on my shoes. I wasn’t scared of Bishop, because he’s my brother. I didn’t doubt him for one second. But the order for him to grab me was bad.” I sit forward and drop my head. “It was bad news. Derrick pulled up video of my…” I choke on my words. “It was a video of Gemma. They’d beaten her to hell and back. They hurt her bad, and to this day, I still go to sleep thinking of what happened to her. If I’d been better at my job, they would never have found her.”

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