The Departed

Didn’t know what to think. His mind went blank. Words, the easy glib lines he could always hand out whenever he needed to do whatever he needed to do—they failed him. He needed to talk, needed to say something , but he couldn’t.
    He had to do something, though, and he had to do it fast, because if he let her leave this time, he wasn’t going to have a chance in hell of getting her. Keeping her. And he was finally starting to realize that was exactly what he needed to do—what he wanted, what he absolutely must have.
    Otherwise, he was going to turn into one of those shadows that haunted her. Maybe a living, breathing one, but everything that made him live would be gone. Dez made him live, damn it. He’d been dead the past year.
    Fuck.
    Jogging to catch up with her, he caught her arm. “Dez…”
    He swallowed as she stopped in her tracks. “Get away from me,” she whispered, her voice low and raw.
    “You can’t leave,” he said. He jerked his hand back and shoved it in his pocket.
    “Why the hell not?”
    Without anything else to say, he latched onto the one constant he’d always had in his life. “We have to go back out to the kid’s house. You’re the only one who has any possible chance of maybe connecting to the one who did this, and if we wait much longer, even that chance is gone.”
    “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She turned around and stared at him, her eyes wide with disbelief. “You want me to play bloodhound? Hello, have you forgotten? I’m the one who talks to ghosts, remember? I’m not the bloodhound. I talk to dead people.”
    “You’re still psychic. You pick up on lingering emotions and in case you haven’t noticed, you’re picking up a hell of a lot since you’ve been here. If you expect me to think that somebody can try to kill and not leave a trace for you to pick up on, then you must think I’m past stupid,” he said. He didn’t entirely believe that line, but he didn’t disbelieve it, either. Dez underestimated her abilities. She always had. And whether anything came of it or not, he’d have another hour or two to figure out what to say to her, how to fix the damage he’d done to them.
    All before he’d even realized he wanted to take a chance at being a “them.”
    Fuck. Maybe he was past stupid.
    Dez continued to stare at him, her eyes suspicious. He held her gaze, refusing to look away. She finally swore and broke the stare. He held out a hand and said, “Truce?”
    She shot him a dirty look.
    “Like hell. Let’s get this over with so I can get the hell away from you.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    DEZ ignored the man next to her.
    She wasn’t up to anything else just then. Bad enough that she was in the car with him, bad enough that she knew she couldn’t get away from him yet, get away from this town…she wasn’t ready to look at him or think about anything remotely personal. So she ignored him. She’d stripped herself bare— again —and it had gotten her nothing.
    Not that she’d expected anything different.
    Not from Taylor Jones. Yeah, he had a heart under that ice-cold exterior of his, but damned if he knew how to show it. He wasn’t going to change.
    So she’d do her job. Then she’d get out of town. Get away from him. Let another ghost pull her in, suck her dry. Sighing, she rested her head against the window and closed her eyes, the bone-tired exhaustion sucking at her, trying to pull her into sleep, even though the car ride lasted only minutes.
    The car came to a stop and she straightened in the seat, pressing her fingers to her eyes and rubbing at them. It didn’t do anything to get rid of the gritty ache there, or the throbbing that had taken up residence behind.
    “When was the last time you had a decent night’s sleep?” Taylor asked, his voice low and soft in the silence of the car.
    “What do you care?” she asked wearily.
    “Can you answer the question?”
    In response, she unbuckled the seat belt, but before she could climb out, he hit the locks for the door. Clenching her jaw, she stared mutinously ahead at the brightly lit house. The cops were still there, in a careful, controlled mess around the Donnelly household. But she didn’t see any sign of a new car. Had his parents ever shown up? Did they even know yet?
    “We’ve got a job to do, Jones,” she said, forcing herself to keep her voice flat and cold. Wouldn’t do any good to yell. Wouldn’t do any good to get angry. She’d done that before and it changed nothing.