Yes, Abilene is Leo Galloway’s granddaughter too, and despite her mechanical bird heart, I could tell his death upset her. And his death is what I came to talk about it.
“Have they found out anything more?” I ask Ash.
“Since we talked last night? Not really.” He rubs at his forehead with his thumb, a gesture so sweetly familiar that for a moment I’m hit with a loneliness so barbed and needy that I can hardly breathe. “I mean, they didn’t even try to make it look natural. Forced entry into his penthouse, injection point in the neck, digoxin—a heart medication that he’s never taken.”
“It was Melwas.”
Ash looks at me carefully, slowly dropping his hand to adjust the silver watch on his wrist. “Preliminary investigation suggests the Iranian rebels he and Penley Luther tussled with thirty years ago.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Ash. Political enemies from thirty years ago—who never had any money or power to begin with—don’t hunt you down when you’re no longer a threat. It’s Melwas trying hurt Greer again. It wasn’t enough to shred her reputation; now he has to kill her family. She’ll be next if we don’t do something.”
His fingers are still playing with his watch, but he keeps his eyes on me as he speaks. “You might be right, Embry. In fact, I have a feeling that you are. I wouldn’t put it past Melwas to have hired these men, and believe me, if we turn up the slightest hint of actual evidence that he did it, I will do everything in my power to make sure he pays. But at the end of the day, I can’t use this office to act on hunches and suspicions.”
“There’s never certainty in war,” I insist, leaning forward. “Your hunches are what saved lives in Carpathia. How many times did we have no intelligence or wrong intelligence or half-assed intelligence and we went in anyway?”
“Because we were ordered to,” Ash points out. “And now I’m the one giving the orders. And this isn’t just war, Embry, there’s more to worry about than how fast we can build the next outpost.”
“I know there’s more—”
“Do you? I don’t think you do. And you gave up the right to protect Greer when you got Abilene pregnant.”
There it is.
There it fucking is.
“You just couldn’t wait to say that, could you?” I ask coolly.
Ash replies, just as coolly, “I waited longer than you did before you fucked Abilene.”
We stare at each other for a moment, and I break the gaze first, my eyes dropping to his shoes. “It wasn’t like that.”
“You said it was going to be just a public thing. You said you weren’t going to sleep with her.”
“I didn’t plan on fucking her! It just—”
Ash rolls his eyes. “It just happened? God, Embry, everything else aside, can you at least not be such a cliché?”
I glare at him. “Everything else aside? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think? Greer and I love you, we trusted you, even though you’ve spurned me twice, even though you left her in Chicago all those years ago, even though you’ve spent the last five years ago fucking everything that moves—”
“Including you, remember?”
“—And how long was it before you found greener pastures? A whole week and a half after the wedding night?”
Those long, black eyelashes are working fast, a muscle jumping in his jaw, and I see it: he’s not angry, he’s hurt. Jealous. That he would be angry on Greer’s behalf was obvious to me when I walked in here, but that he’s hurt for himself, that he feels betrayed himself, tears something new inside me. No matter how dangerous it might be with Abilene, I can’t force myself to give him anything other than the ugly truth.
“Abilene drugged me, Ash.”
Ash pauses, recalibrates. “What?”
“I got my blood tested that day, just to be sure, but she essentially confessed to it. GHB, Cialis, a couple other things. But it turns out I have prescriptions for all of those medicines.”
“You’ve never taken GHB or Cialis.”
“Exactly. She had the scripts forged and filled. When I checked with the White House doctor’s office, there are even records of the visits when these drugs were recommended.”
Ash frowns. “Dr. Ninian wouldn’t do that.”
I shrug. “I’m going to find out. But even if she did it, it doesn’t change the fact that Abilene is pregnant.” I have to force the next words out. “Probably with my child.”
“You’re right,” Ash says, and the heat has finally left his voice. He only looks sad now. “It doesn’t change that.”
I think of Greer in her office at Georgetown, practically glowing with righteous fury, her blond hair damp and tousled in the sun-warmed room as I devoured her cunt. I think of the wedding night, the things we said and shared. “I miss you. I miss Greer. I miss us.”
“Me too, little prince.”
“Is it ruined? Did I ruin it?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he looks at me, and then I’m being pulled to my feet and dragged into the bathroom just off the office, pinned fiercely against the wall. His lips are warm on mine, warm and firm, and the feeling is unbearably good. It’s electric and soft, it’s skin and stubble, it’s fourteen years of two men too proud to bend, too in love with being broken.