Page 23 of High Water

“Thank you.” I risk reaching out and letting my fingers brush hers where she’s touching the pages. She glances down at the contact, her eyes shifting to me a moment later, studying my face. “Truly, this means a lot to see these and hear you talk about her. I want to know everything. Or as much as you’re willing to share anyway.”

She nods, her lashes fluttering like she feels the same pull of weight as me for the briefest of moments. Her smile returns while she grins down at the photos of Fallon—our daughter.

“I’m happy to share as much as you want to know. I want her to know you too. It’ll take some time, but I think the two of you… I know she’d love you if she knew you, and you’d love her too. She’s got some of our best qualities, I think.”

“And our worst?” I laugh, trying to ward off the tears I feel threatening.

“Those too. But I was gonna wait to share those.” She laughs with me.

“I love her already. Anything you’re willing to give me, I’m here for it.”

Aspen slips her hand over mine, squeezing it gently as she speaks with the slightest hint of trepidation in her voice. “That makes me so happy. I can’t tell you how much.”

NINE

Bishop

“I heard you and my sister finally had a chat. How’d that go?” Levi asks as we walk back to one of the meeting rooms. He’s heard from Zephyrine, his fiancée, and one of the primary investigators on the mystery they’re trying to uncover, and she told him to come speak with the group.

“About the way you’d expect. Sorry for outing you for giving me her number. She asked, and I didn’t want to lie.” I feel guilty, but I also wasn’t going start off a new chapter with her by dodging questions.

“You’re fine. She would have guessed anyway.” He waves his hand and then scrutinizes me from behind his glasses. “Well… You’re still in one piece. At least from what I can tell. That’s promising.”

“She’s given me reason to hope my fuckups can be forgotten if not forgiven. On a long enough timeline at least.”

“So are you ever going to tell me how long the two of you were a thing?” He leans back against the wall in the elevator.

“From the day I moved into the bunkhouse.”

“Since the bunkhouse?” His brows knit together in a mix of surprise and confusion. “How the fuck did I miss it for that long?”

“We kept it a secret. We both worried it would make too many waves.”

“Fuck…” Levi shakes his head. “I can only imagine at the time what my dad would have said.”

“I think he suspected even then.”

“I just thought the two of you hated each other. You were always bickering back and forth at dinner and the holidays.” Levi smirks at his own memories.

“It’s a thin line between love and hate,” I admit.

“Any plans to cross back to the other side of the line?” It’s Levi’s way of asking about my intentions. We’re as close as brothers, but he’s always been protective of Aspen. Rightly so.

“I don’t think that’s in the cards. She’s given me some reason to believe she won’t make a fuss of letting me back into the family fold, but she’s doing it for the greater good. Not out of personal interest.” I do my best to explain without exposing the whole truth. She wants to tell her brothers, and I respect that. In fact, I prefer it because I might be holding off a swing or two from one of them.

But I’m also sure that what I want is impossible. So much so that I don’t even want to let myself think it, let alone say it. I know what her answer would be now that we’ve talked. Any delusions I had about her having missed me as much as I missed her have been destroyed. Why would she? She was married. He had her all those years, and she had someone to take care of her every want and need. I doubt she ever went to bed wondering what it might have been like to have me back in it. A thought I’ve never been able to escape when it comes to her. But I can wrestle with what this new reality is going to look like another day.

“I see.” I can tell Levi has more questions, but he doesn’t voice them, and before we can discuss them further, the elevator dings.

When we arrive in the meeting room, Zephyrine’s already got things set up, and there’s a small group gathered around the table. Charlotte and Rowan sit at the far end, discussing something in hushed tones as we walk into the room. Grant’s pulling out Dakota’s chair and ushering her into it before he sits down, giving me a brief tip of his chin in greeting.

Grant and Levi own the building we’re in—the Avarice; it’s a casino and a resort they inherited after their uncle’s death, and Dakota is Grant’s fiancée. She’s currently rebuilding the Seven Sins Saloon, her bar that burned down, just outside the resort. It’s set to open in a few weeks, but in the meantime, she’s been helping Charlotte and Zephyrine in their hunt for a final missing relic.

Zephyrine is a former nun-in-training who gave up her vocation to be with Levi and pursue a new calling returning lost artifacts. Her first assignment was from her former abbess at the nunnery in Germany, and she enlisted Charlotte’s team’s help. Charlotte’s a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to the art and antiquities market, but her passion is the repatriation of stolen collections. Rowan is her utility knife—a sergeant at arms, a confidante, and a dealmaker rolled into one. He’s also only one of three men she’s in a relationship with, and even in the brief time I’ve known her, I can see why. Hudson, a close friend of Grant’s, and Finn a good friend of Ramsey’s, are both still in Cincinnati with work at the moment. They’ve all been closely involved in Stockton business and have proven to be helpful allies in our ongoing pursuit of justice for the murder of Aspen and her sibling’s parents.

“Perfect. Levi’s here, and we can get started,” Charlotte announces, tapping her pen to the table and then drawing everyone’s attention to the presentation she has displayed on the screen on the wall. “As we all know, Zephyrine’s been asked to retrieve the last relic, and we’ve agreed to help her find it. Late last year, she discovered this photograph.” Charlotte clicks over to a scan of a photograph Zephyrine stumbled upon in a family photo album at the ranch. It’s black-and-white—four soldiers huddled together in Ike jackets, smiling at the camera and holding cards in their hands, playing a game of poker in some rural area of Europe.

“That’s my maternal grandfather. That’s my paternal grandfather. This is the Stocktons’ grandfather, and that’s Hudson’s grandfather.” Zephyrine points to the last man. “We’ve gone through these photos as well as located photos from archives all over the US for this unit that they were a part of. We’ve got a fairly good idea of where the unit was deployed and its path through Europe. We suspect that my paternal grandfather was using the relics as collateral in card games, gambling with them in order to try to win money.