Finding Eden(86)

When we stepped outside into the crisp fall air, we stopped and I took a big breath. I leaned back against a column in front of the building and wrapped my arms around her and hugged her close. "Hey," I whispered. "You have to stay calm. You've got a little life inside of you."

Eden nodded her head. "I know," she whispered against my chest. "It's just a shock. Seeing him . . . hearing about his past. I don't even know what to feel. Oh my God, Calder, we found him."

"I know," I said quietly. "And I don't know how to feel either."

She tilted her head and looked up at me. "None of that . . . none of that makes it okay what he did."

I shook my head, staring unseeing at the parking lot in front of me. "No, it doesn't. In fact, it might make it worse—making victims out of others, taking you from your parents when he knew what it felt like to lose a little girl, causing your miscarriage." My hand automatically went down to her still-flat belly.

Eden was quiet for a minute. "Did he," she bit her lip, "just go crazy after what happened to his family, or . . .?"

"I don't know. Maybe the police can look into it when we give them his name."

She shivered against me and I pulled her tighter. "Yeah, maybe." When she looked up at me again, she asked, "Should we call them from here and tell them what we found?"

I furrowed my brow. "We're heading back tomorrow. Let's let them know when we get back. The very last thing I want is for a bunch of media to show up while we're still here. It's the very thing we needed to get away from."

"True," Eden said. "Hector . . . Thomas is dead anyway. I guess it's nothing that can't wait another day. We need to call Xander, though. He needs to know about this."

"Let's bring all this to him tomorrow, too. That way we'll be able to show him all the articles. Plus, we should be there in person to drop this bomb on him."

Eden nodded. "Yeah, you're right." We stood there for a few more minutes holding each other. I glanced down at Eden's purse, half of Willa Greer's face showing on a small corner of one of the articles sticking out of the top. Thank you, I said in my mind, pulling Eden closer.

We headed back to our room and we took a bubble bath together in the large tub, soaking in the warm water, just enjoying the intimacy, but mostly lost in our own thoughts. "Danae," Eden whispered. "It's unusual. I bet it's a Greek Princess or something like that."

I kissed her shoulder. "Probably. You were right. All the Greek stuff . . . he was a Greek History teacher. God, my girl is smart." I smiled against her skin and rubbed my nose over it, trying to make her smile, to make a little bit of the melancholy that had been surrounding us since we'd left the library dissipate.

Eden laughed softly. "Think the police have a position open for me?"

I laughed. "If they're smart, they do."

Eden rolled over in the water and brought her hands to my face and kissed me softly. After a few minutes, the water began to cool, and my blood began to heat. We got out of the bath and dried off and I made love to her in the spacious hotel room bed.

We ordered room service after that, content to spend our last night there wrapped up in each other. Personally, I felt like I needed that after what we'd found out earlier in the day. I needed to reset my emotions and find my equilibrium again and there was no better way to do that than to block out the world and focus solely on Eden.

The next morning as I was drying off from the shower and throwing my stuff back in my bag, Eden sat at the small desk scrolling through the Internet on her laptop. She turned to me. "What would you think about driving through the town Indiana University Southeast is in? The college Thomas Greer worked at?"

I paused. "Why?"

She tilted her head. "I don't know. I thought I might recognize something there . . . maybe the house where he kept me? I went out into the yard every now and again . . . What do you think?"

I went over to her and squatted down next to her chair. She turned toward me and took my hands in hers. "Eden, if you need that, I'll do it. But I don't want this to upset you. I don't want to risk your health in some way—"

"I'm stronger than that, Calder," she said. "And besides, knowledge, information, it has always made me feel more powerful, more in control. Plus, we're so close. I don't know if we'll be back this way, you know? Once life gets underway," she put her hand on her stomach in an unconscious gesture, "we won't want to focus on any of this. We'll want it behind us in every sense."

I breathed out and smiled gently at her. "Yeah." I paused. "Sure, we'll drive through the town a little bit and then we'll head home."