The Minutes We Have

chapter twenty-eight

He blinked. 

One moment, his eyes were alight with lightning on a dusk horizon, and then his pupils darkened like the fury of a hurricane. His emotions shuttered from concern to instantaneous anger, hardening the angles of his face until he seemed to become stone. 

"That bastard," He cursed, turning away to harshly rub his jaw. I stared at his back for a long moment, he was tense. Like an animal that had been cornered and his last defense was to fight until death. "I never should have trusted him."

My fingers tightened into fists, nervous for a breath. Mikeal never swore. He was adamant that we didn't, always correcting our language and warning us not to do it again. To hear him swear so freely, I knew it wasn't good. We were two ends of a string and the middle was on fire, it was only a matter of time before it reached an end and one of us would burn faster than the other.

Mikeal began to pace. "He knew you were working. He specifically targeted you," He paused, staring off into the distance with square shoulders. He turned back---and maybe it was the darkness that creeped in around us at the intersection---but he looked lethal. "I'm going to kill him."

"Don't say stuff like that," I said, quietly. His eyes flashed to mine. We stared unblinking for a moment. All I could think about was Sheriff Lawerence burying the body in the woods. How many others met the same fate when they found out? "I did this. Rylan knows because I gave it away."

"Jordyn, stop," He said. Suddenly, there was so much gentleness in his tone and he took a step closer. "You didn't do this." 

"But I made it worse." 

"No, you didn't." He sighed. In that breath, the tension bled from his shoulders. His emotions softened from stone. He wrapped his arms around me as I breathed out the same breath. It was difficult when life didn't seem fair. "You didn't do anything wrong. We're just getting sucked into a really ugly situation." 

But why did bad things happen to good people? 

I remembered asking myself that a few months ago. 

How were we in this situation again? 

"I know what I have to do." 

"What's that?" I pulled away with a frown. 

"I'm going to tell him everything," Mikeal said. "That is the reason he's here. He wants to put the Sheriff behind bars but he needs evidence, leads that aren't false ones. He came here for help, I'll give it to him." 

"And what happens when it goes to court and you're called to the stand? How are you going to explain that you knew Rylan was an officer without getting charged?" 

"I'll give him the information in exchange for that part to remain buried."

"You're using his own leverage against him," I murmured. 

He nodded. "It's the only way I see a path out of this. He must have had a reason for telling me. There was no way he would blow his cover without a plan." 

I thought of the incident that happened only an hour ago at the Little Red Diner. Was that what he was trying to tell me? About trusting him? 

Trust was a risk. One I rarely took.

"So, you're willing to trust him?" I asked. 

"No, but he trusted me." 

"You don't know that," I replied, "He is an expert in the field of manipulation. He does undercover work for a reason. How could he just trust a local? Let alone a local that's only lived in the area for a year?"