Bounty Hunter [REWRITTEN VERSION]

Chapter 57: Tell Me Who You Are

Chapter summary; Malec <— as u wonderful reader have taken to calling them :)

MAIZE

Several hours later all of them were taken to stay at a local hotel. The officers still had questions for them and said that each of their statements would need to be taken—including Ryder's, which he was not at all thrilled about.

Maize agreed and nodded off to whatever with minimal commitment—she didn't care.

Their initial accounts were jotted down by assistants of Johnson and Monroe, before they were cleared. The two agents stayed with them, saying they were not done and would need to have more discussions about the case once they were a bit more rested. Afterwards, they were driven in their vehicle and Ryder's—where Kota had been waiting in the back seat—and taken to a place to stay in rooms for the night. God knew each of them needed it.

Maize was exhausted as she found a seat at the corner of her rental room in the motel the agents had paid for on the RCMP's tab. She felt numb. She felt raging with fire. Her jacket weighed so heavily on her shoulders, where the phantom pain of the scar on her upper back had not stopped prickling in both pain and ache. She wanted to shed the leather coat, if only to relieve some of the pressure, but she found she couldn't move.

The fire suddenly swept out like a match in the wind. She was left only numb. And with her thoughts.

Somehow, she knew she was still in a state of shock. Even after all that had happened to sober her, a part of her could not believe what she had seen.

She always knew...somehow...someday...she knew her past would eventually catch up, one way or another. But she couldn't have seen it coming this time, or even how it came. With a ghost she thought had died with her old identity. But then she thought back to the room, to Alec standing before her, and the cold bite of the pistol in her hand. Perhaps not. One could never kill ones old self completely, merely burry it down in the shadows and pray against the day it surfaced.

What would she have done?

In the moment she knew she wasn't going to kill Alec. She told herself so. She had changed, and she would not kill an ally. She would not kill her detective...But even so, it near frightened her how easily they all thought she had slipped into that old persona. Even Alec from the resigned look she had seen fall in his eyes.

She closed her eyes and stood, making for the door. She couldn't do this, she needed an out, some air, anything. Anything to get away from the claustrophobic feeling she thought was closing around her. She opened the door with the intent to walk out and fast before anyone could see or stop her, but her plan fell immediately dead as soon as her forehead crashed into the hard jaw and a pair of familiar cognac eyes flashed a near exasperated look down at her.

Not now, she silently pleaded. Out of everything, he was the last person she wanted to face at the moment.

"Maize..." She refused to flinch at the deep tone his voice took, slightly husked with an edge. He was staring at her, but behind a knowingness in his eyes, there was nothing else readable. But either way, it wasn't the way he had been looking at her before this whole endearment. It wasn't the glinting, tantalizing, flickering light look she hadn't even realized she had grown so used to seeing. So much so that the dark shadow that hovered over his gaze now seemed almost unnatural.