Chapter 6 #2
She studied me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. The sirens were getting closer.
"So what do you want to be?"
"I don't know. Someone who tells you the threat is real and then shuts up long enough for you to decide what to do about it." I ran my hand over my forehead."Even if your decision keeps me up all night."
"And if I choose to stay here? In my own apartment?"
"Then I'll respect that." The words tasted like something I'd rather spit out, but I said them anyway. "I'll hate it. I'll probably park outside your building like a lunatic. But I'll respect it."
Her posture changed. Not all at once. The rigid anger loosened by degrees, like a fist slowly unclenching.
"I don't want to stay here," she said finally. "Not tonight. Maybe not for a while. They've made this place feel..." She trailed off, looking around at the destruction. "I can't sleep in that bed knowing they touched it."
"Then stay at my place. Your choice. Not mine."
"My choice," she repeated, like she was testing the weight of it.
"Yes."
"And the security team?"
"Tell me what you'd be comfortable with, and I'll make it work."
She was quiet for a moment, and I could see her processing. Running her own calculations. The forensic accountant's brain, weighing variables.
"Tell me what they'd actually do. The security people. Walk me through it."
I explained. Four-person detail, rotating shifts.
They'd monitor her movements, check locations before she entered, maintain a discreet distance unless there was an active threat.
I told her their backgrounds: former military, vetted personally, people I'd worked with before.
I told her the cost, the logistics, the chain of communication if something went wrong.
She listened without interrupting. When I finished, she nodded slowly.
"Okay."
"Okay, to which part?"
"All of it. The penthouse. The security team." She met my eyes, and the weariness in her face made something ache within my chest. "But if you ever make a decision like that again without asking me first..."
"I won't."
"...I walk away. From the case. From the partnership." A pause. "From you."
"I understand."
The police arrived then, two officers with notepads and bored expressions.
Lindsey handled them with the same competence she brought to everything: calm, cooperative, revealing nothing.
I stood in the background and let her handle it, which required more effort than I expected.
My hands wanted to do things. Take charge.
Fix the situation. Instead they hung at my sides, useless, while she navigated the interview without me.
It was deeply uncomfortable. I filed that away as something to think about later. I had a lot of things in that file.
After the officers left, she packed a small suitcase.
I stood in the doorway, not helping, not hovering, just present.
She moved through her bedroom quickly, not looking at the bed, pulling clothes from her closet with the kind of efficiency that comes from wanting to be somewhere else as fast as possible.
When she emerged, suitcase in hand, her face was blank. The forensic accountant face. The one that processed without feeling. I recognized it because I had my own version.
"Ready?" I asked.
"Ready."
We walked to my car in silence. The night air was cold, carrying the first hint of autumn, and she shivered slightly as we crossed the parking lot.
I almost took off my jacket. Stopped myself.
Wasn't sure if that fell under the category of deciding things for her, which was a ridiculous thought, it was a jacket, but I'd just been told I had a problem with this, and apparently the problem extended to outerwear.
I held the jacket halfway off my shoulder for a stupid, frozen second, then put it back on.
She noticed. Of course she noticed.
"You can offer me your jacket, Will. That's not a unilateral security decision. That's just being nice."
"Right." I took it off and draped it over her shoulders. It swallowed her. She pulled it tighter without comment, and I tried not to think about how she looked wearing my clothes, which was a thought so wildly inappropriate given the circumstances that I should have been embarrassed by it.
I wasn't. I was just aware of it, sitting there in the front of my brain, refusing to leave.
The drive to my building was quiet. I kept my eyes on the road, checking mirrors more often than necessary, scanning for any sign of the dark sedan. Nothing. Either they'd made their point, or they were better at hiding now.
Beside me, Lindsey sat with her hands in her lap, very still.
The stillness was wrong. Lindsey in motion was Lindsey at her best: fingers flying across a keyboard, pen tapping against a desk, hair being tucked behind her ear for the fifteenth time.
Lindsey being still meant she completely shut down.
I reached for the radio. Some half-formed idea about filling the silence, giving her something that wasn't her own thoughts.
My hand made it to the dial and then stopped, because what station do you put on for a woman whose apartment was just desecrated by operatives connected to a human trafficking ring? There wasn't a preset for that.
My hand dropped. Landed on the center console. Stayed there.
A minute passed. Maybe two. The highway stretched ahead, orange-lit and empty.
Then her hand moved. Slowly. Like a decision being made in real time. Her fingers found mine on the console and just... rested there. Not holding. Not gripping. Just touching. The lightest possible contact, like she was testing whether it was allowed.
I didn't move. Didn't close my hand around hers. Didn't do anything that might break whatever this was. I just let her fingers stay where she'd put them, cool against my knuckles, and drove.
After a while, her fingers curled. Just slightly. Hooking around mine the way you'd hold onto something in the dark.
We didn't talk about it. We didn't look at each other. We just drove through the night with our hands barely connected, and I focused on the road; the silence turned into something that was almost bearable.
I pulled into my building's underground garage and put the car in park. The engine went quiet. Her fingers were still hooked around mine. I could feel her pulse against my knuckle, or maybe that was my own pulse. I wasn’t certain anymore.
She let go first. Reached for the door handle. I felt the cold fill the space where her hand had been and didn't say anything about it.
"Will." Her voice was quiet, barely above a whisper.
"Yeah?"
She paused, half-turned toward the door, her profile lit by the dim glow of the parking garage lights. "Thank you. For coming. And for... trying. The asking thing. I know that's not..." She trailed off, like she'd run out of the energy required to finish sentences.
"I'll get better at it."
"Yeah?"
"Probably not quickly. But I'll get better at it."
A small sound escaped her. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sigh. Something in between that made me want to reach for her hand again, which I did not do, apparently I was learning.
"That's weirdly reassuring," she said.
She opened the door, and we walked toward the elevator in silence, her suitcase wheels clicking against the concrete. I carried her laptop bag because she'd let me, and that felt like a concession I hadn't earned but was going to take anyway.
The elevator doors closed, and we stood side by side, watching the numbers climb.
In the mirrored walls, I could see her reflection, tired, pale, wearing my jacket with the sleeves hanging past her hands.
I could see my own reflection too, and the expression on my face was one I didn't recognize.
Not the mask. Not the operational blankness.
Something unguarded that I was going to have to deal with before she noticed it.
I looked at the floor numbers instead.
The elevator opened. She stepped out first. I followed with her bags, and showed her the guest room, and pointed out where the towels were, and told her the Wi-Fi password, and did all the normal things you do when someone stays at your home, as if any of this were normal, as if there weren't armed men out there who'd just sent a message written in her scattered belongings.
"The security system panel is by the front door," I said. "Green means armed. Red means... well, red means we have a problem, but we won't have a problem."
"Comforting."
"There's water in the fridge. Extra blankets in the closet. If you need anything..."
"I'll knock on your door. I know." She was standing in the doorway of the guest room, holding her suitcase handle, still wearing my jacket. "Will?"
"Yeah?"
"Stop hovering."
"I'm not hovering. I'm providing orientation."
"You've shown me where the towels are three times."
"...Have I?"
"You have." But the corner of her mouth moved, just barely, and it wasn't a smile but it was the possibility of one, and I'd take it. "Goodnight, Will."
"Goodnight."
She closed the door. I stood in the hallway for a count of ten, then walked to my room and shut myself inside.
The city glittered beyond my windows. Somewhere out there, Victor Reeves was probably drinking something expensive and congratulating himself on a message well delivered.
He'd wanted to scare her. Shake her loose from the case. Make her feel small and vulnerable and alone.
Instead, she was in my guest room. Under my roof. Behind my security system.
He'd made a mistake. He just didn't know it yet.
I stood at the window for a long time, running through what came next. Bates would need to know about the break-in. The security detail needed to be in place by morning. The storage unit protocols would have to change. New routes, new schedules, new communication channels.
Operational. All of it, operational. I was good at operational.
What I was less good at was the other thing.
The thing where her fingers had curled around mine in the car, and I'd felt something burst in my chest that wasn't rage or calculation or strategy.
The thing where she'd looked up at me on those apartment steps and I'd wanted to fix everything, burn everything, tear apart anyone who'd made her feel afraid.
That wasn't operational. That was something else. Something I didn't have protocols for.
I'd figure it out later. Right now, there was a security detail to arrange and an FBI agent to brief and a trafficking ring CEO who had just made the worst tactical decision of his life.
I pulled out my phone and started making calls.
The work was familiar. The anger was useful. And if, between calls, I pressed my hand flat against the door of the guest room just to confirm she was on the other side of it, that was nobody's business but mine.