“Don’t. I’ve had about enough of people telling me I didn’t give them courtesy. This is a murder investigation and I left my etiquette disc at the office. Ease off!”
He just drew her up until she was on her toes. “If I hadn’t been so guilty and distracted, thinking it was something I did, or was, or had that was causing him to take my people, I’d have come to this myself long before. You let me think it.”
“I don’t know if it’s me or if it’s you, but I did know—and boy are you proving it out—that if I told you this possibility, you’d go off.”
“So you lied to me.”
Her fury bloomed, so ripe and real at the accusation she had to fight, viciously, to stop herself from punching him. “I did not lie to you.”
“By omission.” He dropped her back on her feet. “I thought we trusted each other more than this.”
“Fuck it. Just fuck it.” She sat down, pressed her hands to her head. “Maybe I’m screwing up, right, left, back, forth. Feeney, you. I do trust you, and if I haven’t shown you that by now with every goddamn thing I have, I don’t know how else to do it.”
“Mentioning this bloody business might’ve done the job.”
“I needed to think it through. It never really occurred to me until Mira brought it up. And that was just today. I haven’t had time to think, goddamn it. I haven’t even run the probability yet.”
“Run it now.”
She dropped her hands, looked up at him. Her own temper had fizzled like a wet fuse, and all that was left were the soggy dregs.
“I can’t take it. You’ve got to know, however spineless it is, I can’t take it if you slap me back, too. I can’t take it from both of you in one day. I wasn’t trying to hurt either of you. I was just doing my job the best I know how. I wasn’t keeping this from you, I just hadn’t…assimilated it yet.”
“Or figured out how to use it, if your assimilation indicated it had merit.”
“Yes. If it has merit, I will use it. You know that if you know me.”
“I know that, yes.” He turned away, walked to her windows.
“There was a time I wouldn’t have had anyone to consult on a decision. There was a time,” she continued, “I wouldn’t have considered it necessary to take anyone’s thoughts or feelings into account in any decision I made. That’s not true anymore. When I’d thought it through, when I’d come up with ideas or options, I would have told you. I wouldn’t have moved forward without telling you.”
True enough, he told himself as he mastered his own fury and fear. That was all true enough, for both of them. And small, hard comfort.
“Still, you’ll move forward, if you believe you must, regardless of my thoughts and feelings.”
“Yes.”
He turned back. “I probably wouldn’t love you so much it all but chokes me if you were otherwise.”
She let out a breath. “I probably wouldn’t love you, et cetera, et cetera, if you didn’t understand I can’t be otherwise.”
“Well, then.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s hard for you.”
“You do.” He crossed back. “Aye, you do, but you don’t understand the whole of it. How could you? Why should you?” He touched her cheek. “I wouldn’t have been so angry if it hadn’t taken me so bloody long to realize it wasn’t about me, but about you.”
“Not everything’s about you, ace.”
He smiled, as she’d meant him to, but his eyes stayed intense. “We’ll talk through, thoroughly, any plans you make to try to use this angle. To use yourself as bait.”
“Yes. My word on that.”
“All right, then. We need to go to bed. I’ll have my way on that, Lieutenant. It’s nearly two in the morning, and you’ll want to be up around five, I’d guess.”
“Yeah, okay. We’ll catch some sleep.”
She walked with him, but couldn’t stop the ball he’d launched from bouncing around in her mind. “It was shuffling around in my head,” she began. “The idea of me being a target. A lot of information and supposition was shuffling around in my head.”