He didn’t. “You owe me the truth,” he said. “You owe me your notes. Your sources. If you’re in over your head, you don’t get to drag the rest of us down with you.”
My ribs felt tight. The hallway was too narrow, the carpet too soft, like it might swallow my feet whole if I tried to run.I could break his nose if I needed to, I thought distantly. Heel of my hand up and out. I’d been trained. I knew how.
But this was Derek. The man who’d sent me into war zones with a mixture of pride and worry. The man who’d called me from a bar at midnight once, voice hoarse, to tell me he’d just watched my piece run and “Kid, you did it.”
Seeing him like this—cornered animal, flailing in a trap I couldn’t see—hurt more than his grip.
“This isn’t you,” I said quietly. “Whoever got to you?—”
“You think everything is about sources,” he snapped. “Sometimes it’s about consequences.”
The elevator at the end of the hall dinged. Neither of us looked.
“Let go,” I repeated.
His fingers tightened. “Not until you tell me what you’re hiding.”
The voice that came from behind him was low and lethal.
“She told you to let go.”
Derek jerked, half-turning. I looked past his shoulder.
Levi was standing at the end of the hallway.
He looked like he’d been through a war. His shirt was rumpled, a dark smear at the collarbone that might have been dirt or dried blood. There was a cut at his hairline, angling through his temple, the skin around it just beginning to swell. His eyes, though, were crystal clear. Sharp. Locked on the place where Derek’s hand wrapped around my arm.
“Levi,” I breathed.
He walked forward, unhurried. Each step was controlled, precise, the way I’d seen him move in combat zones when he was trying not to spook a skittish crowd. The air around him felt charged, like the moment before a storm breaks.
Derek’s fingers spasmed on my arm. He dropped it, finally, as if it had burned him.
“This is a private conversation,” he started, trying for authoritative. It came out strained.
“No,” Levi said. “It isn’t.”
He stopped a foot away, close enough that I could feel heat coming off him, see the muscle flex in his jaw.
“Did he hurt you?” Levi asked me, not taking his eyes off the man in front of him.
My arm throbbed where the fingers had been. It would bruise. “I’m okay,” I said. Then, because it was also true: “He grabbed me. He blocked the door.”
Levi’s expression didn’t change much. Just a slight narrowing of his eyes, a subtle shift in his weight. But I felt it, like a pressure drop.
Derek lifted his hands, palms out. “This is a misunderstanding,” he said quickly. “I flew down here to talk to my reporter about a sensitive story. She’s under a lot of stress, you’re under a lot of stress?—”
Levi took one smooth step forward and put himself between us, his back a solid wall in front of me.
“Face me when you talk,” he said. “And choose your next words very carefully.”
27
LEVI
Derek started babbling.
"I'm just doing my job," he said, voice climbing an octave. "She's my reporter. I have a right to check on her progress. This is how journalism works. You can't just?—"
