He pulls away from the curb, the Marshalls’ house slipping out of view as the street stretches quiet and ordinary ahead of us. I stare out the window, my reflection faint in the glass.
My thoughts slide somewhere uncomfortable. To what I might have to sit on. To what I might have to pretend I don’t know. To the line I can already see forming ahead of me, thin and blurry, between wrong and right.
Is it still the right thing if you have to bend the rules to get there? No…I can’t do that. I took an oath.
“We need to make sure everything is done by the book,” I say, still staring out the window.
I can see that’s not what he’d want to do by the way stress creeps into his features.
Anton reaches over and squeezes my hand, as if he knows exactly where my head has gone without me saying a word.
Whatever we’ve just stepped into, there’s no clean way out of it anymore.
30
Freya is asleep after a long,stressful day. She spent most of the afternoon at a desk next to Ingram, then came home to put in a second shift at GhostEye, debriefing them on the new developments from the Marshall interview.
I gaze down at her. She’s finally surrendered to sleep. Her hand is curled near her stomach, her lips parted, her breath slow and even. I stand there for a moment, watching the tension drain from her face in a way it hasn’t all day.
I pull the blanket up over her shoulder in our bed and step quietly down into the living room because, for me, the adrenaline hasn’t burned off yet, and I don’t want that near her.
A knock comes at the door. Nobody passes through the gates out front, manned by armed guards twenty-four seven since Enzo is meticulous about security. It has to be a Mendez or a woman who has chosen one.
Still, out of habit, I look through the peephole.
Rio.
I open the door, and he steps inside. His expression is dark, his presence heavier than usual. Rio is always serious, but tonight it’s different. Tonight, he looks loaded. As if he’s been carrying something all day and finally decided where to set it down.
“What’s wrong?” I ask because evening visits aren’t typical from Rio unless they involve tequila.
He doesn’t answer right away.
“You want a drink?” I head toward the kitchen.
He looks like a man who might want one.
“No. I’m good.”
We move toward the breakfast bar. He perches on a stool and shrugs off his blazer. The sleeves of his Prada button-down are rolled up, revealing full arms of tattoos. He must have come straight from work.
“I wanted to be at the ranch office this morning, but I got pulled into San Francisco.”
I nod.
“Ava and Enzo told me about the timestamp and what came of the Marshall interview.”
He glances up at me, and I see something I have never seen before in Rio’s dark, hooded eyes. He’s…eager.
Rio Mendez never comes across as if he needs you.
I want to tell him to come out with it, tell me why the hell he’s stopped in at nine-thirty after a long day at Headquarters, why he’s refused tequila. But whatever is going on,his features are strained. It’s not an easy conversation for him.
So I share some of what we learned at the Marshalls’, even though I know he’s heard it from Enzo and Ava when he returned from work.
“Ingram left out a lot of detail in the police report. For one, Zoe might have had a love interest. Her parents heard her arguing a couple of times. She’d become secretive around that relationship and also had an apparent lottery win that enabled her to finally start her business. They said it was a shock Zoe would have been drunk driving, too.”
He perks up. “Why’s that?”
