"Well," Ray said. "Now you've met Jake Walsh."
CHAPTER 2
No. No, no, no.
Emily Callahan walked down the eighth-floor hallway with the velocity of a woman trying to outrun whatever she felt that wasn't actually behind her. It was inside her. It had been inside her since a man in a backwards cap had looked at her across Ray Crawford's office and saidhe didn't mention you were beautifullike he was correcting an error in a briefing document.
Her office was forty-seven steps from Ray's. She'd counted once, early on, the kind of useless data her brain collected when it needed to feel in control. Forty-seven steps. She could make it in thirty if she didn't slow down, if she didn't stop, if she absolutely did not think about how Jake Walsh's hand had felt around hers or how his voice had sounded when he'd saidyeslike asking her out was the simplest decision he'd made all day.
She made it in twenty-eight.
Her door was glass. She hated that right now. Glass meant visible, meant Claire Harper could see her face from across the bullpen, and Claire Harper could read Emily's face as well as Emily read case law, with precision and an irritating refusal to accept the first interpretation.
She closed the door. Set her coffee down. Opened a file. Stared at it.
The words were in English. She was reasonably certain of that. They appeared to be arranged in sentences. Beyond that, she had nothing. Her brain had locked into a continuous loop of a man putting a DEA agent on hold, looking at her with those blue eyes, and sayingI'm dealing with something important.
She was the something important. He'd said it in front of Ray. In front of Claire. While a federal agent waited on his phone. Like choosing her over the call was so obvious it didn't even register as a choice.
Emily pressed her palms flat against the desk. A courtroom trick. When the verdict's coming and you need to be still, you press your hands against a solid surface and let it do the work your nerves won't.
It wasn't working.
A knock on the glass. Emily didn't look up.
"I'm busy."
"You're staring at an upside-down brief."
Emily looked down. The brief was, in fact, upside down. She turned it over with as much dignity as the situation allowed, which was none.
Claire opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind her with the care of a woman who'd just watched a controlled detonation from across the bullpen. She had two coffees. She set one on Emily's desk, which meant she'd gone to the break room, which meant she'd given Emily exactly enough time to compose herself and was now here to watch the composition fail.
"Don't," Emily said.
"I haven't said anything."
"You're thinking it."
"I'm thinking many things." Claire sat in her chair she claimed a year ago, the chair across from Emily's desk. Crossedher legs. Sipped her coffee. The picture of a woman who had absolutely nowhere else to be and was prepared to wait. "Would you like to narrow it down?"
"I would like to review the Costa file and prepare for the motions hearing on Thursday and pretend the last forty-five minutes didn't happen."
"Okay." Claire nodded slowly. "And now the real thing you'd like to do."
Emily didn't answer. She was looking at the window, at the sliver of Tampa skyline going bright in the mid-morning sun, and she was thinking about how Jake Walsh had stopped walking away. He'd been halfway out of the office. He'd had every reason to keep going. And instead he'd turned around and looked at her like the rest of his day had just become negotiable.
"Emily."
"Claire."
They stared at each other across the desk. Ten years of friendship compressed into a silence that said more than either of them was willing to speak out loud.
Claire broke first. Not because she'd lost, but because she'd decided to stop playing.
"You're not going tonight," Claire said. "That's what you're telling yourself right now. You have work. You have responsibilities. The Vance case needs attention. Going to a bar in Clearwater to see a man you've known for one hour would be irresponsible."
"It would be." Emily didn't look up from the file she wasn't reading.
