“Our card players mentioned a rumor about someone getting mugged outside sometime last week, but they didn’t know who got attacked or who the witness was. Hard to judge if it has anything to do with this since Priya was seen after that.”
Rios hummed a noncommittal note and picked up his sandwich.
Sensing he was thinking, I let the silence settle and dug into my onion rings.
Eventually, I realized he was watching me again. As my mouth was full of fried deliciousness—God, when was the last time I’d had onion rings?—I simply arched a brow.
“Why did you ask for my help with this?”
It was a fair question considering what he believed I thought of him. I washed down the food with more tea.
“Astrid mentioned you used to be military police.”
The way his face instantly shut down told me more than denial would have. A shutter dropped behind his eyes, cutting off access to something I hadn’t realized I’d even seen. He clearly hadn’t expected me to be aware of that.
“So that’s it? I happened to have police training?”
I didn’t blow off the question. Because that wasn’t the answer. When I’d blurted out my request, his police training hadn’t even crossed my mind.
“Because when I look at you, I see someone with the same drive to find the truth that I feel. Someone who isn’t going to give up because it gets hard or complicated.” I studied him back, noting the tension in his shoulders, around his mouth. “I see somebody who also understands how ‘used to be’ feels when it wasn’t fully your choice.”
His gaze snapped back to mine, sharper now. “How do you know it wasn’t my choice?”
I could have backed off. Accepted the rebuke and changed the subject. That would’ve been the polite thing, the safe thing.
But if we were going to do this—really work together—there wasn’t much point in polite lies. And maybe this would mean more than my fumbled apology at his boat.
“Because you were a man accused of something heinous, and you chose to go into a field where you protect people from that exact kind of harm. Because when Astrid mentioned a missing woman, your first instinct was to start looking before anyone asked you to. Because you walked into an ugly situation the other night and shut it down without hesitation or expectation of thanks. Sure, there’s a healthy dose of ‘good guy’ in there. You’re constantly proving you’re not the monster people believed you were. But there’s also an element of unfinished business. Transference, if we’re going to be clinical about it. I know something about that.”
His fingers tightened around his glass. For a heartbeat, I thought he might get up and walk away.
Instead, he leaned back, studying me like I was a puzzle he hadn’t realized he’d sat down to solve. “You get all that from one line on a résumé?”
“I get all that from watching you. And from spending half my career reading people who were lying to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
“No,” I agreed. “You’re just… editing.”
His mouth flattened. He stared over my shoulder for a long beat, as if he were watching some internal film. “You’re not wrong about some of it,” he said eventually.
I stayed quiet, letting him pick what he wanted to put on the table.
Eventually, his mouth twisted into a parody of a smile. “Transference, huh?”
“My old therapist would be thrilled I acknowledged it,” I muttered.
“Ex-therapist?” he asked.
I gave him a look. “I didn’t pack her in my carry-on.”
Something like amusement flickered across his face. It faded quickly, but it was there. “So, what are you transferring? Gwen?”
Weren’t we both?
But I’d give him this honesty.
“I became a prosecutor because I wanted to put monsters away. I watched what Gwen’s disappearance did to my family, to this island, to you. How the lack of answers hollowed people out. I thought if I could be the person who got answers—who put bad guys in prison—it would help balance the scales.”
