He continued to study her, but the hardness left his expression. He seemed more…curious. Interested. “Maybe.”
She took a sip of tea. “For what it’s worth? I think you did the right thing.”
His eyes sharpened. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”
She straightened her spine. “Making assumptions about me?”
“Never. Assumptions get people killed.”
The temperature between them seemed charged. Anticipatory. Neither said a word. They just…stared at each other.
“Then I’ll refrain from making any further ones about you,” she said, sneaking his broken cookie.
Wolf was quiet for another moment, then he relaxed slightly and chuckled. “Your assumptions might be accurate. I suspect you’re so good at your job that profiling people like me comes easy.”
Her cheeks heated at the compliment. Then they heated even more from embarrassment. What was wrong with her? People told her all the time that she was an expert at her job, at profiling. Why did the words coming from him seem to carry so much more weight?
She wanted to ask how he could be so sure she was good at her job. They’d known each other for less than a day. But the moment felt fragile, and she didn’t want to break it. “What about before the Navy?” she asked instead. “You have family?”
He tensed again. Sore topic. “Dad was military. He taught me to shoot when I was eight, and he and Mom divorced when I was ten. Mom remarried and moved to D.C. when I was a teenager. I stayed with my dad in Virginia.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was what it was.”
Deflecting. She recognized the tactic. “Any siblings?”
The pause was too long. His hand tightened around his mug. “A sister,” he said finally. “Half-sister, technically. I rarely got to see her.”
“Where is she now? Does she live around here?”
His throat worked. He gripped the handle of his mug tighter. “She passed when I was still a teenager.”
Claire’s chest went tight. She’d meant to create an easy rapport with him, not dredge up bad memories. “I’m so sorry.” She knew that pain. Knew what it meant to lose someone young. To spend the rest of your life wondering if you could have saved them. “What was her name?” The question came out before she could stop it.
Wolf’s jaw clenched. He cleared his throat and looked away. “What about you?” His voice was rough now. “What made you join the FBI?”
She’d gone too far. He wanted to turn the spotlight off himself. Fair enough.
“My best friend Lily was murdered when we were fourteen. We’d been friends since we were in second grade. She was... everything. Bright, funny, fearless.” Claire stared into her tea. “We were walking home from a movie. A man tried to grab both of us. I fought—broke my arm, ended up with a concussion trying to stop him. I got away, but he took her.” She drew in a breath, let it out slowly. “They found her three days later.”
The words were clinical. Detached. The only way she could say them.
Wolf said nothing, but she sensed his empathy.
“I was useless,” she went on. “I couldn’t save her. Couldn’t even give the police a good description of the guy. The head injury scrambled my memory of his face.” She looked up. “So I decided to become someone who could save people. Someone who hunts men like him.”
“You were fourteen, and you fought a grown man.” Wolf leaned forward. “That’s not useless. That’s brave.”
“I lost her.”
“You did what you could.” The intensity in his voice caught her off guard. “That matters, Claire.”
Something in his voice, the way he said her name—Claire’s chest felt too tight.
“Lily would be proud of you,” he said.
The certainty in his words stopped her. “But I let her down.”
