He just stood there, looking at her with a dazed air. So she rushed forward and kissed him.
And oh—it was so good to breathe in his forest scent, to feel his wiry arms wrap around her and his magic nip at her skin. Incredibly, wonderfully good. She’d thought she would never get to do this again.
Everything bad receded. The unsettling location. Her joblessness. The lingering ache in her left elbow. Nothing mattered but his warm mouth, cool hands and the sound he made as he pulled her closer.
He ended the kiss first and simply held her, the embrace somehow more intimate than his lips on hers. He pressed her so tightly to him that she could feel his heart racing against her cheek.
Then he pulled back, and she saw in his eyes that he thought he would lose her yet.
“Daggett,” he said, slowly, reluctantly, “the fact remains that I am at fault. I should have considered what that program could be used to do—I should have listened to my misgivings about Kincaid. I was willfully blind. I didn’t want to know.”
She took his hand. “He’s very good at spinning a persuasive lie. He almost hadmebelieving he was just finding autodidacts to teach them.”
“No, listen,” Hartgrave said, a pleading edge to the words, and she had enough sense to be quiet. To stop embroidering his past with her few spare facts. “I’d known him for years before I finally managed a working tracking system.Years.Enough time to tell he wasn’t right. I knew he was asking me to do dodgy things and I did them, I did them anyway because”—he looked away—“who cared what might happen to other people when I had everything I wanted.”
That sounded familiar.
“I might not havepersonallykilled anyone,” he said, twisting the word like a knife, “but he sent me out to the microchip companies as his manager-slash-enforcer, and I lived up to his every expectation.”
Perhaps you’ve assumed I’ve done nothing under his tutelage that would sicken you. This, possibly, was what he’d actually meant that night in the hospital. This was the decision that couldn’t be explained away by Kincaid failing to tell him the truth.
She tried to keep her voice level as she asked, “Did you hurt people?”
“Scared them badly enough to leave emotional scars. So—yes.”
She bit her lip, trying to reconcile her Hartgrave with Kincaid’s Hartgrave. She thought of how he had knocked her out with one swift kick. Then another memory surfaced, the one immediately afterward, as he kneeled over her, voice trembling.
She would ask him, of course, but it seemed pretty clear in hindsight that he’d meant to unbalance her, not injure her.
“Shaw enjoyed what she did,” she said. “Crawford, I think, saw it as a necessary evil. How did it make you feel?”
“Irredeemable,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it.
She nodded. “I think that’s why Kincaid never told you the truth. Crawford and Shaw knew, but he must have sensed there were some lines you wouldn’t cross. Maybe at first he saw the same something in you that he found in them,” she added as he tried to interrupt, “but you grew up.”
“Don’t paint me as his innocent victim, Daggett,” he warned. “This is not one of your childhood books.”
She could feel the blush spreading across her cheeks. “I did finally figure that out. Look: There’s no question you’re to blame for everything you did.Youare. However, you’re being deliberately obtuse if you don’t also take into account everything you did once you realized you were wrong. And just for the record,” she said, slipping her other hand around his, “I love you.You.”
He said nothing. His face, though, said everything.
“Psst—reciprocate,” Bernie hissed from somewhere behind her, giving her a start. She’d forgotten he was there.
Judging by his sharp intake of breath, Hartgrave had too. He glared at the man. “Have younoconcept of privacy?”
“No, and you’re welcome,” Bernie said. “You need supervision or you’ll muck it all up again.”
She successfully fought back a grin. “I can manage from here. Go and make a bet with Willi that we’ll miraculously patch things up.”
Bernie guffawed. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“Wait.” Hartgrave clasped Bernie’s arm. “Thank you.”
“We even for you saving my life?”
Bernie was joking. Bernie wasalwaysjoking. But Hartgrave, in all apparent seriousness, said, “Yes.”
She teetered on the edge of both tears and laughter.
