He glanced at her. “You’ve changed. You’re much more confident. You handled Gadsden like a pro.”
She frowned. “Actually, I messed up.”
Not at all what he expected her to say. “How’s that?”
“I got mad when he thought you were in charge.” She sighed. “I’m tired of having to prove a woman can be in charge in law enforcement. You’d think by now those old stereotypes would be gone, but they’re alive and well.”
“Yeah,” he said, as he witnessed gender discrimination often enough on the job. Not only from the public but also from other law-enforcement officers.
“I shouldn’t have let it get to me. If I hadn’t, maybe I would’ve handled him better.”
He didn’t like seeing her second-guess herself this way. “His cooperation was forced when I talked to him on the phone, and you probably would’ve ended up in the same place with him.”
“Maybe.”
He studied her, trying to determine if there was more behind her comments than she was letting on, but she faced the window.
The miles rolled on, the tires spinning over the asphalt and tension seeming to grow with each turn of the wheel. He knew asking to discuss Olin was a risky move. After all, she could kick him to the curb, but he also knew it would be better for the investigation if they got things out in the open.
“We should talk about Olin,” he said matter-of-factly.
She shot him a testy look. “No. We really shouldn’t.”
He wouldn’t back down yet. “It’s best to air out our differences.”
“And I think we should let it lie.” She slumped down in the seat. “Bringing it all up will only make it seem worse.”
He looked at her then, long and hard, seeing her sullen expression and crossed arms. “You never did like conflict.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Where you, on the other hand, liked to stir things up.”
“Yeah.” Once upon a time he’d liked questioning things just to question. Now he had to have a good reason to do so. He considered pointing out that he’d changed, but hopefully she’d see the difference soon enough.
“You like working on a task force?” she asked, her change of subject so obvious it was painful.
Fine. He wouldn’t try to get her to talk about Olin now. He couldn’t make her do anything, and that included staying out of his thoughts when he should be focused on finding deadly terrorists. “I like being at the forefront of stopping terrorism. If working on an interagency team is the best way to accomplish my goal, then so be it.”
She swiveled to face him and honestly looked interested. “Don’t politics get in the way?”
He kept his eyes on the road but felt the intensity of her stare. “More often than I would like. What about your team? You’re multi-agency.”
“Sean and Mack had some issues, but they worked all that out. Now things are great and we’re all friends.”
He’d often wanted the same thing for his task force.
“Of course, on this investigation we’ll only be the point team, and there’ll be hundreds of people working behind the scenes with Eisenhower in D.C.”
He was so impressed with how far she’d come since he’d last seen her and wanted to know more about how she accomplished it. “How did you end up on the RED team?”
“I was still an agent in Atlanta working the cyber squad,” she said, then paused.
He waited for her to addafter Olin died, as the three of them had worked on the multi-agency investigation in Atlanta back then.
“And Barry Eisenhower came to the office to interview Agent Spelling for the RED team. A kidnapping occurred while he was there, and he inserted himself into the investigation. I hacked the teen’s car information system to get the girl’s last GPS location, and she was found. Eisenhower said he was impressed. Not that hacking the car was a big deal, but that I thought to do it when Spelling didn’t.”
“So he offered you the job instead.”
She snorted. “Not quite that easy. He checked out my credentials, and we had several intimidating interviews first. And not until after he’d hired Sean and Addison. She’s Mack’s wife, but they’re separated.”
