I’d finally gotten through, so I pushed. “The hell I can’t. I’m not going to watch you get yourself killed. Emily Shaw is dead, Sylvie. None of those answers are going to bring her back to life, and they won’t save you if you get yourself killed while we’re trying to find out what happened to her.”
She huffed out a breath. “I know. I know. Look, I’m not used to this. Investigating murder in my own non-law enforcement way, sure. Talking to people, asking questions. Maybe I’ve met a few who gave me a bad feeling, but I’ve never actually been in danger before. Sorry if my meter for serious shit is a little off.”
Huh.She got it more than I thought she did. That was exactly what I needed her to admit.
I let out my own huff of breath. “Yeah, well, you need to recalibrate. Set it to extremely fucking hazardous. Because so far, everything about this case fits that description.”
She stayed quiet for a beat, and I glanced over. She was staring out the passenger window, her eyebrows drawn together, her mouth in a slight downturn. It wasn’t anunhappy expression exactly. More like she was processing. The only noise was the sound of our tires on the road.
“You never said why Sinclair Security is interested in Emily Shaw,” she finally said, breaking the silence.
I’d known this was coming. “No, I didn’t,” I agreed.
She let out that harrumphing sound I found cute and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning into the corner of her seat so she could face me a little across the dark vehicle.
“What if I tell you it’s confidential?”
She rolled her eyes. “I signed an NDA.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you everything.”
“Is it for a client,” she pushed, “or is it personal?”
I wasn’t answering that one. Not yet. Maybe never. The truth was, there were moments when it felt like I’d known Sylvie for years. But she’d blown into my life less than twenty-four hours ago. I didn’t have a good enough read on her to know whether I could trust her. And our search for Silas was none of her business.
“I’m asking,” she said, “because I can’t help but notice that you almost got yourself blown up too.”
She had a point. “True,” I agreed, “but of the two of us, I was prepared to run. You were the one who wouldn’t leave the evidence behind.”
“I’m not apologizing for that,” she said. “Because again, I’m alive, in one piece, sitting here, and we have Emily Shaw’s phone.”
I couldn’t argue with that. And I knew if it had been anyone else on my team sitting beside me, the argument wouldn’t even have occurred to me. My unsettled feeling didn’t feel logical; this wasn’t my head telling me Sylvie had fucked up. This was my gut talking.
“You could have died,” I said again, not liking the cold weight of fear in my chest.
“Stop reminding me.” She looked out the window. After another long sigh, she said, “You’re right. I get that I should have run when you said run. Also, I’m not sorry, because we needed that phone.”
“What if there’s nothing on it?” I couldn’t seem to let it go.
Another thing I didn’t understand—I was nagging at her like she was a teenager who hadn’t put her laundry in the hamper. It was over. Done. She understood. I’d made my case. It wasn’t like me to drag shit out. But I kept seeing her on that shelf, the timer ticking down, and I couldn’t drop it.
“Maybe there’s not,” she said. “Maybe she was the only person on the planet who didn’t live their life on her phone. I guess we’ll find out.” She leaned forward a little bit to pin her eyes on the phone in the chest pocket of my shirt. “Are you going to crack into it, or are you going to give it to your guys? Maddox and…what’s his name?”
“Emmett,” I said. “And if it was anything else, I might take a crack at it. But this is all we have. We can’t afford for me to fuck it up, so I’ll give it to the best. Their boss, Lucas, is as good as the two of them. Maybe better. Between those three, if there’s anything to find in the phone, they’ll find it.”
“What do we do now?” She shifted in her seat, resting her cheek against the headrest.
“We drive back to Atlanta and get some sleep. It’ll be dawn by the time we get there.”
“I don’t want to waste a whole day sleeping.”
“It’s not a waste,” I said. “How many hours of sleep have you gotten since your van blew up?”
Sylvie started to shrug, then stopped and stared up atthe roof of the car before saying slowly, “I took a nap yesterday for a few hours.”
“I know you weren’t sleeping when you went to bed,” I said, “because you heard me in the hall. You slept in the car tonight, but?—”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
