He led me into an office with a standing lamp in the corner, somewhat dimmer than the bright open room we’d left. He waved a hand. “Makes it easier to see the screens when it’s not too bright.”
“Sure,” I said, wondering, “What kind of business are you in?”
“Oh, you know. A little bit of this and that,” he said.
The weirdly unspecific answer landed wrong in my gut.
“Here, take a seat,” he said, pulling out the desk chair. “I’ll bring up the cameras. We’ll go through the footage, and I can let you know if I spot anyone who shouldn’t be here.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, thinking as I sat. Suddenly, without meaning to, I’d ended up alone behind two closed doors with a man I didn’t know. No one knew where I was. I should make an excuse, leave, and come back later with backup. I leaned forward, bracing my feet on the ground to push the seat out, deciding I didn’t need to see that camera footage after all. A hand closed over my shoulder, holding me in the chair.
“Uh-uh, Sylvie. Too late for that.”
I heard a rustle and then a sharp, fiery burn in the side of my neck, followed immediately by an icy chill spreading beneath my skin. I reached up, my arm sagging, heavy, falling to my side as I tilted, sliding slowly out of the chair. Strong hands righted me, an arm sliding around my back, lifting me to my feet.
Then everything went dark.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ELI
Isucked back another sip of tepid coffee, the liquid sour in my mouth. Nothing tasted good. I was tired of searching through files, tired of spinning my wheels.
I was trying to give Sylvie space. I didn’t know what else to do.
I got it. I did, finally. I’d thought I was keeping things simple—making it easy, playing by the rules, keeping Sylvie on a need-to-know. I could compartmentalize: look for Silas, find Emily’s killer, and get Sylvie her life back. I’d compartmentalized my whole life, and I was damn good at it. There hadn’t been any reason to change anything about the way I operated, or so I’d thought.
I hadn’t thought about trust. Sylvie’s trust, and what it would mean to have it, and then lose it. I just hadn’t seen Sylvie coming, hadn’t imagined that I’d ever feel like this about someone. Now she was here, and I couldn’t let her go. But she needed space, and I needed to figure out how the fuck I was going to get her to trust me again.
All of that made sense in my head. Still, a dark ball ofworry had settled in my chest. Giving her space felt wrong. Leaving her alone in the apartment felt too risky, despite the fact that it was a safe house in the middle of the Sinclair Security building. No one could get to her. I didn’t need to hover to keep her safe. I knew all of that, but I didn’t like it.
She’s probably sitting up there, thinking up more and more reasons to hate me, to shut me out.
I pushed my chair back, intending to go get a new coffee, but as I looked down into my mostly empty, cold mug, I knew that wasn’t where I was going.
“Any progress?” Maddox asked, looking up from his laptop screen.
“No,” I said shortly. “I’m going to check on Sylvie.”
“I got used to having her down here,” he said. “Started to feel like she was one of the team.”
“Yeah, well, I fucked that up,” I said. “You were right. I should have leveled with her. I thought I could keep it simple.”
“Women are anything but simple,” Emmett said, spinning around in his chair and giving me a surprisingly sympathetic look.
He wasn’t one to dole out compassion, which made me feel even shittier. This wasn’t in my head, this rift between Sylvie and me. This was bad enough that Emmett felt sorry for me.
Fuck.
“Now I have to figure out how to fix it.” I looked to the door at the end of the hall, urgency to get to Sylvie pulling me to her.
“Honesty usually works,” Emmett said blandly.
I raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. “Just throw yourself at her feet. You know, bare your soul.”
I started to shoot back a sarcastic remark and then stopped, considering.
I wasn’t exactly a bare-your-soul kind of guy. I didn’t love the vulnerability of putting it all out there. I was more of a make-a-joke-and-hold-things-close-to-my-chest person. But that clearly hadn’t worked, because it had led me here. Not a lot could feel worse than this—her shutting me out, me not knowing how to get back in.
