“Where do think you’re going?”
“Home. Shower, change. Work.” She remembered suddenly that he’d taken her service weapon. Her knife. His gaze remained locked with hers. Silence swelled between them, highlighting the outside noises of the marina, the engine of a boat chugging out to sea.
“No,” he said quietly.
She stared, her heart beginning to race.
“We spoke about this, remember?”
Shit.This was real. She glanced toward the portlight above his tiny sink. A dull gray dawn was seeping into the darkness. She dragged her hand over her hair, smoothing her ponytail.
“Angie, look at me.”
She inhaled deeply, then finally met his eyes.
“Call in sick. Take some time off. Go see someone.”
“I can’t just call in sick. The case—”
“I’m giving you two options, Pallorino. Call in sick, and see a professional. Or try to come in, and I’ll have to hand over your service weapon and report what happened.”
She glowered at him, tension thrumming into her body, her hands tightening at her sides.
“I don’t want you on my team right now. On anybody’s team.”
Heat seared into her face as she focused on his bruised and bandaged one. The impact of what she’d done to him was undeniable. And she realized, as much as she wanted it to all just go away, to pretend it never happened, she couldn’t shove it under the rug this time. He’d have to go in to work and offer some explanation as to what had happened to his face.
“Don’t push me, Angie. Don’t make me report this.” He paused. “Let me help you.”
So he was going to hide it, for now? He was going to make up some story for her?
“Why?” she said quietly. “Why are you doing this for me—risking things?”
He was silent a long while. Wind gusted, sending a clatter of raindrops against the thick glass of the portlight.
“Because I care,” he said, in slow, measured words. As if working this out for himself. There was a sincerity in his tone that made her heart gallop up into her throat. She wasn’t worthy of this. Of him.
Uciekaj! Run ...
She could not handle it. Didn’t want it. Him. Wanted independence. The panic noose tightened. She moistened her lips, turned her back to him, hesitated, then climbed the small ladder up to the companionway and pushed out of the doors onto the dark, wet deck. Angie wavered for a moment as the freezing rain spat against her face. Then she climbed overboard and made her way along the dock in the dark gray dawn, leaving him standing there in the warm galley with her coffee mug in his hand. And inside she was shaking.
CHAPTER 49
“So, like, where’s Pallorino?”
Maddocks glanced up from his metal desk in the incident room. In front of him stood Kjel Holgersen wearing his narrow-legged, dirty-gray jeans that bagged around his skinny ass in that supposedly fashionable way. Even in stillness the man appeared fidgety.
“What?” Maddocks said, irritated at the interruption. He’d come in early to work on his notes from the Drummond funeral observation and the Father Simon interview. The priest had revealed something potentially key about Gracie Drummond’s promiscuity. He was also trying to focus on work instead of Angie.
Holgersen took a small step backward as Maddocks raised his head from his work. “Jesus, man. What in the hells happened to your face—your nose? You look like shit.”
“Yacht lines came loose in the storm last night—boom swung round in the wind, smacked me in the face while I was slipping around in the snow and seawater on deck in the dark trying to resecure things.”
Holgersen regarded him in silence for several beats.
Maddocks met the detective’s gaze square, unblinking, despite the throbbing pain in his face and his watering eyes. Given Holgersen’s opening question about Angie, he was fishing for something and was reading him for tells. There was a reason this guy came highly recommended despite his oddities—he was sharp. He had an uncanny read on people, and most tended to underestimate him because of his speech, his dress, his quirky body language. And Maddocks was fast learning that this was Kjel Holgersen’s advantage—and possibly he riffed off it to set people off-kilter.
“What’s up your butt, Detective?” Maddocks said smoothly. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
