Page 118 of Sins of Arrogance

A strange sound comes out of his throat. Sur­prise maybe? “It wasn’t a date.”

“It was more of a date than you’ve taken me on since our sixth an­niver­sary.” And that was over a year ago.

Be­sides, duty dates on our an­niver­sary don’t count, even when they do man­age to hap­pen.

“It was busi­ness. I told you that.”

Busi­ness that had to hap­pen at a restau­rant? I don’t think so.

I’ve spent most of the night pic­tur­ing my hus­band and Dier­dre laugh­ing over an in­ti­mate ta­ble for two. And busi­ness did not fea­ture in a sin­gle one of the im­ages tor­ment­ing me.

Ig­nor­ing his claim, I say, “You for sure do not get to come home act­ing like noth­ing hap­pened. Like I’m sup­posed to be here, ready, warm and wait­ing for you, just be­cause you de­cided to come back.”

“There was never any ques­tion about me com­ing back. I never sleep away from you if I can help it.”

He likes to be here in the morn­ing to have break­fast with our son. That does not make me feel spe­cial.

“Kara, mo chuisle—”

“No.” I put my hand up. “Just no. Not tonight, Mick. You al­ready got your rocks off for the day. If you wanted to make love again, you would have stayed.”

“That was not an op­tion.” Frus­tra­tion laces my hus­band’s voice.

It’s weird. He doesn’t usu­ally show im­pa­tience.

But I’m not giv­ing in.

“Do I have to say it?” I ask.

We both know what I’m talk­ing about.

Red.

He jerks his head side to side. “I’ll take a shower and leave you to what­ever has you so en­thralled.”

I grab the urge to take back my words and stuff them down as deep as I can, past my hurt­ing heart and deeper than my un­re­quited love for my con­tract mar­riage hus­band.

Chap­ter 30: Ghost Guns & Cer­e­mo­nial Skeans

MICK

I’m still in a piss-poor mood when I make it into the lab two days later.

For two nights, my wife has kept me at a phys­i­cal dis­tance. She al­lows her­self to snug­gle into me af­ter she goes to sleep, but when I wake her to make love, she pulls away.

Feckin’ Darakov.

Feckin’ Dier­dre.

They are both fuck­ing with my mar­i­tal peace and the thought of killing one, or both of them, is grow­ing more at­trac­tive by the day.

They bleedin’ de­serve each other. That’s for sure and cer­tain.

Even the prospect of test fir­ing the work­ing pro­to­type of the whis­per gun doesn’t pen­e­trate my dark mood. I don’t want to be here in the lab.

I want to be with Kara and I want her to look at me like she can’t get enough. Not like she can’t get away from me fast enough.

The air in the Bunker is fil­tered, but some­times the scent of our DNA killing cleaner lingers in In­ter­ro­ga­tion. And the shoot­ing range smells of spent pow­der and gun oil.