Page 45 of Until the End

True. But she’d still lied about something. He needed to know what. “When you saw the gun and understood the danger your friends were in, why didn’t you leave and call the police?”

“What’s going on? Why are you interrogating me all of a sudden?”

“Answer me.” His voice was rough even to his own ears, but he was losing his patience.

Her gaze flickered to his weapon on the counter and boomeranged to him. “I was in shock over what was happening. One of the men who had his back to me moved. If I didn’t duck out of the hall, he would’ve seen me once he turned. I slipped into the mainframe room.”

True.

“Then what happened?”

“I thought we had a truce, but I don’t feel like we’re on the same side right now.”

“I want to trust you, Kit, and I want you to trust me, but I need you to answer my questions. After you hid in the mainframe room, what happened?”

“I realized Jasper had given me a message, a way to stop them. I took one of the hard drives.” She dragged the corner of her lip through her teeth, her eyes crinkling in that dodgy way.

Shit. A fucking lie.

A haze of red shrouded his vision, his ears ringing with alarm bells he’d missed before. “Do you even have a hard drive? Or do they only want you dead because you were a witness?”

“What? Probably both.” She stiffened. “I’m certain I have information that can stop them. Or at least help find them. I just need time to decode it.”

That was true, or she believed it to be. “How many hard drives did you take?”

She bounced from slack-jawed surprise to spunky spitfire with triple the zest in a hot flash. “I told you. One.” Another shady squint as she fiddled with her hair.

There it was. “You lied to me!” He slapped his palm on the counter. “You’re a real powder keg. But you’re not going to blow up my career. My ass is on the line. Tell me the truth.”

She gifted him with a stare more stubborn than a mule’s.

“Or I’ll wash my hands of you and Sanborn will assign that hotshot Cutter to protect you.” He paused, letting that sink in. “How many drives did you take?”

Dead, bloated silence settled in the room and it reeked worse than a two-week-old corpse.

He was hot enough to spit bullets. “Good luck with Cutter.” Castle whipped out his cell phone. He hated this course of action, but she’d left him with no other choice.

“Three.” Her gaze fell. “I took three hard drives.”

The unexpected response hit him like a rock between the shoulder blades. His back tightened as he straightened in his seat, looking for signs of deception.

True. “Where are they?”

Her eyes snapped back up at him. “I’m not telling you so you can notify your boss.”

They’d circled back to this: her not trusting him. He would’ve been seething if her suspicion wasn’t justified. Once he got those drives, he was supposed to turn them over to Sanborn. “I don’t like being kept in the dark.”

“Too bad. Don’t cry about it now. We had a deal.”

“That was before I knew you were a damn liar.”

They stared at each other in a standoff. He could almost hear the gears churning in Kit’s brain, sensed her seesawing between further confrontation and confession.

Come on. Make the right choice.

“Thanks for the food. I would’ve been happy with a cheese sandwich, but a homecooked meal was much nicer.” Her undisguised sincerity had him softening against his will, damn it, and he wondered what new game she was playing. “I’m bushed. I need to rest for a few hours.”

She pushed away from the counter and stood.