Page 18 of 72 Hours

“Which I thought I did!” He was very flushed now. “I could say the same about you too. Imagining how I felt. You think I’m not ashamed of the whole thing?”

“Ashamed?” Of us?

“Of the fight!” He glared at me, his eyes back to that cold flint colour. “We’ve hammered anything else to death, I’d say, and I don’t need any extra helpings of death wish right now.”

“That’s why I left,” I snapped. “Like I don’t need the trouble myself. The abuse, the misery.”

“That’s what it all was, then? Trouble? Misery? You gave up that easily?”

“Yeah. Maybe so.” I was warming up now. My heart was thudding and my flesh felt too hot. My fingers itched to grab hold of something. “Far as I can see, I’m out on my arse and a disappointment all round, and now I can’t even hide in my seedy little sanctuary without being hounded down—”

“For God’s sake, Tanner, I knew where you were all the time!” he growled. “I tracked you down pretty quickly.” He must have seen my wide-eyed outrage. “Tanner, I didn’t mean it like that—”

“Like what?” Like he was a stalker? Like he wanted to prove something? Like he cared?

“I mean that it was a security issue. In case... anyone needed to find you.”

“Security issue. Right. So why did Simon and Brad bother tracing me as well? Could’ve just come to you—”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” he said, far too quickly. “I assumed you’d run here to be alone. It was up to you what you did then.”

I was trying to read any underlying feelings in his tone, in his eyes, in his body language. Fuck all to work with at the best of times. Of course, it could just have been indifference. The absence of care.

Niall was shaking his head again, forehead creasing with irritation. “Oh, the hell with it!” He looked disgusted that I’d wrung the emotion out of him. Bemused. Pained. “Tanner, what’s the point of digging over the past?”

I stared at him, my anger leeching away like water through a sieve. He’d been near death. His ordered life had been thrown up in the air like a handful of confetti and he was standing amongst the drifting pieces. He didn’t need my arguments. He was right.

What was my point?

​​​Chapter 8 – Tuesday 08:45

He’d mentioned the fight, and I guess you need to know what that was all about. Or maybe just that it happened. Niall and I had a falling out, but a rather major one. In the middle of a mission. We fought, physically—and I’ll have you know I put up a creditable defence—but Judith took a dim view of it, at work and all. We were both hauled over the coals and suspended for three months.

There you are. My fall from grace in a nutshell. Not only that, but the end of my affair—the end of Niall and me. With not a whimper, but a rather impressive right hook. His.

So what did it matter now whether I’d been humiliated or hurt? It was past history. Neither of us was going back there. What did it matter whether Niall knew where I was all along? Whatever he thought about me and what he knew... well, that was all his problem now, wasn’t it? Shit, there I was again, going around in that spiraling way that leads to plenty of sleepless nights. That’s what it’s like at the end of a relationship, after all, no new revelations there. It’s the loss of everything, including the right to know anything about your ex; to share anything with them; to have anything but a supporting role in their future life.

Niall obviously had it sorted out well. I was the one struggling.

There was silence between us for a while. Maybe he had as many questions bubbling in the back of his mind as I did, but neither of us spoke them aloud. His eyes were clouded with what looked like shock. Yet again, I’d drawn him out, and so quickly. But he could blame the trauma he’d been through.

I didn’t have that excuse.

“Why did you get called back in?” I was curious, despite myself. “Couldn’t they manage the investigation without your inimitable help?” Maybe if he’d kept withdrawn like me—kept out of the line of fire while he did his time—well, maybe he’d never have been targeted in the first place. What sort of masochist was he?

He bit at his lip again. I watched the plump flesh ease out from under his even, white teeth. “I don’t know why you want to know. You’ve made it clear you’d rather be kept out of it all.” He took a deep breath. “But I guess it’s important now that you do know. For a while, we thought I might have a clue as to the motive behind it all. There’s so little to go on.”

“And...?”

He shook his head, not answering directly. “It should have been given higher priority from the start. The Team should have contained the situation after the first attack. It was a small letter bomb, though it made a hell of a mess of one of the Departmental carports. But there were plenty of personnel available at that time; plenty of opportunity to identify the culprit. Personally, I think they underestimated the threat, thinking it was an isolated event. The work of an amateur.”

“And then it escalated?”

He nodded, very slightly, as if reluctant to engage me. “When the next attack came in, and the next after that, all in such quick succession, there was too little time to regroup. Especially when it shifted and threats started on Team personnel.”

“And then it did become priority.”

“Judith suggested she revisit some of the closed mission files to see if there were any connections, any reason for a specific vendetta against us. To see if there was anyone who’d also threatened the Team or its people in the past. I was only called back into active duty because I could identify someone who fit that profile.”