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“Mmm-hmm.”
They passed a brightly lit factory, and she was able to make out the print on the business card. Anderson Owens, Inc. Sean Owens, President. Corporate address in San Jose.
“Anderson Owens is your company?”
“Yeah.”
“And you do online security?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you, like, on the lam?” she asked. “Are you hiding out in Camelot from, I don’t know, tax fraud or something?”
“No.”
That was it. Just no.
“Can you at least make an effort at conversation? I don’t want to spend the whole night talking to myself.”
Sean’s silence only served to fuel her irritation. He was such a mystery to her, and she didn’t know why she cared, but she did. She wanted him to talk to her, to tell her everything. Last night he’d opened up to her, and now he was giving her monosyllables. It was frustrating.
“Sorry if it’s inconvenient for you, having a partner and all,” she said. “I know you probably figured if we drove at night, I’d fall asleep like I did last time and you wouldn’t have to deal with me, but it’s not going to happen, Buster. I’m not coming off a tequila bender this time. I hate driving in the snow, I’m hungry, and I want to talk to you about the case. Not to mention that I think we probably need to come to some kind of terms with the fact that I still want to screw you senseless.”
She caught her breath. That wasn’t what she’d meant to say. It was her runaway mouth again, blurting out the worst possible words when she was under pressure. What was it about Sean that put her under so much pressure? How did he keep turning her into a snowflake, determined to fling herself against his slick, unforgiving surface?
The strained whine of the wipers made her want to put her fist through the windshield.
“Ffeel better?” he asked.
“No.” She felt sick, full of hot shame and thick resentment.
“I th-think there’s a bag of p-pretzels in the armrest.”
“Pretzels?” The word came out sounding like Go to hell.
She could hear the smile in his voice when he answered. “Yuh-you said you were hungry.”
“Did I?”
“Eat the p-pretzels, sweetheart.”
Somewhat mollified by being called “sweetheart,” and rather ashamed to admit she’d needed that tiny scrap of evidence of Sean’s affection, Katie shut up and ate the pretzels. She offered the bag to him, but he passed. When it was empty, she flattened the shiny plastic out on her knee and tried to fold it into an origami frog the way Judah had taught her this afternoon.
“Do you really think someone wants to kill him?”
There it was. The worry that had been nagging at her all day.
“I d-don’t know. It’s sstarting to look that way.”
“I don’t know what he expects me to do about it. He needs the police. I want to help him, but I’m useless at this. I keep thinking he’s going to end up with an ice pick in his chest, and it’ll be all my fault.”
The frog fell apart on her lap, the plastic too slippery to hold a shape. She crumpled the bag up and shoved it back in the armrest. Sean’s hand found her knee and warmed it up.
They weren’t going to be friends. No woman alive could be friends with a man who put his hand on her knee. Not when the weight of it made her respond with heat and achy longing entirely out of proportion to the compassionate intention behind the touch.
Katie didn’t need another friend. She already had friends, both male and female, and none of them touched her knees. None of them inspired the kind of intense interest that Sean did.
An interest that she had to admit was considerably older than their assignment to the case.
