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“Yes.” She doesn’t back down.
“And how do you think I should handle it? Set up a secret meeting with the Alpha. Slip him a poison. Watch him die. Then have Avery doctor the COD report as just another fatal accident.” I brush my hands together, as if wiping them clean. “There seems to be a pattern of those accidents with your cases, Bonds.”
Her eyes narrow. “I’m not surprised you discovered the truth,” she says. “Just surprised it took you this long.”
I mock laugh. “I didn’t think your buttons could be pushed so easily. Glad to see you do reflect some human emotion.”
She turns her head away, stares at the whiteboard. “Are we really doing this?”
“What?”
When she looks at me, her face is devoid of any anger. But it’s also absent of hurt or emotion. She’s a pro at stoicism. “I don’t want us to be enemies, Quinn.”
“You’re right,” I say, pushing off the desk. “Neither do I. I might end up dead.”
“Fine.” She tosses her hands in the air. “Pout. Be pissed off, righteous anger guy. But just remember, it was you who refused the truth when I offered it to you.” Eyes drilled hard on me, she waits for a reaction I’m not going to give. “With or without you, I won’t let Avery get hurt. She’s been through hell, and I won’t let her go back there.”
This does trigger a reaction. “That hell? The one where she was tortured, beat with a cane for the whole department to witness? That hell she suffered was because of a fucked up situation you created when you went outside of the law to hunt and kill Lyle Connelly.”
There it is. The root of my anger.
“And then,” I say, “you dragged her further into that hell when you implemented her in the murder of Price Wells. You need to stop, Sadie. You need to stop before you destroy her. She’s not—” I look down, jaw clenched.
“Me,” she whispers in answer.
I look up and stare into her green eyes, impassive. “She’s not you. That’s right. She feels what you’re not capable of feeling. Guilt. Remorse. Even for those who deserve the death penalty, she understands that punishment shouldn’t come at her hands. It shouldn’t come at any of our hands. We’re not executioners.”
“You’re right.” Sadie glances through the glass wall, shielding her face from me. Beyond this office, there’s a flurry of chaos, no one aware of the battle that rages within. It’s just another day on the job. Agent Bonds and Detective Quinn arguing, as usual.
But this is no ordinary struggle of wills.
I see that as soon as Sadie’s able to look at me again. Eyes wide, they shimmer with something I’ve never seen from her before. Tears. It rips through me with brutal force, decimating and destructive.
“You’re right,” she says again. “I didn’t want to drag her into my world, but I did. And her suffering was the consequences of my actions.”
A chest-crushing exhale pushes free. “Sadie… Fuck.”
“I can’t change the past, Quinn. If I could, I’d have done so much differently. For Avery’s sake. Back then, I never expected to feel…” She trails off, and a single tear slips free. “I never expected to feel. Period. I never thought I’d be capable of caring for others, but God. I care about Avery, and I even care about you. And I don’t want to see anyone else suffer.” She wipes hard at her cheek, then stares at the wetness on her hand in disbelief. “All I can do now is make sure that every loose end, that every threat, is eliminated. It’s the one thing I’m good at.”
She takes off toward the door. I’m there in a heartbeat to grab her arm and pull her to a stop. “I actually don’t want to be your enemy, Sadie. That’s not what I want for us.”
She swallows hard. “But now that you know the truth, can you ever look at me the same?”
She pulls away from me, and I let her. No—I can’t look at her the same. But I haven’t been able to since that night in the hospital. When faced with the ugly truth of a person’s unvarnished existence, it takes one hell of a person to see past it.
And I’m not a saint.
“That’s what I thought,” she says. “If you handle the Feds, keep their attention diverted elsewhere, I’ll make sure this ends tonight.”
She leaves then, and all I can do is stare at the fucking floor. My mind a twisted, tangled web. Despite what I said in the heat of the moment, Sadie is exactly the hero Avery needs right now.
Someone determined to go to any extreme to protect the person they love.
Am I angry with Sadie because I really believe she’s at fault, or because I envy her ability to do what’s necessary at any cost?
I shut my door and pull out my phone, punch in Carson’s contact. He answers on the first ring. “Head to Lark and Gannet now,” I say, then end the call before he can ask questions. I make another call to Larkin before I let my mind start rationalizing.
“I’m sending Carson your way,” I say to him. “Make sure he’s prepped and ready to go in tonight.”
