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“And then?”
He sighed. “Then I liked you so fucking much I didn’t want to scare you away.”
Her eyes flashed. “So you were a coward?”
The words hurt, but only because they were true. “I was a coward.”
Surprise registered briefly on her face, like she hadn’t expected him to cop to it.
“How much do you know?”
“That you were in an accident with Samantha Hancock, that she died and you didn’t.” She blinked against the tears in her eyes and it took every ounce of his self-control not to go to her. “You came close though. You almost lost your leg, but you fought your way back, made yourself strong, went to law school, interned with the AG before going to work there.”
“What about after the beginning?” she asked.
“After the beginning?” Panic started to twist in his stomach — panic that she would tell him to leave, that she would never forgive him the lie of omission, that she would never trust him again when winning her trust had felt like the biggest victory of his life. He was losing the thread of their conversation, like a drowning man who kept dropping the rope that kept him afloat.
“You said in the beginning you’d been curious,” she said. “All that background, all the stuff you know, that’s not a quick Google search. Why’d you keep digging?”
He knew why she was asking. It had felt voyeuristic even as he’d been doing it. He could only imagine how she felt knowing he’d done it.
Betrayed. Violated. By him.
The knowledge was like a vise around his heart.
“As a former detective, there were details of the accident that didn’t make sense,” he said.
“So it was professional curiosity,” she said.
Professional curiosity didn’t feel like enough to describe the way he’d felt when he’d read the details of her accident, the familiar rage that had risen like high tide in his body, rage he’d felt when Erin had overdosed, when MIS took cases to avenge the innocent.
It was the rage of injustice, but he couldn’t say that to her, not that way, not without giving weight to the AG’s investigation into MIS as an alleged mercenary operation.
“Professional curiosity and anger.” It seemed safe enough.
“You were angry?”
Her eyes shone with the light of triumph and he had to choke down the fear of discovery unraveling in his chest. Citizens in the private sector became angry about injustice too.
“It felt so unfair,” he explained. “Samantha was killed, you were badly hurt, and the driver just left you there.” He shifted on the sofa, turning toward her, hoping what he’d learned about the case would be enough to make her forgive him for not coming clean. “The thing is, the more I learned, the more I became convinced something wasn’t right about the investigation.”
“What do you mean?”
He glanced at his phone, still in her hand. “I’m assuming you know about this because of my phone, so you may know more than I do right now, but something didn’t add up from the beginning.”
“Like what?”
He was relieved to see the curiosity in her eyes. Curiosity was better than anger, better than the pain that had shone there when he’d first emerged from her bedroom.
“Allston’s a busy road. Even late at night, it’s not deserted. Why didn’t anyone see the accident? And why wasn’t there any CCTV footage?” He was warming to his subject, relieved to finally discuss the details with someone, with her. “Why was the case closed so soon? And then there are the two detectives — one of them was promoted right after the case was closed and the other retired not long after that.”
He didn’t notice the change in her demeanor until he stopped talking, but somewhere along the way the curiosity in her face had shifted to something darker, something that spoke of unimaginable suffering and shock.
She stood. “I don’t want to hear this. I want you to leave.”
He rose to his feet. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You should have thought about that before you sifted through the details of my accident like some kind of vulture, before you lied to me.”
