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A chill ran up his spine, as disturbing as the touch of a Shade. “You’ve been spying on me?”
“Why do you watch her?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Her lower lip protruded. “You promised to protect me always.”
He sat back, his shoulders relaxing as he realized that she wanted only reassurance. “I will. I am. That’s why I sent you with Serge. But I’ll be there soon.”
“What if they come to take me away? To hurt me?”
He stiffened. If they found her, they would do exactly that. “They won’t.”
“Then why did I have to leave?”
He laughed. “I’ll see you soon. Just put Serge back on, okay?”
She nodded, her face sliding out of frame as she passed the phone. “Tomorrow,” Serge said, as Tasha began to twirl around the apartment behind Serge, the skirt of her nightgown flaring as she moved in and out of the frame. “Get your ass here tomorrow.”
ChapterNine
By the time Manny arrived in their small, shared office, Sara had already cleared her desk of all the leftover paperwork from the Stemmons trial and had pulled out the private file she kept locked in her desk. The one she only allowed herself to study in that short space of time between closing one case and returning her focus to the never-ending list of others.
The copy of her father’s cold case file that she’d requested after her first year in the DA’s office.
The self-imposed limits on her time were necessary; it would be too easy to slide into obsession, going down every rabbit trail over and over again, searching for that elusive clue she must have missed. She opened it, then slowly flipped through the pages. She knew them all so well, she could have recited every word or recreated every photograph. It didn’t matter. Sometime, someday, she would see something she’d missed.
“Still riding high?” Manny said, slouching into the chair behind his desk with his sunglasses on.
She raised a brow, amused. “I’m just settling in for work. Looks like you’re the one who spent the night partying.”
“Just with a bottle,” he said, blinking as he tugged off the glasses, tossed them carelessly on his desk, then ran his fingers through his coal black hair. “From what I could see, your celebration was a bit more … active.”
She drew in a tight breath, then focused on the documents in front of her. Or tried to.Shit. She looked back up. “You have something to get off your chest?”
“No. Sorry, no. Or, actually, fuck it. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I’m just wondering why you prefer strangers to what’s right in front of you.”
She shook her head, anger rising. “Sharing an office doesn’t make you my shrink, and it sure as hell doesn’t give you the right to judge me.”
He lifted his hands as if in surrender. “I’m not. But shit, Sara, come on. You think I don’t see it? You broke up with Dan. You turned me down—”
“Weworktogether.”
“—and then you get all hot and heavy with some stranger. I mean, hell, it wasn’t like you were playing tic-tac-toe on the wall by the restrooms, right?”
“Don’t go there, Manny. Do not even think of going there.”
“Why? You know it’s true. I care about you, Sara. Really care. As a friend even if there’s never any more. You know that. And because I do, I hate watching you do this to yourself.”
She started to interrupt, but he was on a roll. “You chase danger. Probably because you found your father’s body. A violent crime, and you were just a kid, so of course it’s all twisted up inside you. But now you seek it out. You lobby to work on cases with the worst kinds of perps. And for a while there, you were going home with strangers. What? You didn’t think I noticed?”
“I don’t do that anymore.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s been awhile. But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts you hooked up with that guy after he left.”
She felt her cheeks burn, and not just from her fury. “There is no way in hell I’m justifying myself to you. And you have no right—”
“Yeah. I do. Because we’re friends. And because I understand the why. You take risks. Face danger. And every time you walk away without dying, it’s a big fuck you to whoever killed your father.”
