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Fair enough.
I could ask a different question.
“Let me rephrase that,” I said. “Has whatever you originally needed my help with been solved?”
She shook her head. “No.”
That’s what I thought. “Alright. So, how about you tell me what it was that you had needed my help with?”
There was so much hesitation. I had no doubt that Sawyer had convinced herself that I was no longer an option in helping her, so telling me about whatever it was didn’t make any sense. “I’m really okay now. I’ll figure it out on my own,” she said.
“Okay. Well, I mean, it’s not like I even know if I would have been able to help you to begin with,” I started. “Since you’re here, why don’t you just tell me about it? Even if you no longer want my help, maybe I can offer some advice.”
Sawyer pressed her lips together and stared me down. She was waging a battle with herself, and while I was sure there was some small part of her that wanted to share, there was a much larger part that was going to try to stick it to me.
Jesus, she was a tough one.
Since it worked in the cemetery, I decided it might work here, too. I was going to push her.
“Sawyer, why did you come to Harper Security Ops looking for me two days ago?” I asked her.
I hadn’t expected that was all it was going to take, but the minute I got the question out, she blurted, “Because I had learned just a few hours beforehand that somebody wanted to kill me.”
I’d heard a lot of things over the years that caused me great concern, but nothing in all of my years had ever led me to the point that it felt like ice was running through my veins. I held my hand up in front of me and said, “I’m going to need you to back up a minute.”
“What?”
I could feel the disbelief written in my expression as I allowed my eyes to roam over her face. “Somebody wants to kill you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you know who?”
“Yes.”
It seemed I was going to have to pull every ounce of this out of her, because she didn’t have any intention to elaborate.
“Who is it?” I questioned her.
She immediately replied, “My boss’s wife.”
That was another unexpected response from her. Instead of immediately responding with more questions and demanding explanations, I gave myself a moment to consider it. Obviously, Sawyer didn’t know that I’d done any research on the very little she had shared with me, but I did. And with what I had learned about the club being shut down, the type of club that it was, and the fact that Sawyer’s boss had a wife that wanted Sawyer dead, a couple of possible scenarios popped into my head.
If Sawyer had been dancing in this man’s club, was it possible that he’d crossed a line with her? A line that she’d been happy to cross but that his wife was not happy about?
It was no secret that Sawyer had been a very daring woman. I’d seen her list before, and while not everything was overly ambitious, there still had been quite a few things that were particularly adventurous. Was it possible that the nature of her list had changed? Did she push the envelope further now?
There was too much in all of the thoughts I was having that was affecting my ability to remain composed. Sawyer as a stripper was at the top of that, but the thought of her being with a man, let alone one who was married, wasn’t far behind.
It had been easy to ignore the possibility of Sawyer in relationships with anyone else when she wasn’t around. But seeing her in front of me made it incredibly difficult to pretend.
Only, that’s what I did next.
I saw her.
I looked into the eyes of the woman who’d torn me up inside for years and realized I was being unfair.
She was Sawyer.
