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Kara should have left with the others that morning. She technically didn’t have to be here on Monday when Matt met with Seattle FBI and the AUSA and went to Avila’s arraignment. She’d done her part; she’d even written a full report. With details.
But she didn’t feel like she had a home yet—just a mostly empty, generic apartment while she looked for something semipermanent. No friends in DC, no family, not much of anything. She considered visiting her grandmother, but instead she stayed put. Then she and Matt ended up in bed, where they always seemed to be when they were alone and had no crime to deal with.
And damn, it was great. No murder, no bombs, no tears, just an intense passion that had her wanting more...and fearing her own emotions.
She stared at Matt as he slept heavy, sprawled over her bed, naked. She almost kissed him. Not just because she wanted to have sex again, but because she had feelings—feelings she wasn’t quite sure what to do with.
She hadn’t felt this way before. Sex with Matt was different.
No, it’s not. It’s the same. It’s just sex. Good sex, orgasmic sex, but only sex. A satisfying, intense, totally hot release, but nothing more.
It can’t be anything more.
She hadn’t been able to shake what Catherine said to her. Kara might have been tough to her face, but Catherine’s every word seemed etched in her mind, and no matter what she did or how much she drank, Kara could not get rid of the sick feeling in her stomach that Catherine was right.
Matt would be damaged if their affair came out, but he would survive it.
Kara wouldn’t. She’d be kicked to the curb, homeless, jobless, with nothing.
She had to end this with Matt. Shehadto. For her, for him.
She didn’t want to.
It was unlike her. She rarely cared what anyone thought of her, her relationships, or anything else. All she cared about was her job and that her supervisors respected her work. Even then, she didn’t much care what people thought about how she did her job because she got results.
Why did she care if she was cut from the task force? Just this week she’d been thinking of walking away. She’d recognized earlier that she really wasn’t part of the team, that she was different from everyone else. She wasn’t an FBI agent. She had no college degree. She would never be one of them...except that she had done good.
And she and the team worked well together. Ryder sought out her advice on how to read Neil Devereaux’s cop shorthand. Michael and she trusted each other, they could act without speaking, as if they had been partners for years instead of months. She finally felt that she was important to this team, a valued member. That she had a place. She’d saved lives and taken down the bad guys and that’s why she became a cop in the first place.
Well, not exactly. She was a cop because she hadn’t known what else to do with her life, and she found out she was good at it. Her mentor in high school told her she had a knack, and she went to the academy on his recommendation because she wanted to please him. She didn’t recognize it at the time, but he’d saved her life—not physically, but mentally. She had been in a dark place when she was living with her grandmother. She’d hated her parents, hated who she had become when she was with them. She had the urge to kill her mother’s boyfriend—an urge that terrified her. They were con artists, not killers, yet the lives they destroyed... When she was fifteen, she didn’t know what options she had. And murder came to mind until her mother sent her to live with her grandmother.
She’d thought a lot about this over the last few days. It was exactly half her life ago—fifteen years—when she had landed on Em’s doorstep. Her mother had done it for selfish reasons, but Kara was glad. She had Em and she finally knew what unconditional love felt like.
She took another look at Matt, then slipped silently out of bed, grabbed her tank top and sweatpants, and walked to the kitchen while dressing. She didn’t want to wake him up because she didn’t want a conversation, not now. Not when she was dealing with this confusion.
Confusion she shouldn’t feel because she’d neverfelt this way before.
It was nearly dark out. She grabbed a beer even though she would rather just drink a bunch of tequila to stop her mind from all this thinking and doubting. She went out to the front porch. They faced the water to the east, and she knew there would soon be fireworks for Independence Day. She’d have a great view from here.
She popped the cap off her beer and drank half the bottle, stared out at the ocean. She could just make out faint lights on the shore of Orcas Island across the strait.
She wanted—needed—this job. Without it, she feared she’d go back to her old ways. To the darkness. She couldn’t go back to LAPD. She might not even be able to get a job with any other police department. Her record was solid, but in this climate, her use of force would be questioned. She could justify every situation, she’d been cleared in every mandatory investigation, yet who’d take a risk on her?
And could she be a regular cop? Her entire life had been working undercover. Something she was good at. And working for this task force, she realized she was also good at the investigating. Damn good. But in any other department, she’d have to start at the bottom. She’d have to earn detective, and maybe that’s what she should do.
If someone took a chance on her.
Except she liked her team, for the most part. If she didn’t particularly like someone—Catherine came to mind—at least she respected them.
Kara didn’t want to lose this. This task force might be the only thing left for her. Without her badge, who was she? And if she had to give up Matt to keep this, she would. Because it was just sex.
Don’t lie to yourself. It’s not just sex.
She pushed the thought from her head, frowned. She loved sex. She’d never become emotionally attached because she had sex with a guy. Maybe with Colton, a little. They’d been friends, partners on several cases, and she’d liked him. But she’d never wanted to be with him all the time, and they’d had an understanding that worked for them. She missed him. His murder was still raw to her. It should never have happened.
But she realized she missed his friendship more than anything else. She missed hisbeing alive.
