Page 147 of His Good Girl

“No,” I said.

Avery looked up. “You knew this might happen.”

I did not answer quickly enough.

“Callum.”

“We had received a tip,” I answered.

“A tip.”

“A photo of you outside the building. My car at your apartment.” I forced myself to keep my voice even because rage would only make her feel smaller in the room. “Nothing explicit. Nothing public. Nothing we could do anything with yet.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I should have,” I admitted.

Avery stared at me, and the hurt in her face landed exactly where it should have.

“Yes,” she agreed in a quiet voice. “You should have.”

“I didn’t want you afraid.”

“I’ve been afraid. I just thought I was being dramatic.”

Her words cut deep. “I’m sorry.”

Her mouth tightened, not in anger, not exactly. “Don’t do that again.”

There were a dozen things I could have said, beginning with the fact that I had been trying to protect her and I wanted her safe, but none of that mattered.

“I won’t,” I said.

Benjamin glanced up from his phone, and for once, did not make the obvious comment, which was how I knew the situation was worse than it looked.

We kept it contained through the weekend and for two more days. By Wednesday morning, Benjamin had narrowed the breach to two impossible channels.

“One inside,” he said, standing in my office with a tablet in hand and the expression of a man who had slept badly for much of his life. “Then one personal.”

“Personal?” I asked.

His jaw tightened. “Someone close enough to know her movements, or careless enough to expose them.”

I looked at him. “Say what you mean.”

“They know the public things,” he said. “Dinner. The car. The after-hours departures. That can be surveillance. Expensive surveillance, but surveillance.”

“And the rest?” I asked.

Benjamin’s mouth tightened. “The rest reads like someone standing too close to Ms. Hale while she was trying to decide whether to trust you.”

My hand went still on the desk.

“How close?”

“Close enough to know she was worried about the godfather angle. Close enough to know the pencil skirt meant something before she ever walked into work wearing it.”

My voice came out colder than I intended. “Who knows those things?”