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He climbs the cabin steps. The door opens, then closes.

I sit at the chart table alone and mull over the last ten minutes.

Connie’s back and I don’t know if I can trust her. Until I know that with clarity, I’m not going to give it. I don’t know if she’s gone to Mikhail. I don’t know if she’s forgiven me. I don’t know which version is in front of me.

What I do know is that she’s not safe to trust with anything that matters until I figure out which Connie I’m dealing with.

I pick up my phone and look at Cole Mercer’s number. He gave it to me after our interview. I think about the conversation and his concerns for Josie’s safety. He could add an extra layer of protection, but more importantly, if I clued him in on my concerns about Connie going to Mikhail, he might insist Josie leave Seattle.

I think about what I would have to admit to him to get his complicity. I think about what he would do with the admission. I think about whether he could keep Josie safer than I can.

I put the phone face down on the chart table.

If I bring Cole in on Connie, I bring Cole in on me and Marcus, and the second I do that, I’m not the man who saved Josie anymore. I’m the man Cole’s reluctantly trying to keep out of a federal cell for her sake. The way she looks at me changes. The way her father looks at me when he meets me for breakfast changes. The architecture of the life I have somehow earned a place in changes.

I’m not ready for that change.

Not yet.

I will be. I know I will be. But not today.

Today I’m just a man trying to keep the woman he’s falling in love with alive.

CHAPTER 18

Josie

“You’ve checked your phone four times in the last five minutes,” Caroline says.

I drag my eyes off the screen. “I have not.”

“You have. I counted. Four times.” She’s leaning against the counter with a mug of coffee she’s doctored with so much sugar my teeth ache.

As usual, she’s dressed in yoga pants and a slouchy sweater, but she carries it with the effortless grace of a beauty queen. Tall and statuesque, her black hair and brilliant blue eyes turn many a man’s head. I’ve noticed it here at work, the longing on more than one expression.

She stands with one ankle crossed over the other, watching me like she’s already three moves into a chess game I didn’t know we were playing. “Either you’re waiting on somebody you don’t want to see or somebody you do and you’re nervous about it. Which is it?”

“Neither.” I hold up my own coffee cup. “I’m caffeinating.”

“You’ve ignored your coffee the entire time we’ve been here.” She glances at her watch. “Which has been about fifteen minutes and my break’s almost over.”

“You’re very observant for someone who’s supposed to be doing reports.”

“It’s a gift.” She takes a sip. “Is it the Voronin case you’re worried about?”

And there it is. The off-ramp, handed to me clean, because Caroline is the kind of person who notices when you’re not quite right and gives you a dignified place to land. The case is the easy answer. The case is true enough. I am, in fact, on edge about it, because the man I’m falling in love with thinks one of his oldest friends just handed my name to a Russian who kills women for a living.

But I can’t say any of that.

“Partly,” I say.

She catches the word with a raised eyebrow. “Partly?”

I should leave it at that. Partly is a complete sentence. Partly is a fine place to stop.

But I don’t. I need a girl’s ear for the other thing that has me on edge. “I’m seeing someone.”

Both of her brows rise and her eyes round before a slow grin breaks across her face that makes her look about fourteen. “Shut up.”