Текст книги "What Lies Behind"
Автор книги: J. T. Ellison
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 25 страниц)
Chapter 41
THERE WAS A second of calm before pandemonium broke out around them, and the gunman managed to get off another few shots.
Fletcher reacted quickly. He shoved Sam to the ground, stepped forward to the curb and returned fire. It wasn’t SOP, and the sedan was already pulling away, the tires screeching smoke. Suddenly Hart was there, too, the two men shoulder to shoulder, firing in unison, both in perfect triangle stances, mimicking each other, and the rear window of the sedan shattered.
The car lurched hard to the right, up onto the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians like a flock of birds hit with shrapnel, and slammed into the building one block down.
Fletcher and Hart took off. Sam was right behind them, up and running hard. The smell of gas reached her nostrils as she skidded to a stop next to the car. She saw someone bolt from the passenger seat. Hart saw him, too, took off running after him.
Fletcher shouted at her to get back and yanked the driver from the car. The man flopped from the driver’s seat onto the pavement. She heard the shouts and screams of the people around, blocked it all out.
The driver’s head was ruined. He’d taken one of their bullets to the back of his skull, but he wasn’t dead yet. She pushed Fletcher to the side, pressed her fingers into the man’s neck, felt the feeble pulse starting to skip. There was nothing to be done, nothing at least that she could do. The bullet had decimated his brain; his heart was just waiting for its last signal to stop pumping.
Fletcher was rolling the body, slapping the man’s pockets, looking for ID and other weapons, getting blood on the pavement and his pants. There was brass all over the car, and thick red blood, and Sam sighed heavily as the man died with her hand on his neck.
She sat down on the curb. Her knees and her palms were skinned from landing hard on the concrete sidewalk. Fletcher saw her, his face filled with concern, and more—anger, frustration, an almost feral gleam from the adrenaline she knew was punching through his system. Killing was hard, but the first rush was impossible to avoid. It was the power of taking a life, of being the stronger creature, that drove the limbic system into overdrive. It didn’t care about morality, it simply was.
He shook himself a little, trying to get back to normal. “Are you okay? You’re not hit?”
She shook her head. “He’s gone,” she said unnecessarily, gesturing to the man at her feet.
The adrenaline was fleeting, and now Fletcher was starting to freak out. Sam didn’t blame him a bit. She was feeling quite rattled herself.
“Holy shit, holy shit. Do you know who it is?” He wasn’t asking, he wasn’t looking at the body. He was walking in circles, letting his body and mind get back onto the same plane.
Hart came back, panting, shaking his head, talking a mile a minute. “He got away. Bastard got away. I lost him in the crowd on M Street. What the hell was that about? Who’d we shoot?”
He grabbed the wallet Fletcher had stripped from the pants pocket, opened it. “Jesus, he’s one of ours.”
Sam nodded. She’d recognized the man from their meeting earlier in the day. As she’d stood over him, a finger on his erratic pulse, her mind tried to reconcile the situation—an ally turned enemy. And there was going to be hell to pay.
The man who’d tried to kill them was Jason Kruger, head of the Africa desk, from the State Department.
And now they had to figure out who had been in the car with him.
* * *
Sam watched Kruger’s body being loaded into the blue morgue van. The sun was setting in earnest, night coming on fast. The lights of Foggy Bottom were ringed in haze, leftover precipitation from the afternoon rains. Small wisps of fog drifted up from the Potomac, and Sam listened to the conversation taking place beside her with half an ear.
She’d just received a text from Daniels. He was in Robin Souleyret’s world; they were crashing her email. He hadn’t found anything yet, but he’d only gotten started five minutes earlier. She texted him back an OK, then tuned in to Fletcher and Hart’s hushed tête-à-tête.
“It was a man who fled the scene, right, Lonnie? I wasn’t imaging that?”
“Looked like a dude to me. Moved like one, too. Big, wearing a baseball cap. Yes, I’m pretty sure it was a guy. Why?”
“Just wanted to be sure we weren’t dealing with Robin Souleyret face-to-face. We keep finding evidence that points in her direction.”
“Media’s here. You want to make a statement?” Hart asked.
Fletcher shook his head. “Hell, no. What I want is to get in Regina Girabaldi’s face, find out what the fuck her acolyte was doing shooting at us.”
Sam saw a large black man making his way toward them, and pointed him out to Fletcher. “Isn’t that your big boss?”
Fletcher groaned slightly, stood to meet the man. “Chief, I can explain—”
Fred Roosevelt, the D.C. chief of police, held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. There are cameras and reporters thick as lice on the street behind me, and who knows who’s managed to point a boom mike in our direction.”
Fletcher nodded. “I’ll save it, then. You’re up to speed?”
“I am. You’re all okay?”
“We are.”
Roosevelt glanced over his shoulder. Sam saw a reporter staring their way. He didn’t mince words. “Captain Armstrong’s here. He’s going to have to take your guns. Let’s do that quietly, inside, with a crime scene tech. Then you and Hart need to go home.”
“Sir, I can’t—”
Roosevelt shook his head. “Not now, and not here. Go surrender your weapon, then go home. You’re off the case, effective immediately. We’ll hand it over to Woolrich—he’ll do it right.”
Fletcher nodded, red-faced, swallowing down his anger, and turned, signaling to Hart. There was no fighting this; it was how things had to be. There were some protocols even Fletcher couldn’t outmaneuver.
Roosevelt turned his attention to Sam. He gave her a long, lingering, thoughtful look. She knew he had never liked her, not since he was the captain running Homicide and Fletcher and Hart got involved in a shooting trying to protect her. She’d just moved to D.C.; she barely knew any of them. Hart hadn’t even held it against her, and he was the one who’d been shot. Roosevelt always had it in for her after that. The higher he rose on the food chain, the more difficult it became. She knew Fletcher had been shielding her from Roosevelt’s animosity, but there were no barriers to entry now.
His eyes were appraising and unfriendly. “Trouble follows you, doesn’t it, lady?”
She squared her shoulders. “We—”
He bent closer, voice low. “Get off my scene. You may have Lieutenant Fletcher wound around your little finger, but you’re going to end his career one of these days, whether you mean to or not. I’d prefer you not end it with a bullet. Now, go play with your FBI friends and leave my boys alone. You hear me?”
She opened her mouth to retort, then closed it. He was right. Any time she got involved, things went from bad to worse. Instead, she decided to play it cool. She nodded, turned and started to walk away. There were muffled words, then she clearly heard him mutter, “Bitch,” under his breath.
She turned around and stepped to his side.
“That is entirely uncalled for. Fletcher originally brought me into this case, yes, but I was assigned to work it by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I don’t care if you have a problem with me. I intend to help Lieutenant Fletcher and Detective Hart solve this case, and finish it, whether you want me involved or not. As a matter of fact, Chief Roosevelt, the FBI should probably take over the investigation from here. I’ll send a liaison with official instructions.”
His mouth dropped open. “You can’t do that. This is my case, my jurisdiction.”
“I can’t take you over, no, but I am already conducting an investigation, and I am going to make an official request for jurisdiction. I’m a federal officer, and I’ve been shot at. The suspect in question is a government official. This should be our case, and I’m going to make sure it is. You’re welcome to continue working it—your team is a great asset. But the FBI is officially in the mix.” She gave him a smile. “Now you can call me a bitch to my face, because I’ve earned it.”
His eyes bugged out and a vein popped up in his forehead. He started to sputter, but before he had a chance to form words, she went up the stairs toward Fletcher, who was staring at her narrow-eyed. She didn’t bother to look back.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
“Not now,” she replied.
They went inside the building. There was a crime scene tech waiting near the broken metal detector. He was quiet, did his job quickly and efficiently, taking swabs of both Hart’s and Fletcher’s hands, bagging their guns. Sam realized her hands were covered in blood. The crime scene tech handed her a wipe. It stung obscenely against her abraded flesh.
They were done in five minutes, and Fletcher’s immediate boss, Captain Armstrong, was waiting for them. If he’d seen Sam’s exchange with Roosevelt, he chose not to mention it. He leaned in, spoke quietly in Fletcher’s ear, close enough that she saw him twitch when Armstrong’s mustache tickled the lobe. “Go home, Fletcher. Let me deal with Roosevelt. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Armstrong shot her a strange glance, and she could have sworn he smiled, albeit briefly. So he had heard their tiff, damn it. She was beginning to feel foolish for losing her temper, then decided to hell with it. Part of working with the FBI, as Baldwin had explained, was putting up with the occasional skirmish with the locals. Of course, she hadn’t expected to get into one so soon, but Roosevelt had it coming.
Sam spared a glance toward the front doors, saw a bevy of microphones and camera flashes, the black stalks of camera tripods being hurried into place. Roosevelt was going to do a presser right here at the scene, and distract the media long enough to get his men away.
“Good of him,” Fletcher said to Hart. “He could have thrown us to the wolves.” And to Sam, “Now are you ready to tell me what all that was about? You seemed a bit heated talking to the big dog.”
“You don’t want to know. Suffice it to say, I just jacked your case.”
“You did what?”
She grabbed his arm as the flashbulbs started behind them.
“Come on. We need to get out of here.”
“I’m off the case. I’m supposed to go home and sit on my hands like a good little boy.”
She chewed on her lip for a moment. “Well, you can do that. Or you can come with me and solve this case.”
Fletcher shrugged back into his jacket. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Samantha, but I’m with you.” He turned to Hart. “Go home. Watch your back. I’ll stay in touch.”
“Hey, dude, we’re off the case. What do you think you’re doing?”
Fletcher glanced at Sam, gave his old partner a shrug and a grin. “We’ll see.”
Sam called Quantico as she walked out the back door of Bromley’s building, avoiding the press corps and that puffed-up rooster Roosevelt. Fletcher followed Sam. He looked troubled, not that she blamed him. What she’d just done was impulsive, but necessary. She couldn’t let someone like Roosevelt get in and muck things up. He used to be a cop, but now he was a politician, and everything was going to turn his way if they weren’t careful. And this way, she could protect Fletcher, too.
Charlaine answered on the first ring. “You’ve got my kid Daniels working hard, don’t you?”
“I do. Listen, I may have just mouthed off to D.C.’s chief of police that I’m requesting jurisdiction of this case.”
Charlaine started to laugh, and Sam told her the whole story with relief, fighting down her own laughter as Charlaine hooted. “You don’t waste any time, do you, Dr. Owens?”
“Apparently not. I felt it was justified. We were just shot at, and the shooter was an employee of the State Department. And the chief was being a jerk. He’s a politician. He’ll screw everything up.”
Charlaine laughed again. “Then you did exactly the right thing. Set up at the Hoover Building. I’ll brief them on what’s happening. You’ll have to go in and give them the rundown. Do you want to run this yourself, or do you need more help?”
“I think we need all the help we can get right now, Charlaine. Night has fallen, and we’re chasing our tails. We’ve got a manhunt ongoing, a spree killer shooting his way through D.C., five dead and two suspects missing, plus a load of possibly hot vaccines in the wind. We have a dead State Department official in the street outside. This is bigger than even my capable hands, and we need to work with the D.C. police, too. And someone needs to get Regina Girabaldi in a private room.”
Charlaine whistled. “She’s involved?”
“To her perfectly waxed eyebrows. I’m not sure exactly how, but she pulled us in this morning and asked us to cover the whole thing up. It’s beyond that now.”
“I hear you. You’re smart, Sam. We do our best work when we work together. I’ll handle things from this end. And I’ll let Baldwin know. He just checked in from the plane. I think he’s headed your way when he lands in a couple of hours, so you can coordinate together.”
“Roger that. I have to go home. There’s a whole separate branch of this case brewing in my living room. You saw the assassination attempt of James Denon this morning, right?”
“I did.”
“That was my guy who shot the would-be assassin. He’s got Denon holed up at our place while he tracks down who was involved. Turns out, I think we’re working the same case. There’s a common player between the two. Our girl.”
“Seriously? Sam, be careful. Go take a breath, let me get things moving.”
“I will. And, Charlaine? Thanks.”
“You got it, kid. Nice to have you on board.”
* * *
Fletcher listened to Sam’s call and decided he needed to make one of his own. It might get him fired; he knew continuing to work the case was dangerous to his career, but he had a feeling in the long run, it would be better to keep pushing than step back and wait like he’d been told. Armstrong would agree, he was sure of it.
When Armstrong had replaced Fred Roosevelt as captain, Fletcher had been worried. Armstrong was tough, no-nonsense, a careerist who liked to see his numbers move in the right direction. He’d spotted Fletcher as a troublemaker from the beginning, and Fletcher naturally assumed the two would clash constantly.
His concerns had been unwarranted. Roosevelt had been a hard-ass, kept himself separate from the troops. Armstrong, on the other hand, was one of them, had risen up through the ranks. He and Lonnie worked out together. He’d given Fletcher the chance to work on the Joint Terrorism Task Force and promoted him to lieutenant, allowed him the autonomy to continue investigating in the field as he wished, instead of letting him ride out his twenty at a desk.
Fletcher knew he had an ally in Armstrong, but he was still reluctant to tell him all of his suppositions at this point. If he was wrong, it would cost him his job, and no amount of bonhomie from his boss would save it.
It was time to talk to Girabaldi, but Fletcher wanted to do it in his house, not in hers. Rattle her up, make her uncomfortable, find out why Kruger had tried to kill him, and who had been riding in the car with the would-be assassin.
But that wasn’t meant to be. He had to watch his back, make sure he didn’t get fired. As they drove back to Sam’s house, Fletcher called the number he’d been given earlier. The phone was answered almost immediately by Ashleigh Cavort.
“Is it true? Did Jason shoot at you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my God. The shooting was on the news, but I didn’t believe it. His car was gone, his desk was empty. They said it was a State Department official. We knew it had to be him. How could he do this?”
“Ms. Cavort, I know this is a difficult time. But I need everything you have on Jason Kruger, and I need it now. And put Girabaldi on the line. She and I need to have a chat.”
Cavort gulped back her tears, adopted a more professional tone. “The undersecretary has been placed under protection, Lieutenant. With the events unfolding as they are, we can’t help you. We have to protect her—she’s our number-one priority. Even I can’t get in touch with the undersecretary right now.”
“Then screw Girabaldi, you have to get me Kruger’s file. Ashleigh, please. We’re under attack, and we don’t know why, or from whom. You gotta let me see who this guy really was. I don’t have time to go through the proper channels.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Do you have a secure email?”
“Sure.”
“Give me the address.”
He rattled off the combination of letters and numbers.
“I’ll do my best,” she said, and hung up.
Chapter 42
George Washington Parkway
RILEY DIDN’T SPEAK after he dropped the bomb that Robin had just killed the wrong man. He wouldn’t answer any questions about who might have killed Amanda, and she finally grew frustrated and stared out the window at the darkening sky.
She watched the dimly lit scenery pass as Riley drove them into Virginia, getting her far away from D.C., to someplace safe. That place being his house. He was giving off clouds of black and gray shadows; she was trying very hard to control the synesthesia and ignore his anger. But it was becoming more and more difficult the crazier the day became. Riley was the first person who’d understood her gifts, accepted her despite them.
No. That wasn’t true. Amanda had, as well. Grief made her stomach seize, and she reached out to Riley, put her hand on his arm, seeking some sort of connection. She had to fix things, fast.
“Riley. I’m sorry. I reacted without thinking. He attacked me, and I, well, honestly, I don’t remember much.”
He shrugged off her hand. She set the offending palm in her lap and stared at it. It still had bits of his blackness swirling from the tips of her fingers.
He didn’t look at her, kept his eyes on the road. The sun had set; the lights of oncoming traffic were blinding her.
“You shot the man three times. Tortured him, and didn’t manage to gain any usable information. Is it that easy to forget, Robin? Can you turn yourself off so well now that you don’t even feel?”
She shook her head. “That’s not fair. I feel. I feel too much. That’s the problem. It sounds like a convenient excuse, but I’ve never lied to you, Riley. I’ve lost the edge that allowed me to stay neutral all these years. I can’t find it. And until I do...”
He ignored that. “Atlantic called. Amanda got herself into some serious shit. She smuggled out an SD card with encrypted data she’d stolen from a pharmaceutical company in France. And she brought a group of vaccines into the country. I can only assume someone followed her, tried to retrieve the info and killed her in the process.”
She thought about Cattafi, lying gray and unmoving in the hospital bed. “If Amanda was the target, why kill all the people around her, too? Because everyone she’s been in contact with is dead, or near to it.”
“We don’t know.”
She looked at his big, sure hands on the wheel. Was it possible that those hands had caressed her body in the night? They were lethal, deadly hands, worse even than her own. It was what drew them together, the understanding they had about why and how they needed to do their jobs. No wasted energy. No wasted death. Their code. How their lives operated.
She’d broken that unspoken pledge. She’d killed out of anger. Shame flooded through her, waves and waves of pulsing red.
She tried to pull it together. Weakness wasn’t allowed. Even admitting she’d lost her edge was a betrayal of their code. They weren’t allowed human emotions. And she knew she had them, and that was going to cost her everything.
“Does Atlantic know what was on the SD card?”
“No,” Riley said. “And the D.C. police have it in their evidence locker.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. There’s no way they’d be able to get through the encryptions. They’d need a major cryptographer, all the right programs, everything. I know my sister. She is—was—the best at what she did. The information is safe for now at least.”
“If only that were true, Robin, but I think you’re wrong. Metro has a chick from the FBI working with them. I’m sure the stiffs from Quantico have already gotten their grubby little paws on it and decrypted the information.”
She let that sink in. If the FBI was involved, things would be more difficult, but not unsalvageable. Not yet.
“Damn it, Riley, what the hell did Amanda stumble across? And why did the State Department want it? The email she received came directly from the Africa desk. She was bringing it in for this Kruger guy.”
“I don’t have an answer for you, Robbie.”
She took the nickname as a good sign. Maybe he had forgiven her. She straightened, forced his darkness away, filled her space with a light blue fog that felt calming, took a breath. “So what is our mission?”
He looked over to her, his green eyes muddy with anger. He was volatile, that was part of the attraction. He was so very much alive. Her calm vanished; the car went black again.
“My mission is to get you to safety and recover the SD card and the vaccines so we know what the hell is going on. Your mission is to lay low. You’ll stay here until I return.”
“Come on. That’s not fair. I need to do something. I can’t just sit around, knowing my sister’s killer is prowling the streets.” And that I did nothing to help her when she asked, she thought, but kept it to herself.
“Atlantic’s orders,” he growled. “Nonnegotiable. So don’t even try lobbying me.”
Damn it all. Atlantic had given her a life when hers was collapsing in on itself. If he was pissed at her, it was like going to jail, or worse. Siberia, without a coat.
“I want to talk to him.”
“He’s out of touch. We’re here.”
Riley turned down a dirt track toward the water. He lived on a houseboat south of Old Town Alexandria. He liked that he could pull up anchor at any time and sail away, though he never really did. He wasn’t ever home long enough to enjoy more than a glass of wine on the deck, watching the sun slip into the horizon, or the occasional sunrise, billowing pinks leading into soft yellow days, or, more often, sleepless nights, the water around him glowing silver in the moonlight.
At least, that’s what he told her. He could be poetic when he wanted to, when the night made anything possible. Now was definitely not one of those times.
She had never been here. He always came to her. It was how they worked. Compartmentalized from each other. She couldn’t help herself; she was dead curious about where he lived.
He pulled into the parking lot and practically dragged her to the boat. Inside the sliding glass doors, he gestured toward a round wooden table, built into the floor. He opened a cabinet, pulled out a scrambler and a laptop, set things up and called in on his satellite phone.
“I have Nightingale. She’s A-OK.”
They heard three clicks, affirmation of the transmission, then he shut it all down and stowed the gear. “There’s food in the fridge. Help yourself.”
He started toward the doors.
“Hey. Where are you going?”
He turned and gave her a sharp green glance. “To clean up your mess.”
“That’s uncalled for. Why are you so mad at me?”
He ignored her, kept moving toward the door, a big man with broad shoulders and strong arms, the swirling black accompanying him like a matador’s dirty cape.
“Riley. Don’t walk away.”
That stopped him.
Back still to her, he spoke carefully and evenly. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry.”
He turned, and she was overcome by the colors of the emotions swirling around him. Greens and blues and pinks and yellows. Colors at odds with his harsh words. Before she could process things properly, he had her in his arms, his mouth hard on hers.
The kiss lasted forever, or only a moment, she wasn’t sure. Then he pushed her away savagely and walked out the doors and up the dock, away from her, without looking back, and when the engine of his car turned over, she felt the small interior walls she’d built over the past months with him crumble to dust.
He’d just said goodbye, and she hadn’t stopped him.
She didn’t cry. There was no point. They’d always been prickly together, and it was a thing of convenience, of mutual admiration, not love. Never love. She didn’t do love. And God knows, neither did Riley.
She tried to get the computer out of its cabinet, but it was locked. And not just any lock—it was biometric, the bastard. She’d need a thumbprint to open it.
She checked her phone, saw there was no service.
The pity party was over, replaced by a fine sheen of rage. He’d left her here on his boat, in total isolation. Not the most chivalrous act he’d ever committed.
If he was done with her, perhaps she should be done with him, as well.
The darkness of the Potomac was all-encompassing. But she didn’t mind the dark. It gave her more room to move, held the synesthesia at bay. She turned off the lights of the houseboat so she wouldn’t be backlit in case anyone was watching, stepped out the doors, slid them closed behind her and jumped quietly off the boat onto dry land.
Robin knew how to disappear. She didn’t even have to go back to her house if she didn’t want to. She had a stash out in Woodbridge at the bus station, a go-bag she could access, with money and passports and weapons, one of the many she had all over the world just for these kinds of situations.
These kinds of situations.
She almost laughed. She didn’t know what the exact protocol was when your sister was murdered, your boss dissed you, your lover broke it off, you crossed your own moral lines and you had nothing left to live for. She checked her bag—yes, the small locker key she’d clipped to her key chain months ago was there. She might have been a bit crazy, but she was meticulous.
She started off into the night. She’d need a car. It was a few miles back into Old Town; she was sure she’d find one that met her needs along the way. She laid out a mental map in her head as she walked. She could be at the station by nine and gone from the world five minutes later.
The bright lights of a car’s high beams swung into the gravel lane that led to Riley’s dock. Robin froze, then ducked into the brush, crouching against a small sapling, feeling the sticky wetness of its leaves covering her legs. The car drove in slowly, as if the driver was looking for something. Or someone.
She pulled her gun from its holster, screwed on the suppressor. Felt something inside her—the last shreds of hope—break. Riley had left her here to be eliminated. She’d faced a hell of a lot of betrayals in her day, but this, her own team turning on her? This was beyond the pale.
She felt the anger and hurt leave; icy certainty flooded her. She was calm, breathing slowly, heart rate dropping, eyes laser focused. Not a girl with synesthesia who felt too much, but a stone-cold killer who wasn’t about to be taken alive.
The car passed her. It was a black Lincoln Town Car with diplomatic plates. French, if she wasn’t mistaken. The glass was dark; she couldn’t see who was inside.
Curiosity kept her in place, watching dispassionately as the car pulled up carefully to the small dock. The engine idled. No doors opened.
Who had they sent to kill her? She knew most of the top assassins in the world, if not by name, at least by face. She’d spent years building dossiers on her competition. In her job, she needed to be aware at all times of who might be coming, and whether they were friend or foe.
Of course, the two roles could be reversed at a moment’s notice.
They’d need a top contractor to take her out, someone simply outstanding. She ran through a list of the few people she thought might be able to take her, preparing scenarios for each. Realized these could be her last thoughts ever, and forced that away. No. She wouldn’t go down without a serious fight.
At last, the door opened. The driver emerged, male Caucasian, five-ten, buzz cut, eyes roving, a hand on his waist. An operator. When he was satisfied no shots were coming, he walked around to the passenger’s side. She laughed to herself. She could knock him off in a heartbeat, and his passenger, too. She leveled the gun against her arm, sighted as the car door finally opened.
They had sent their best. Out stepped her old boss. Regina Girabaldi.
Robin lowered the weapon, took a deep breath to dispel the surge of adrenaline that tried to punch through her system.
There were few things in this world she was certain about. That Regina Girabaldi would want her dead, or even try to have her killed, wasn’t on the list.
She stood up, made her way carefully back to the boat. Regina was already on board, tapping gently at the glass. Her bodyguard—Secret Service, most likely, and nervous to be out alone, away from his flock—was watching intensely. While Regina wouldn’t hurt her, this loon might.
Silent as a doe in a thicket, she stepped to his side, pulled the earwig from his ear and pressed the suppressor gently against his temple. She felt his muscles bunch; he was going to attack.
“You’re looking for me,” she said softly. “I won’t hurt her.”
He didn’t relax, but he didn’t move, either. She took his weapons, just in case, and with a small jab to his ribs, started him onto the path down the dock to the boat.
