Scott said softly.
“Of course not,” she replied, but he could tell she didn’t believe it.
“Is that why you stopped being a negotiator?” He’d known it was the Connors case, but he’d thought it was the reality of having to stand that close to the line of fire and watch people get killed. He’d thought it was the stress of it, the horror of seeing all that bloodshed up close and personal. Until now, he’d never suspected she’d blamed herself for any of it.
“Nothing from that day is going to reveal where Connors is now,” she said, sidestepping his question.
Scott stood and Chelsie moved away from him, looking wary.
“Come on, Chelsie. You can’t blame yourself for Connors’s actions.”
“I don’t,” she snapped, putting a hand up when he moved toward her. “I don’t want to talk about this with you, Scott. And I don’t think reviewing old crime-scene pictures is going to make any difference. There must be a state-wide APB out on Connors. They’ll catch him and we can both go home.”
She turned and hurried to her room before he could reply.
Scott sat back in his seat, staring blankly at his laptop. That was a lot of baggage to carry around—the deaths of nine military officers who’d left behind wives, children and, in one case, grandchildren.
In HRT, Scott had seen too many people die. It came with the job that sometimes by the time they could act, lives had already been lost. But it comforted him to know how many more were saved.
A sudden fury hit him. Connors had taken more than Scott had realized on that beautiful June day. Not only had he robbed nine men of their lives, he’d also stolen away a promising career.
Scott might not have seen Chelsie in action, but he’d heard enough about her from Maggie and some of the other agents at the WFO long before he’d taken her home. Even before she’d trained as a negotiator, she’d had a reputation as someone who could see to the heart of what a perp wanted and talk him into choosing a peaceful way to get it.
It was not a talent a lot of people had. He sure didn’t. He could take out a moving target at half a mile, but talking down a terrorist with a bomb strapped to his chest? That was a job he’d gladly leave to someone else.
Cursing under his breath, Scott pulled up the case file from last year. Chelsie might not want anything to do with it, but there was something about this whole situation that felt off to Scott. Something about Connors’s actions that didn’t add up. And the answer had to be in the original case, or in the trial testimony.
Wherever it was, he planned to find it. And hopefully, it would lead them to Connors.
Once they put Connors back behind bars where he belonged, Scott could turn to the next problem. And suddenly that wasn’t how to get Chelsie back in his bed, but how to convince her not to throw away her career as a negotiator.
And if she happened to fall for him again in the process, he wasn’t going to put up a fight.
* * *
FEAR PUMPED THROUGH Chelsie’s veins as she crouched outside the community center, pressed as tightly to the brick wall as possible. The roar of the rifle was all she could hear. Dead men lay in the parking lot, their blood slowly streaming toward her.
Her bullhorn was discarded across her lap, useless, as somewhere out there, Connors tried to center her skull neatly in his crosshairs. Chelsie crouched lower. Everyone was dead. She was a failure, a failure, a failure...
Bang!
The sound split through the air as Chelsie jolted upright, breathing too hard. Everything was dark, except for the light streaming toward her from the left, and it took her a minute to get her bearings, for her eyes to adjust.
She was in the bedroom in the safe house. She’d been sleeping, having the dream again—the one she thought she’d quit having six months ago. She wasn’t back at the community center with Connors trying to kill her. It was over. She was safe. As long as Connors didn’t find her again.
Scott stood in the open doorway, backlit from the hall. He held a laptop in his hands and his hair was sticking up on top. He seemed exhausted, but there was a sharpness to his expression that made her drag the covers up to her chin.
Which was ridiculous, since the cop who’d been called to the break-in at her apartment had packed her a conservative T-shirt and pajama shorts to sleep in. Scott had already seen her naked, already had his hands and mouth on just about every inch of her skin.
“What are you doing in here?” she croaked, glancing at the clock on the nightstand. She’d gone to bed hours ago, after eating a silent, awkward dinner with Scott. She’d thought he was asleep, too. Andre had woken up to finish off the rest of the cold pizza and take the next watch.
“I knocked,” Scott replied. “You okay?”
“Fine.” As he stepped into her room and flicked on the light, Chelsie squinted up at him. “Did they find Connors?”
“Not yet.”
She slumped against the headboard, dropping her covers. “Then what do you want?”
His gaze slid over her, and she squirmed as he moved closer, his steps slow and sure. His jeans and T-shirt fit his lanky body just right, made him seem laid-back and approachable while doing nothing to hide the bunching muscles underneath. It reminded her of how he’d looked in Shields a year ago.
It reminded her of exactly why she’d thrown thirty-four years of caution away and gone home with a near-stranger.
In a lot of ways, he was still a stranger. They’d talked in Shields, had discovered they could make each other laugh, that they had similar outlooks on their jobs. But once they’d left the bar, they hadn’t exactly passed the hours chatting. She could describe the birthmark on his upper thigh in minute detail, but she couldn’t say if he had any siblings besides Maggie, what he’d done before he’d joined the Bureau or how he spent his free time.
As he sat on the edge of her bed, sinking down on the springs, his weight shifting her closer to him, an ache filled her chest. She wished she did know those things. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She opened her mouth, wanting to ask him...something, but he spoke first.
“I want you to check out the crime-scene images.”
Chelsie sat up straighter, moving away from him as he held his laptop toward her. “What? Why? No.”
She sounded frantic, but she didn’t care. The nightmares were already starting up again. She didn’t need to study the crime-scene photos and make it worse, regardless of how much of a coward that made her seem.
She scowled, hating that Scott would see her that way now, too. He’d picked a job where he ran into the danger everyone else ran away from. He’d already seen her run away, from her job as a negotiator, and from him.
Steeling herself, she grabbed the laptop before she could change her mind. But there were no crime-scene photos on his screen, only a drawing with the details—distances, locations of the victims and the shooter— written in. Surprised, she glanced over the top of the screen at Scott.
He
