He swiveled his chair until they were knee-to-knee, face-to-face. "You know better than that."
"Under normal circumstances, we all try to know better than that. But this wasn't normal circumstances. It was about me this time."
"What you said or didn't may not be the answer."
"No. He's killed two people, because of their connection to me. I have to know why. We have to find the answer, Dave, because he has no reason to stop at two. He's been outside my house." She closed her eyes again. "He may try for someone I love next."
"He won't get near them."
"He can't once we identify him, find him, stop him. I… I need to contact Roy's fiancee. And I have to tell Carly. I have to find a way to tell Carly."
"What you have to do right now is go home, get some sleep. Take a little time, Phoebe. It might be a good idea for you to talk to the counselor about this."
"The best cure for guilt and misplaced responsibility in the negotiator is work, study and training." She managed a ghost of a smile. "Someone wise has been known to say that, often."
"Maybe I have, but in this case, you need sleep first. We'll talk about the rest of it later."
When she walked out of Dave's office, she went straight into the women's room and finally let herself be sick. Viciously, violently sick. Emptied out, skin clammy, eyes running, she sat back against the stall door until she got her breath back. She didn't weep. This had gone far beyond anything as simple and cleansing as tears. She simply sat on the floor, back braced, until she was sure she wouldn't be sick again. Then, after rising, she walked to the sink to wash her face, to rinse out her mouth with cupped handfuls of cold water. He'd been looking into her eyes, she thought as she lifted her head to look into her own now. He'd been looking straight into her eyes, his full of fear and pleas, this man she'd once loved. This man she'd made a child with.
Then he was gone. Gone, she thought, because she once loved him and made a child with him. Not for his own sins, but because she met him one night at a party, and let herself love.
So she'd find the answers. She'd search until she found them.
After drying her face, shoving her dampened hair away from it, she started toward her office. She'd go home-Dave was right about that. But she'd take some files with her. The odds of getting any real sleep were slim, so she could work off the hours, and maybe find some answers. She didn't see Duncan until he was pushing to his feet and walking toward her.
"You should've gone home."
"Don't even start that crap with me, okay?"
"What?"
"Goddamn it, Phoebe." He took her arms. Then he just jerked her against him. "Okay, fight later. Let's just do this for a minute."
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to go through that."
"Yeah, me, too, and back at you." He eased her back to take a good study of her face. Her eyes were reddened, shadowed, exhausted. "I'll take you on home now."
No car, she remembered. She didn't have her car. "I have to get a few things out of my office first."
"I'll wait."
"Duncan-" She broke off when she saw Phin coming toward them, clicking his cell phone closed. "Carly."
"She's fine. She's fine." Phin kept walking, opened his arms and took Phoebe in. "She's sound asleep. Got a patrol car out in front of the house, another couple cops out the back, and my fierce wife and lovely dog inside."
It surprised a muffled laugh out of her. "Thank you. I should go by and get her, bring her home."
"Honey, it's four in the morning. Since it was damn near midnight before the giggling stopped, I bet those girls are going to be sleeping a few hours yet. Why don't Loo and I bring her home after she's up and around? We'll call you first, then bring her home. How's that?"
"Good. That's good. No point in waking her up to… No point.
I'm grateful, Phin, grateful to you and Loo, and I'm sorry."
"No need to be either about this."
"I need to get a few things. I'll only be a minute." Phin watched her go. "She holds up pretty good."
"She's got that strong spine. Something that appealed to me right off. Everything okay on the home front?"
"Taken care of. I'm going to go on. You get some sleep, you hear. We'll talk about all this later."
Duncan gave him a bump on the shoulder. "Thanks."
When Phoebe came back, Duncan stepped over to take her overloaded briefcase. "Good idea. You're going to work from home for a while."
"Not instead of, in addition to."
"Only so many hours in the day, Phoebe."
"So I need to make good use of as many as I can. This is police business, Duncan."
"Oh, don't pull that crap on me either."
She remained silent a moment, ordered herself not to respond. But her willpower snapped when they stepped off the elevator. "I seem to be pulling quite a bit of crap on you tonight."
"Yeah, and I can't say I care for it."
"Then you ought to just go on. I can get my own way home."
"In about one more minute, I'm going to take this shovel I'm using to pitch away this crap and hit you over the head with it. I've had a bad night, too, Phoebe, so watch where you push."
"I told you to go home, didn't I? I said-"
She didn't say a thing more as the breath whooshed right out of her when he whipped her around and pushed her back against his car. She'd seen him irked a time or two, even seen him on the edge of nasty temper. But this was the first time she saw the full-blown affair.
His eyes had the hard, hot look of a man who could and would kick any number of asses, then gesture for more to come on.
"We found out I like aggressive women-thanks for that. I like strong women, and smart women. I like women who can handle themselves. I like, apparently, a woman who knows where the hell she's going and how she wants to get there. You getting this?"
"You're hurting my arms, Duncan."
He eased his hold a fraction. "What I don't like is being told what to do, or how I should feel or what I should think. I don't like being fucking dismissed when-"
"I didn't mean-"
"Shut up, Phoebe. I'm not finished. I don't like being dismissed when a smart, strong, knows-how-to-handle-herself woman figures she doesn't need me anymore. I don't like, and I won't tolerate, being told it's none of my non-police ass's business when I stood out there tonight and saw that poor bastard blown to pieces. So go ahead, Phoebe, tell me one more time to go on home."
Her breath shuddered out once before she controlled it. "I didn't think I could face you again tonight."
"What? Why?"
"I wasn't sure… I thought I might break down if I did, or worse, that you'd look at me differently. I don't know. It's not rational, it's emotional, all right? I've got plenty of goddamn emotions."
"I'll say. Phoebe, first, if you'd broken down-"
"I said it wasn't logical." The shove she gave him to push him back had a little heat along with it. "Don't stand there trying to make it logical."
"Good point." He considered a minute, then reached into his back pocket for the flask Phin had given him.
"Oh God. Thank you." She took a short sip, then a long drink. "Oh Jesus." She leaned back against the car. "Oh Jesus, Duncan."
"I never…" He took back the flask for another quick pull. "It's not like I ever imagined. What happens to a person."
"The bomb guys call it pink mist."
He capped the flask, opened the car door for her. "You've been through it before?"
"Not like this." She waited until he was behind the wheel. "I've been on teams, a few times, when we weren't there soon enough, or something went wrong. I've never seen… nothing like this. I was so mad at him, I was so angry. About him getting married again and moving to Europe without giving Carly a thought." She rubbed the heels of her hands on her eyes. "I think it's worse, it's worse having those feelings in me for him than if we'd managed to be friends, or at least friendly. But that's what I had in me for him."