Halina suddenly choked on the memories and stopped short.
Her appreciation of how well he’d treated her evidently didn’t move anything inside Mitch. His eyes narrowed and his face tightened in anger.
“So . . . what?” he asked. “You felt obligated to let me down easy? Thought the way you handled it was more . . . humane?” He laughed at the absurdity of the idea, but then cut it short abruptly as something ignited in his eyes. “Wait. You knew? You knew all those months, while I was killing myself to shut that company down, that it wouldn’t happen?”
Halina tensed her muscles. Clenched her teeth. This was what she’d been afraid of—unintended information spilling over. He was so damned smart. He had the most amazing way of piecing puzzles together. Now her mind was pinging around Classified Chemical searching for damage-control scenarios.
“You just let me fight for it and stress over it,” he said, his voice rising again. “Just watched as it ate away at me. As I fought myself right out of that job.”
“Don’t put that on me,” she said. “I tried to get you to back off the case. I tried everything to get your mind on something else—I made love to you, tried to take you on vacation, tried to talk you into moving to the west coast, hid your home files. I crashed your computer, for God’s sake. But you wouldn’t give up.”
Mitch pushed from his chair, his eyes both shocked and angry. “That was you?”
Halina’s breath froze in her chest. What had she said? Where had she gone wrong? He was too clever. Too perceptive. She should never have tried to explain anything, never given him any information.
He advanced on her, nearly a foot taller and staring down with so much fury burning in his eyes, she knew whatever misstep she’d taken, it had been huge.
Dex put himself between them, looked up, and barked.
“You destroyed my office and took those files? The files that connected Classified Chemical with Schaeffer?”
Oh. Fuck.
Her stomach iced over and dropped.
She didn’t have to worry about that family blood becoming a problem for her—she sucked at this spy business.
God, she felt so stupid. So . . . inept. She crossed her arms defensively. “I didn’t hurt anything in your office.”
He lifted a hand toward Halina. Her mind sharpened. Her arms dropped to her sides. Dex growled. Mitch’s gaze was shining bright green and laser sharp as he put a rigid index finger to her chest. “If you lied about that needle invention, I’ll find out. If you took a payoff from Schaeffer, I’ll find out. And I swear to God, Halina—”
Something moved in her peripheral vision, but Halina didn’t remove her gaze from Mitch. The amount of anger he was emitting had an unnerving sizzle sliding over her skin.
Mitch looked toward the movement, immediately dropped his hand, straightened, and curbed his anger. And Halina knew Christy stood nearby.
“Everything . . .” the attendant started hesitantly, “all right back here? You’ve even got poor Dex riled.”
Halina dropped into a seat next to the window and across the table from where Mitch had been sitting. Dex perched faithfully at her side and rested his head on her thigh.
Christy offered two fresh beers to Mitch even though he hadn’t touched the others. He took them with an absent gesture toward Halina. “We’re just . . . hashing out some issues.”
“Halina?” Christy looked past Mitch. “I’m not kidding about tossing him out. The copilot’s my little brother, but he’s a big guy, and he’ll do anything I tell him to do.”
Halina huffed a laugh and glanced from the corner of her eye toward Christy. “Could he throw me out? I’m ready to go.”
Christy turned those bright blue eyes on Mitch. “Come on, Mitch.”
“Okay. Okay.” He set the beers on the table and raked his fingers through his hair. “I’ll take it down a notch.”
Christy leaned in and lowered her voice, but Halina still heard the woman murmur, “Better take it down a couple or I’ll have something to say about our family accepting your charter again. We’ve only got twenty minutes left on the flight. Behave yourself.”
Halina didn’t feel worthy of Christy’s loyalty. It didn’t matter that she’d made the best decisions she could have made at the time. It didn’t matter that her decisions had kept Mitch alive and safe. It didn’t matter that her decisions had kept a psychopath power monger from creating an army of super killers. Halina still saw herself as Mitch did—a deceitful, selfish, manipulative liar willing to do anything to keep herself safe, including fuck him. An evil-minded scientist who’d contributed to Schaeffer’s sick scheme and let him run free to harm others, which, no doubt made Halina just as guilty of the man’s crimes in Mitch’s mind.
Christy returned to the front.
Mitch rubbed the back of his neck. “Why did you do that? With the files and my computer? Why were you trying to get me off the case?”
Halina took a deep drink of her juice and winced at the tangy sweetness. Her taste buds twanged and tingles spread through the pivot points on her jaw. She set down the glass.
“Schaeffer knew we were dating. I don’t know how, I never told him. But he came to me one day and very simply stated that if you didn’t get off the Classified case, you were going to lose your job. Then insinuated that I might want to help you out if I didn’t want to see that happen to you.”
Halina stared at the table and concentrated on plugging this little leak in Pandora’s box without either creating more or breaking the damn lid off. And she tried to do it without any more lies. If she had to remember one more lie, she might as well just check herself into an asylum.
“I shrugged it off. But then you came home talking about the problems. And then the problems got worse. And worse. And worse. And I’d find myself in an elevator with Schaeffer or pass him in the hall or see him in a meeting and get, ‘How’s Mitch’s job going, Halina?’ or ‘I hear those high-stress jobs can really put a lot of pressure on relationships,’ or ‘One black mark on an attorney’s reputation can kill his chances to advance.’ I knew if I didn’t try to do something . . .”
Halina downed the rest of her juice, forced it past her throat, tight with the half-truth forming there.
“It doesn’t seem so monumental now, but at the time, your losing a job you loved so much seemed like the end of the world to me.”
Before he plugged in the time line to those facts and realized they were several months askew—but very true and an important piece to a bigger crack in Pandora’s box—Halina lightened the subject.
“So this is a family deal, this charter service?”
“Yeah.” He turned to stare out at the clouds. “The brothers are all pilots. Christy flies too, but prefers not to. Tyler flew for the air force. I represented him and that’s how I found out about this charter service.”
He turned away from the window and stood without looking at Halina. “I need a break. I’m going to call Seth.”
Mitch walked toward the front of the plane and Halina stared at the cream leather seat he’d vacated. She knew he didn’t believe her. But it sure would have been nice to hear even a couple words of support or understanding . . . even just acknowledgment of the stress she’d gone through.
She certainly didn’t expect, need, or even want gratitude. Just . . . understanding. But it didn’t look as if that would be coming. And she ached with the punch of his dismissal and rejection all rolled into one.