Scott’s gaze sharpened. “What about Richards? He loaned you the bike.”
“No. I didn’t want to come off as a victim.” She paused. She’d probably blown whatever credibility she had on that score in the alley just now. Even so, it helped her ego to say the words out loud. “I’m a cop. I was armed. I can take care of myself. I did that.”
When she was done Scott’s expression was so hard and cold his face might as well have been made from local Cockeysville granite. His eyes were scary. His once kissable mouth was pinched to a white line.
After a second he scraped back in an almost violent action and left the table.
Worry curled through Cole’s middle as she watched him stiff-arm his way through the front doors of the coffee shop. But she had seen the look on his face. It said Follow at your own risk.
He needed space. She would respect that. For five minutes. And then she was pretty sure she’d be in need of something to smash, too.
Scott paced back and forth in front of the shop, trying to marshal his emotions. Three years earlier he wouldn’t have stopped on the sidewalk. He would have thrown a leg over his motorcycle and roared off into the night in search of X. He would have searched until he found him or, if not him, some Pagan with whom he could start a fight so he could pound on him until he felt better. The outlaw way. He’d absorbed that part of his undercover persona a little too well. He’d been a Ranger, and SWAT. He knew how to inflict pain. But his temper was what had washed him out of the most elite Special Ops.
“You think with your heart, dickwad” was Gabe’s affectionate explanation after Scott had been told he was out. “You can’t do what we do and think with heart or dick or any part of you that is attached to emotion. You’re a good man. Lots of good men aren’t cut out for this. That’s not a bad thing. Hell, it might be a good thing. Learning to live without essential parts of yourself comes at a great cost. The folks got one idiot for a son. You be the upstanding citizen.”
Except his parents were minus one son. And “the upstanding citizen” was not how he was viewed by at least one of them. Not that that mattered a flying fuck at the moment.
Scott wiped his mouth with a hand. Even in the so-called real world emotions could fuck a guy up. Rage roiled within him, making the coffee in his belly feel like lit jet fuel.
A year of anger management teetered on being blown to hell because something had finally gotten under that bunker of control he’d built between “then” and “now” with real blood, sweat, and unshed tears. That something was Cole’s safety.
The thought of anyone hurting Cole made him want to tear up shit.
Instead, he gulped back the hot tangle of rage and anxiety choking him, and continued pacing until the action began to slow the hammering of his heart.
Cole had had to face X without any idea of who he was or why he had accosted her. If she’d been any less prepared, or unarmed, that meeting might have had a far different conclusion. And that would have been on his head. He hadn’t warned her.
Scott’s sudden burst of profanity, while spoken low, startled a couple coming toward him. They hesitated on the sidewalk then gave him a wide berth as they hurried past into the coffee shop.
He gave himself points for continuing to pace but the need to punch something took a while to control.
When the blinding haze of anger lifted he noticed Cole standing a few feet away, arms and legs crossed as she leaned against a lamppost.
When he stopped before her, she tilted her head to look up at him. “You done?”
His face was still hard with anger. “You should have told me.”
Worn out and battered by ecstasy run over by terror, Cole could no longer be calm or accommodating.
She launched herself away from the pole, getting up in his face as righteous anger powered her words. “I’m not your damn girlfriend.”
She lowered her voice but not its intensity. “I’m your partner. So you’re going to tell me what it is that I don’t know. Now.”
Scott found he still had the capacity to smile. “You want to take this somewhere private?”
*
“What part of ‘don’t get yourself dead’ did you not get?” Dave Wilson rubbed his forehead, an action Scott could perceive through his cell phone, because they were doing FaceTime.
“The essential part.” Scott shifted on the park bench where he sat. “You know as well as I do, he’s calling me out. First my parents, now my task force partner. X will continue to escalate. I need to stop him before people instead of things get hurt. At least this way I can control when and where.”
“I can’t get you backup on this, you know that.”
“Right. No probable cause.” By the time he got hard evidence people might have been injured, or worse.