What did she want from him? “No. You said what you had to say, Phoebe. I get it. I won’t bug you again.”
“You don’t get anything. You don’t understand and that’s why I want to talk. You’re saying all the right things, but I can see you’re still blaming yourself. It’s not right. Let’s talk about it and maybe you’ll understand what’s going on.”
Tag was right. Chicks talked too much. Better to shove that shit deep and move on. He was going back to hookers. Hookers didn’t need to talk. They got the job done and went their own way. “We’re cool. I won’t hit on you again and then you don’t have to lock me out of the bathroom. It’s as simple as that.”
Her face flushed a nice shade of pink. “Is that all you’re upset about? That I locked you out of the bathroom?”
Maybe it would be better if he played this cool. He spent all his damn life being an earnest idiot. He wasn’t going to fall to her feet and beg her to let him in. It wouldn’t work. He’d played her fool more than enough. “My toothbrush was in there. Oral hygiene is very important to me.”
A long sigh came from her as she shook her head in obvious frustration. “Jesse, please talk to me. I know I hurt you and I want you to understand.”
He held a hand up. “It’s cool. Hey, it wasn’t that great for me anyway. We definitely don’t have to do it again. At least I don’t have any desire to do it again. I don’t think you do either.”
Now she went a pasty white and there was no way to miss the way tears clouded her eyes. “All right then. I’m going upstairs for a while. Let me know if you need something.”
Shit. He started to get up to go after her, but forced himself to sit back down. He wasn’t the bad guy here. He was trying to put some much-needed distance between them. Yeah, he’d been a douchebag, but that didn’t mean he should run after her and fall at her feet.
“That was rough.” Kai Ferguson leaned against the doorframe. He was dressed in khakis and a white button-down shirt with black loafers. It was what Jesse liked to think of as Kai’s shrink uniform. He wore the same clothes, though in different colors, almost every day. At night he wore leathers, but even then there was something soothing about the psychologist. Despite his neat clothing, his hair was long, brushing his shoulders, though he usually had it back in a queue. He reminded Jesse of a brainy surfer half the time.
It struck him that Kai Ferguson likely had secrets of his own. There was probably something nasty bubbling under his calm surface.
Damn but he wished Kai hadn’t been a witness to that scene. “Sorry. You didn’t need to see that.”
“To know you’re in trouble? No. All I had to do was read the file on Phoebe Ian sent me to know that.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at some conference?” He’d started working at Sanctum a few months before, setting up an office in the previously unused second floor of the building.
“Came back because Tag said he could use some help. Apparently Alex and Eve’s baby arrived early. They weren’t expecting him for another week, but the birth mother went into labor yesterday morning. The baby’s perfectly healthy so they have leave to take him home. Cute little thing, but now Eve wants maternity leave, so I’m here to take her place. The downside is I was making time with a schizophrenia specialist. The upside, I got a private jet all to myself, complete with top secret files. Apparently you got the files, too. Any thoughts?”
He would do just about anything to not have to think about what had happened between him and Phoebe. “I think it’s one of the soldiers who went missing. I’ve pulled their files in particular.”
“I agree. I talked to Tag when I hit the ground and he told me your theory. Very smart and I believe accurate. I’ve been going over the psych evaluations. Naturally there’s nothing that would cause alarm or they wouldn’t be on the team. I would really like to interview them. I think the real proof isn’t going to be in words on a page. I need to meet the men. There were two things that concerned me.”
Jesse sat up straighter. If Kai had something that bugged him, he wanted to hear it. “Yes?”
“First of all, Deke resisted when the team went in to save him. They actually had to knock him out to get him back to base. According to the reports from the squad leader, he even broke one of their noses and afterward he told them he didn’t want to go home.”