He held her gaze. “Thin ice.”
“I’ve got to do this, Maddocks. You know I do. The RCMP investigators are not going to loop me in the way that I need to be—”
“Or want to be”
“Need. Okay? I need this. This is my sister. My other half. My DNA.”
“Maybe,” he cautioned. “It must still be confirmed.” He got up, went to the counter in his small galley, and snagged the bottle of whiskey. He held it up. “Another?”
She shook her head. He poured himself a second tot. He was quiet as he recorked the bottle. Oddly so. He turned and looked out of the portlight above the sink as he took a sip. It was black as pitch out, rain tapping against the pane as the yacht rocked gently in the wind.
“Maddocks?”
With his back still to her, he said, “You could leave it all in the RCMP’s hands, you know, Angie. Offer them what you have so far. Your memories, what you got from the hypnosis sessions—do an identikit of the blue-eyed man you saw or use a forensic artist. If the cradle case is solvable, they can and will solve it without your active involvement.” He turned to look at her. “You don’t have to do this yourself—maybe you shouldn’t.”
She did not like the feeling that the look in his eyes—or his words—put into her stomach. Just the thought of dropping this case now filled her with dread, claustrophobia. She could not tolerate sitting at that social media desk, twiddling her thumbs, if she did not have this case to occupy her. She needed to do something, anything, before Grablowski went to the media and the story broke all around her. She would not be a sitting, reactive victim. She had to act.
“It’s going to hurt your probation,” he said quietly. “Messing in the RCMP’s case. How long do you think it’ll be before they contact Vedder about it? You already cut it fine holding back that evidence. You’re lucky Pietrikowski did not slap you with a warrant. You need to stay clean if you want a future as a cop, Angie.”
Irritation sparked in her. “I’m just going to the mainland for the weekend. I’m going to visit a man who might have known me from before the cradle incident, that’s all. I’m going to ask him if I had a sister, a mother, what happened to them. As a civilian, never mind a cop. That’s my right, Maddocks.”
He looked doubtful. “Like I said, thin ice. Because you’re not just a civilian. You’re a cop on probation. Tell me you didn’t use the fact that you are law enforcement in order to get that interview with Milo Belkin tomorrow.”
She thunked her glass onto the table and lurched to her feet, unwilling, unable to face the aggravating logic in his words. “I need to leave. Got to try to grab a few hours’ sleep. It’s late. Ferry leaves early.” She reached for her coat, which hung on a hook by the stairs that led up to the deck.
“Stay, Angie,” he said quietly. “Finish your drink. Stay the night, please.”
She hesitated, her hand on her jacket.
He set his glass down and came up behind her. Turning her around, he looked down into her face. Her chest crunched at the sight of the hot, dark emotion simmering in his gorgeous deep-blue eyes, those dense, dark lashes.
“I can’t let you leave like this, angry.” He slid his hand under her fall of hair, cupped the back of her neck. His grip was warm. Assertive. Demanding. Again she wondered about his unusual mood, that strange energy that seemed to be simmering in him tonight. He traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. Heat rushed into her belly. Want—fierce and sharp and sudden and desperate—erupted inside her. For something beyond sex. A raw yearning for deep connection. It was a feeling she couldn’t articulate, and it was powerful and overriding and terrifying, so she resisted it, pulling up her cop coping mechanisms instead. Distance. Intellectualization. Walls that were high and cold and safe, that protected her feelings from the rest of the world.
“I can’t,” she said coolly, ducking out from his touch and taking her coat from the hook. She shrugged into it, wincing as the motion tore at the injured tissue in her arm. “It’s almost 1:00 a.m. I need to be up at five to catch the ferry, or I won’t make it to Hansen by noon.”
She started up the stairs. “See you Monday,” she called over her shoulder, not looking back. She pushed out of the hatch. Salt wind slapped her face with rain. As she climbed off the yacht and onto the dock, Angie felt as though she’d just crossed a threshold, taken a step away from all that was light and warm and good to embark on a journey she could only take alone. If she turned around and looked back into Maddocks’s eyes, she’d be swayed by his logic, and she’d not have the strength to do it.
And she had to do it.
CHAPTER 35
SATURDAY, JANUARY 6
Maddocks grabbed his coat and rushed up onto the deck after Angie. She was already striding along the rain-swept dock, wind whipping her hair and the hem of her coat.
“Angie!” he called as he clambered over the side of his boat and went after her.
She stopped, turned. Her face appeared ghost-white under the mist-haloed dock lights.
“Phone me,” he said, nearing her. “Promise that you’ll call and let me know how it went with Belkin.”
She hesitated. Wind lashed a strand of wet hair across her face. And she looked so alone, and he loved her—everything about this irascible, lone-wolf-rogue woman. He respected her, and he loved her. And he felt as though she was slipping away. And he was worried about her. Maddocks at heart knew that he was a rescuer—he wanted to rescue Angie as much as she didn’t want him to save her. Because she wanted to rescue herself. Yet she was having trouble doing it.
“Okay, sure.” She turned, hesitated, and then swung back to face him. It sent a punch of relief through his stomach.
“I never did ask how it went with Ginny—your dinner.”
“Fine. It went good. She’s getting on with her life, doesn’t want her dad’s help and all that.” He smiled ruefully. Wind gusted and rain came down harder. He blinked against it. “So basically it’s business as usual,” he said. “Although her mother would rather she moved back home and is making damned sure I know it.”
Something shifted in Angie’s face—a hesitancy at the mention of his ex-wife. “You didn’t tell me how the barcode case is going, either,” she said.
He hadn’t wanted to. He was still reeling over Sophia Tarasov’s murder, at having the RCMP and task force swooping in, emasculating their team. Telling Angie would have been too much on top of what she’d just endured over the last few days. Guilt pinged through Maddocks at another sudden, darker realization: Tarasov’s tongue being excised, a possible Russian organized crime hit, the secretive task force—it was all highly sensitive and confidential stuff, and maybe, just maybe, a part of him deep down inside didn’t fully trust Angie with it all right now. She still needed to see that shrink, sort a lot of things out.