“I know she didn’t.” He touched her shoulder. “We’re going to do everything in our power to put this man away for the rest of his life. I promise you that.”
Because there was no way he could promise he’d catch anyone. Some criminals got away, just as this one had escaped Selina once. They could only do their best and hope to hell it was enough.
When he returned to his office, Selina sat where he’d left her, staring off into space.
“What was that about?”
She startled, her gaze snapping up to meet his. “What was what?”
“You were all gung ho to find the connection between your old crimes and this one, and when the sister arrives you barely ask a single question. What happened?” Everything he’d seen or heard about her said she was confident, driven, and not one to step aside in her investigations.
But vulnerability flashed in her gaze. The emotion was gone as quickly as it had come, but he knew he’d seen it. She shrugged and looked away. “You were doing a good job. No need to get in your way.”
“I don’t buy it.” He sat in the chair beside her rather than return to his side of the desk. “Something about this case gets to you. Something about Dorothy got to you.”
Her chin lifted, her gaze cooling. “Nothing gets to me. Not anymore.”
“I find that difficult to believe.” He reached out to brush a finger over her cheekbone. “And I won’t think less of you if you tell me when something is bothering you.”
Tears sheened her eyes. Then horror flashed over her face and she jerked away from him, turning to face the wall and clearing her throat. “I’m fine.”
Since he could understand not wanting to cry at work, he let that blatant lie slide, but every protective instinct he had roared to the surface. It went beyond what he’d feel for a colleague—the depth of the emotion stunned him. He slammed the lid down on it. No. He hadn’t felt anything like that for someone he was sleeping with since ... Shit, not since his wife. And look how well that had gone.
He thrust to his feet and moved around his desk. Getting involved with Selina would be a mistake. Caring for her would be a mistake. They were working together now, so the smartest thing to do would be to withdraw and keep things strictly professional. A twist in his chest told him it might be too late for that, but he tamped down on that, too.
Snatching up his phone, he punched in the speed-dial number to call Peyton. He set it to speaker so that Selina could hear. “Any news on my Normal hunch?”
“Not exactly.” The voice echoed through the phone and the door, and Peyton stuck his head in, closing his cell phone. “Apparently, my usual contact on the Normal side went out on maternity leave last week. Now I’m getting jerked around by her captain. He apparently has a real hate on the FBI. I’m tempted to let Cavalli take a bite out of his ass.”
“Nah. I’m the Normal liaison around here. Let me handle it. Thanks for trying.” In fact, Jack had a basketball match scheduled for the next morning with a couple of his Normal contacts. Old marine buddies who’d gone into law enforcement like he had. The thought of burning off a few hours with his friends was a welcome one. Sometimes the normalcy of Normals was a good way to decompress from Magickal troubles. It would be as good a time as any to see if they’d run across any drained bodies lately.
“You don’t need me, then.” The taciturn wolf tucked his cell into his pocket.
“Nope, we’ll be fine on our own.” Jack offered her a grin. “Won’t we, Selina?”
“Fine,” she echoed. “And it’s Grayson, thanks.”
When she looked at him, there was nothing to indicate that she knew him any better than some random FBI agent she’d been forced to work with. It didn’t piss him off that she’d shut him out so quickly—it intrigued him.
This wasn’t the sexy, interested woman who’d been at the wedding the night before, and it definitely wasn’t the soft, sleepy lover in his bed this morning.
He understood why they called her the ice queen now, but he’d seen the other side of her, so it was just another interesting layer for him. He had a feeling she wouldn’t care to know her frosty demeanor didn’t put him off at all.
It just challenged him, made him want to strip away the control and make her scream for him again. Which was a problem, since he knew he should forget about their one evening together. For her sake and his.
“Grayson, right. My mistake. I just got used to calling you Selina last night.”
If her eyes had been cold before, they had all the warmth of black ice now. Her gaze went between Peyton and Jack, as if she couldn’t believe he’d said something in front of the werewolf. “Excuse me?”
“At the wedding.” Jack arched an innocent eyebrow. “Everyone was pretty informal. My apologies.”
If she didn’t want anyone to know that the hotter, wilder side of her existed, then that was her business. He wasn’t going to let his colleagues know what they were missing out on.
“Right. I’ll leave you to it, then.” Peyton was gone without another word, the door whispering closed behind him.
“What the fuck?” A muscle twitched in Selina’s jaw, and for a moment Jack was pretty certain she was going to blast him with the kind of spell that would turn him into a braying ass. Like one of those medieval fairy tales meant to teach humans a lesson about their stupidity.
He held up a hand as if that might ward her off, but if she decided to hex his ass, there was nothing he could do about it. There was no counter spell he could throw out to save himself. Instead, he met her gaze squarely. “I wouldn’t say anything, Selina. Not to Peyton. Not to anyone. You don’t have to worry about me. This is my job and I’m a professional. Which means that my private life is private.” He shrugged. “It won’t make any difference in how professionally I treat you, but if you want me to call you Grayson here, I will.”
“I’d prefer it,” she said. Her gaze went from sulfuric to cautious. “I will make you bleed if you do anything to compromise this case for me.”
“This case?” He cocked his head. Her career, he could understand. Her reputation, yeah. But “this case”? That seemed a little more weight than he would have put on one assignment. She had to have worked hundreds of them—maybe thousands—if she’d been doing this since the seventies.
Her expression flattened, and he knew he’d get no answers from her. He tried not to let it frustrate him. Despite what they’d done together the night before, they still barely knew each other. She had no real reason to trust him. Yet. Even if he didn’t pursue her anymore, he was still working with her, and that required a certain amount of trust. He wanted that from her, probably more than he should. He wanted her to tell him why this case upset her enough to almost lose her cool.
“Just call me Grayson.” She flicked away an invisible piece of lint on her pants. “It’ll be easier for all involved.”
Easier for her, she meant. He didn’t argue with her, merely nodded.
Brushing a wisp of short hair out of her eyes, Selina lifted her chin in that stubborn way he was coming to associate with her. “How long before we get the Winston files from the All-Magickal Council?”
There was a subtle subject change. He almost smiled, but he had enough self-preservation not to make that fatal mistake.
“They’re sending a courier over with copies of her paperwork. She was about two hundred years old, and they haven’t digitized records that far back yet. They have a backlog of older Magickals.”