She was quiet for a moment. “Do you have a secure email?”

“Sure.”

“Give me the address.”

He rattled off the combination of letters and numbers.

“I’ll do my best,” she said, and hung up.

Chapter 42

George Washington Parkway

RILEY DIDN’T SPEAK after he dropped the bomb that Robin had just killed the wrong man. He wouldn’t answer any questions about who might have killed Amanda, and she finally grew frustrated and stared out the window at the darkening sky.

She watched the dimly lit scenery pass as Riley drove them into Virginia, getting her far away from D.C., to someplace safe. That place being his house. He was giving off clouds of black and gray shadows; she was trying very hard to control the synesthesia and ignore his anger. But it was becoming more and more difficult the crazier the day became. Riley was the first person who’d understood her gifts, accepted her despite them.

No. That wasn’t true. Amanda had, as well. Grief made her stomach seize, and she reached out to Riley, put her hand on his arm, seeking some sort of connection. She had to fix things, fast.

“Riley. I’m sorry. I reacted without thinking. He attacked me, and I, well, honestly, I don’t remember much.”

He shrugged off her hand. She set the offending palm in her lap and stared at it. It still had bits of his blackness swirling from the tips of her fingers.

He didn’t look at her, kept his eyes on the road. The sun had set; the lights of oncoming traffic were blinding her.

“You shot the man three times. Tortured him, and didn’t manage to gain any usable information. Is it that easy to forget, Robin? Can you turn yourself off so well now that you don’t even feel?”

She shook her head. “That’s not fair. I feel. I feel too much. That’s the problem. It sounds like a convenient excuse, but I’ve never lied to you, Riley. I’ve lost the edge that allowed me to stay neutral all these years. I can’t find it. And until I do...”

He ignored that. “Atlantic called. Amanda got herself into some serious shit. She smuggled out an SD card with encrypted data she’d stolen from a pharmaceutical company in France. And she brought a group of vaccines into the country. I can only assume someone followed her, tried to retrieve the info and killed her in the process.”

She thought about Cattafi, lying gray and unmoving in the hospital bed. “If Amanda was the target, why kill all the people around her, too? Because everyone she’s been in contact with is dead, or near to it.”

“We don’t know.”

She looked at his big, sure hands on the wheel. Was it possible that those hands had caressed her body in the night? They were lethal, deadly hands, worse even than her own. It was what drew them together, the understanding they had about why and how they needed to do their jobs. No wasted energy. No wasted death. Their code. How their lives operated.

She’d broken that unspoken pledge. She’d killed out of anger. Shame flooded through her, waves and waves of pulsing red.

She tried to pull it together. Weakness wasn’t allowed. Even admitting she’d lost her edge was a betrayal of their code. They weren’t allowed human emotions. And she knew she had them, and that was going to cost her everything.

“Does Atlantic know what was on the SD card?”

“No,” Riley said. “And the D.C. police have it in their evidence locker.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. There’s no way they’d be able to get through the encryptions. They’d need a major cryptographer, all the right programs, everything. I know my sister. She is—was—the best at what she did. The information is safe for now at least.”

“If only that were true, Robin, but I think you’re wrong. Metro has a chick from the FBI working with them. I’m sure the stiffs from Quantico have already gotten their grubby little paws on it and decrypted the information.”

She let that sink in. If the FBI was involved, things would be more difficult, but not unsalvageable. Not yet.

“Damn it, Riley, what the hell did Amanda stumble across? And why did the State Department want it? The email she received came directly from the Africa desk. She was bringing it in for this Kruger guy.”

“I don’t have an answer for you, Robbie.”

She took the nickname as a good sign. Maybe he had forgiven her. She straightened, forced his darkness away, filled her space with a light blue fog that felt calming, took a breath. “So what is our mission?”

He looked over to her, his green eyes muddy with anger. He was volatile, that was part of the attraction. He was so very much alive. Her calm vanished; the car went black again.

“My mission is to get you to safety and recover the SD card and the vaccines so we know what the hell is going on. Your mission is to lay low. You’ll stay here until I return.”

“Come on. That’s not fair. I need to do something. I can’t just sit around, knowing my sister’s killer is prowling the streets.” And that I did nothing to help her when she asked, she thought, but kept it to herself.

“Atlantic’s orders,” he growled. “Nonnegotiable. So don’t even try lobbying me.”

Damn it all. Atlantic had given her a life when hers was collapsing in on itself. If he was pissed at her, it was like going to jail, or worse. Siberia, without a coat.

“I want to talk to him.”

“He’s out of touch. We’re here.”

Riley turned down a dirt track toward the water. He lived on a houseboat south of Old Town Alexandria. He liked that he could pull up anchor at any time and sail away, though he never really did. He wasn’t ever home long enough to enjoy more than a glass of wine on the deck, watching the sun slip into the horizon, or the occasional sunrise, billowing pinks leading into soft yellow days, or, more often, sleepless nights, the water around him glowing silver in the moonlight.

At least, that’s what he told her. He could be poetic when he wanted to, when the night made anything possible. Now was definitely not one of those times.

She had never been here. He always came to her. It was how they worked. Compartmentalized from each other. She couldn’t help herself; she was dead curious about where he lived.

He pulled into the parking lot and practically dragged her to the boat. Inside the sliding glass doors, he gestured toward a round wooden table, built into the floor. He opened a cabinet, pulled out a scrambler and a laptop, set things up and called in on his satellite phone.

“I have Nightingale. She’s A-OK.”

They heard three clicks, affirmation of the transmission, then he shut it all down and stowed the gear. “There’s food in the fridge. Help yourself.”

He started toward the doors.

“Hey. Where are you going?”

He turned and gave her a sharp green glance. “To clean up your mess.”

“That’s uncalled for. Why are you so mad at me?”

He ignored her, kept moving toward the door, a big man with broad shoulders and strong arms, the swirling black accompanying him like a matador’s dirty cape.

“Riley. Don’t walk away.”

That stopped him.

Back still to her, he spoke carefully and evenly. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry.”

He turned, and she was overcome by the colors of the emotions swirling around him. Greens and blues and pinks and yellows. Colors at odds with his harsh words. Before she could process things properly, he had her in his arms, his mouth hard on hers.

The kiss lasted forever, or only a moment, she wasn’t sure. Then he pushed her away savagely and walked out the doors and up the dock, away from her, without looking back, and when the engine of his car turned over, she felt the small interior walls she’d built over the past months with him crumble to dust.

He’d just said goodbye, and she hadn’t stopped him.

She didn’t cry. There was no point. They’d always been prickly together, and it was a thing of convenience, of mutual admiration, not love. Never love. She didn’t do love. And God knows, neither did Riley.