He got off the phone to check flights, and I finally got out of the car to join my fellow officers. It turned out that some of the family had come home, and the deputy guarding the scene had let them change the gate code. Leduc was yelling at someone over the intercom as the gates swung open. He was breathing heavily as he turned back to get in his car. Something must have shown on my face, because he said, “Looks like your personal phone call didn’t go well.”
r /> “My personal business is none of yours.”
“No need to snap at me because one of your boyfriends is getting out of hand.”
I stepped up to him, invading the hell out of his personal space. He was so much bigger than me it probably looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. “Fine, I was trying to be nice, but if you don’t want nice, we can do it the other way. I was calling another marshal for backup, because after having a fucking gun pointed at me by you, I felt we might need more guns on our side.”
I was sorry I’d said the words as soon as they left my mouth. I didn’t even have to see the pain in Leduc’s eyes to be sorry. The cold, dead stare that replaced the pain was chilling, like someone had walked over my grave. I’d given him a target for all his rage and fear—me. So stupid, so avoidable, so my own damn fault.
9
WHEN WE ALL got back in our respective cars, Newman tried not to be angry with me, but he was upset and couldn’t hide it. I finally saved him the struggle and said, “I behaved badly back there, and I’m sorry.”
Newman’s hands were gripping the steering wheel a little too tight as he tried to keep his voice even. “Aren’t you the one who told me, ‘Don’t be sorry. Do better’?”
“One of the reasons I’m more patient with other people’s rookie mistakes is that I had my share of them. Having a temper that made my mouth run away with the rest of me was one of them.”
“We had things calmed down with Duke,” he said as he eased between the now-open gates and followed the sheriff up the driveway.
“I know, and I am sorry that I lost my temper and made things worse again.” Some sense of movement made me look behind us in time to watch the gates ease shut.
“I called you in to help make things better, not worse,” he said. The trees were huge on either side of the gravel driveway. Again I got the sense that the estate had been here long enough to become one with the forest around us.
“I’m aware of that,” I said, and I could already feel myself getting irritated with the fact that he was harping on it.
My temper is better than it was a few years ago, but I will always have it bubbling close to the surface. One of the things I’d learned in therapy is that fixing your issues isn’t the same thing as getting rid of them. You discard the things that no longer serve you, but some things are so much a part of you that you can’t get rid of them without destroying who you are and how you function as a person. My temper was one of those, but more than that, it was part of my aggression, and aggression was how I did my job and protected the ones I loved, how I succeeded more than I failed. Society views aggressive women as bitches, but sometimes being a bitch is the only way to survive. I’ll take survival over being Miss Congeniality any day.
“You were visibly upset when you got off the phone. You can’t blame Duke for noticing that.”
“No, but I can blame him for making the remark about my boyfriends.”
“I’ve seen people say worse to you, and you let it go,” he said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“So why now? What did Forrester say on the phone that got you so rattled?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You know, I defend you when people say that you’re sleeping with Forrester. I tell them, ‘She wouldn’t have been best man at his wedding if his wife didn’t trust Blake,’ but you’re acting like the phone call was more personal than just partners.”
“Are you asking me if I’m sleeping with Ted?”
“No,” he said, “absolutely not.” He sounded offended, almost panicked in distancing himself from the question, which meant either he really didn’t want to know or he really did.
I debated how much to share with him and finally realized that if I was truly afraid of Olaf and he might become our backup, Newman had a right to know at least part of it. I was still debating when the driveway spilled out into a circle with a huge fountain in the middle of it. The house rose up like a dark cliff face. Even the few lit windows didn’t take away from the sensation that the house was part of the landscape like the forest that bordered everything.
“Is that just a huge-ass fountain or a moderate-size swimming pool?” I asked.
He gave a small laugh, but it was a start. “It’s a fountain. The water around it is too shallow for anything but wading.”
Leduc was out of his car and yelling at another man in a similar uniform. We couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the porch light above them let us see their faces. The second man was fighting not to recoil from the sheriff’s pointing finger, which was stabbing at his chest. If it had been a knife, it would have gone through his heart.
“Who’s Leduc yelling at?” I asked.
“Rico Vargas. Deputy Rico Vargas.” Just the tone in Newman’s voice made me raise an eyebrow.
“I take it he’s not your favorite deputy,” I said.