“I know his daughter.”
Hell. He’d wondered if Tina had put the puzzle pieces together. The woman was sharp. She’d been working in the EOD office when Cassidy Sherridan had gone in a few months back. Cassidy hadn’t headed to the office willingly. She’d been hunted, nearly shot right outside on the street in front of the EOD office.
“She’s trying to escape, isn’t she?” Tina asked.
Yes, Cassidy wanted out of the prison that had held her in check for her entire life. “Not at the cost of someone else’s life.” Cassidy would never go for a plan like that.
“It’s not just about her.” Her gaze seemed shadowed. Since when did Tina keep secrets from him? “I want to stop Devast, too. I want to help.”
He had to touch her. He shouldn’t. She was still recovering but...
His fingers trailed down her cheek. Like warm silk. “Help by staying alive.”
“I can do more.” Now she had anger of her own pushing through the words. “So I’m not an agent. I’ve been working with the EOD for years. I can keep a level head. I won’t panic. I have my medicine now, so I can control my attacks. I can do this.”
The problem was that he didn’t want her to “do this.” What he wanted was for her to be far away from danger. He forced his hand away from her and took a step back so the scent of strawberries wouldn’t be so tempting. “Go to your room. You should get some rest.” He turned away.
“Stop it.”
That wasn’t anger coming from Tina. It was full-on fury.
He glanced over his shoulder.
Her cheeks weren’t just a soft pink any longer. They were flushed a dark red. “Uh, Tina...”
“I don’t take orders from you, Lancaster. Whether I’m completing this mission or not—that isn’t your call. It’s mine. It’s my life.”
“A life that you could lose!”
“Pierce Hodges already lost his life.”
Pierce. His body tensed. Pierce Hodges had been the pilot on that plane. A good guy. Drew had worked with him before and—
“Pierce died because Devast was coming after me. Devast is going to keep coming. If we don’t stop him, innocent people are going to die.”
This was what she didn’t seem to get. “You’re innocent.”
Tina shook his head. “Not in his eyes. You really think you’re going to be able to convince him that he made a mistake? My life has been bound with Mercer’s since I was eighteen. You were trying to link him to Rachel, but you overlooked the fact that he’s been linked with me for too long.”
Eighteen?
“I won’t have more deaths on me. Not when I can do something to stop this.”
“You don’t know what you’ll be facing—”
Her chin lifted. “Maybe you don’t remember, but when we were in that hellish room and that jerk with the knife was getting ready to cut me—when he was getting ready to take a finger from me—I didn’t make a sound.”
He shook his head. He didn’t want to remember that moment. It twisted his guts.
“I’m not going to crumble. I don’t have your training, I get that. But I can do my part.”
He stared back at her.
Her eyelashes flickered. “I know what this is about.”
He doubted it. He was good at keeping his secrets.
She stalked toward him, stabbed her index finger into his chest. “It’s because of the attack I had. You can’t get past it.”
Drew shook his head. “That’s not—”
“I am not some little piece of fluff. Do you understand me? Yes, I had an asthma attack. My asthma gets severe—especially if smoke is billowing around me! But I’ve got it under control. I’m fine now.”
But he’d never forget how terrified he’d been. “I’m not going to risk—”
Her finger stopped its stabbing, but her eyes were bright with fury. “I’m not yours to risk, Agent.”
I feel like you are.
“I told you already. This is my life.”
But he felt like she was his.
“You think I’m some green girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing? That I’m just a healer. That’s what you said, right?”
There wasn’t any “just” about it. She saved lives. She’d saved plenty of agents. That was damn important.
“I killed a man when I was eighteen.”
There was that magic number again, only now he realized it was attached to a dark story that had changed her life.
“I can do it again, if I have to.”
She’d killed a man? His doc? Drew shook his head.
Her smile was sad. “Anyone can kill, under the right circumstances. Those circumstances...” The smile vanished as she swallowed. “They didn’t give me a choice.”
His heart was pounding in his chest, racing fast, but when Drew spoke, his voice came out flat. “What happened?” He had to know. It was getting to the point where he felt as though he had to know everything about her.
She backed up a step.
He caught her wrist, held her there. “What happened?” She didn’t get to drop a bombshell like this one and just walk away from him.
She straightened her spine. Her whole body seemed to tense as if she were bracing herself for the memory. “It’s one of those ‘wrong place, wrong time’ stories. They always end badly, you know.”
Pain echoed in her voice and seemed to strike right at his heart.
“My parents and I got caught in the middle of a bank robbery. When we walked into that bank, we didn’t realize what was happening until we heard the teller scream.”
She eased out a slow breath and continued. “My dad, he was a cop. He had his dress blues on that day. He always looked so good in them. My mom would call him her ‘handsome cop.’ And he did look handsome that day. I was proud of him. Always so proud.”
She pushed her left hand through her hair. Her eyes were on his, but Drew didn’t think Tina was actually seeing him. Her gaze seemed to be focused only on the pain of the past. “We went inside, thinking that we’d be in and out. We had dinner reservations at six that night.” She pushed out a hard breath. “We didn’t make dinner.”
“Tina...”
“As soon as they saw my dad, the robbers panicked. They screamed for him to get on the ground and to lift his hands up.”
He wanted her in his arms. But Drew didn’t move.