She studied me, her expression cool, hiding any pain she felt behind her clever eyes as she weighed her options.

“He’d worn a wire and recorded some conversations.”

“Why did you lie when I first asked you?” I softened my grip and turned her arm over to look at the soft inside of her wrist, so small and delicate, then returned my gaze to hers.

I squeezed again, hurting her.

She flinched.

“Why did you lie?”

“I don’t know.”

We locked gazes while water boiled over in the pot. “Do you have access to the recordings?”

Her jaw tightened, and I twisted her arm behind her back, standing so close our bodies touched, hers small and soft, mine wanting.

“Yes.”

I waited, twisting again so that she cried out.

“You’re hurting me!”

“Where?” My voice came clear and calm compared to her panicked cry.

“At the library where I volunteer.”

“You volunteer at the library?”

“I like to read.”

“Where exactly?”

Water spilled out from under the lid of the pasta, hissing as it fell to the stove top.

“Mateo saved the file on one of the computers. A public computer. No one will find it.”

I smiled. “Clever.”

“You’re really hurting me.”

As if I needed a reminder. Hell, she was the one who needed one. “I told you I would.”

She didn’t have a comeback for that. I released her, and she stepped back, rubbing her arm. I turned down the burner.

“Did you listen to the recordings?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He’d only done it the day before he disappeared. I found out the next morning when I went in for my shift and found an envelope tucked under the keyboard at my workstation with my name on the front. I recognized Mateo’s handwriting and looked when I got a chance. It was a scribbled note with a file path. That’s all. I didn’t have time to download it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“Omission is lying.”

“This is a fucked-up situation. I don’t know left from right, and you go from torturing me to…to…” she gestured around the kitchen. “To fucking playing house.”

“We’re not fucking playing house.”

“No fucking joke. My brother is dead. He died because of what was on that recording. Excuse me if I don’t give it up without a second thought to a man I called Death!”

I backed off, filled a glass with water from the tap, and drank, forcing myself to breathe, to calm the fuck down. “What were you going to do with the file?” I finally asked.

She shrugged a shoulder. “Depended on what was on it. I guess turn them over, get Victor arrested, sent to prison.”

“That’s naive.”

“You think I don’t know that?”