Assuming he even wanted inside where she lived. The issue was how to best protect her, and it was hard to know what was worse—her in there alone with him on the perimeter. Or him in there with her.

Dimly, he heard his stomach growl and the sound made him feel keenly the number of hours that had passed since he’d eaten last. But he shrugged that off, just as he had countless times in the field.

Mind over matter, mind over body . . . mind over everything.

He just wished like hell he knew what Grier and her pops were talking about.

Standing in her kitchen and staring at her father as he looked at her little lineup of what-the-hells, Grier had so many questions she didn’t know where to start.

One thing was certain: When her father reached out to pick up the business card, his hand was trembling ever so slightly. Which in anybody else was the equivalent of a full-blown epileptic seizure.

Alistair Childe was a warm man with a good soul, but he rarely showed emotion of any kind. Especially if it was an upset kind of thing. The only time she’d ever seen him cry had been at her brother’s funeral—which had been bizarre not just for the rarity of his tears but because the two hadn’t really gotten along.

“Who gave this to you?” he asked in a voice so thin it didn’t sound like him in the slightest.

Grier sat down on one of the stools at the island and wondered where to start. “I was assigned a public-defender case yesterday. . . .”

The story was a quick tell, but it got a big reaction: “You let that man come over here?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes, I did.”

“Into the house.”

“He’s a human, Dad. Not an animal.”

Her father all but fell onto the other stool and then he struggled to unzip the neck of his fleece. “Dear God . . .”

“I’ve resigned from the case, but I went to Isaac’s apartment just now—”

“What in the world made you go there?”

Okay, she was going to ignore that outraged tone. “And that was when I was given the card and told to call if I saw Isaac again. And I also got that Life Alert thing.” She shook her head. “I’d seen the man before. I swear . . . a long time ago.”

If her father had been pale before, now he turned the color of fog, not just blanching, but going opaque gray. “What did he look like?”

“He had a patch over his eye and he—”

She didn’t finish the description. Her father bolted up off the stool and then abruptly had to catch his balance on the counter.

“Father?” She grabbed his arm in alarm. “Are you all—”

She was not surprised when he just shook his head.