Pivoting around, he saw that she had taken a seat on one of the stools and wrapped her arms around herself. She was utterly self-contained, having retreated into her skin and turned to stone.

“I’m trying . . .” She cleared her throat. “I’m really trying to understand all this.”

He brought the pan back over to the stove and braced himself on his arms, thinking here it was again, the great divide between the civilian and the soldier. This chaos and scramble and deadly danger? To him, it was business as usual.

Except it was killing her.

Like a complete lame-ass, he said, “You want to give dinner another shot?”

Grier shook her head. “Being in a parallel universe where everything looks like your life, but is actually something else entirely is an appetite killer.”

“Been there.” He nodded. “Done that.”

“Made it your profession, matter of fact. Didn’t you.”

He frowned and left that one right where it had landed on the counter between them. “Listen, are you sure I can’t make you—”

“I went back to your apartment. This afternoon.”

“Why.” Fuck.

“It was after I dropped your money off at the police department and gave a statement. Guess who was at your place.”

“Who.”

“It was someone my father knew.”

Isaac’s shoulders tightened up so hard, he found it difficult to breathe. Or maybe his lungs had frozen solid. Oh, Jesus Christ, no . . . not—

She pushed something across the granite at him. A business card. “I’m supposed to call this number if you show up here.”

As Isaac read the digits, she laughed with a sharp edge. “My father had the same expression on his face when he read what was on it. And let me guess, you’re not going to tell me who’d answer the ring, either.”

“The man at my apartment. Describe him.” Even though Isaac knew.

“He had an eye patch.”

Isaac swallowed hard, thinking that whatever he’d assumed she’d had in that tissue when she’d gotten out of her car . . . he’d never considered that it would have been given to her by Matthias himself.

“Who is he?” she asked.

Isaac’s reply was just a shake of the head. As it was, she was already standing at the precipice of the rat hole he and her father were sucked into. Any explaining would be the size-thirteen boot in the ass that sent her over the edge and into a free fall—

With a sudden surge, she burst up from the stool and grabbed the glass of wine she’d been nursing. “I am so goddamn tired of all this silence!”

She pitched the chardonnay across the room, and when the glass hit the wall, it shattered, leaving a bomb burst of wet stain on the plaster and shards all around on the floor.

As she wheeled toward him, she was breathing hard and her eyes were on fire.