“I am… sorry.”

“Stop saying that.” She was angry. “Why are you here? Why today? Why?”

Max wished he hadn’t come. But he was there, and to leave without explaining his visit would have been even more selfish. And he couldn’t shake Pip’s shy smile. “I’m looking for someone. I need… a favor.”

It was the exact wrong thing to say. Niki waved a finger, cutting the air between them. “No. You don’t get to… No.” Then she turned and walked into City Hall without another word, her heels clapping hard on the concrete.

Max leaned against the wall to let a wave of nausea pass. In some ways, it had gone better than he’d expected. She hadn’t done him any physical harm. But on the other side of the ledger, the shame he felt hit harder than any punch.

The last time they had seen each other, he had been narrowing in on Mikhail and she’d had his back. He had convinced himself it was because they were partners. But deep inside, he knew it had been more than that. She had put herself on the line for him, risked her career, her reputation. Max knew deeper feelings lurked in the shadows, beyond work, beyond even friendship. And the way Niki had just laid into him—she must have felt something more as well.

He should have stayed in Grand Rapids. He should have never agreed to help Lyle. He had no business opening such a deep wound and no business turning his back on his penance.

He heard Niki before he saw her, her heels clicking as she marched back toward him. He stood again, ready to receive another dose of her outrage. She stopped short, looking him up and down as if to take in just how far he had fallen.

“You look like shit,” she said, the anger still in her eyes.

“I know.”

“What happened to you?”

It wasn’t curiosity he heard in her voice, but rather clemency. Was she asking him about Mikhail? What did she expect him to do, blurt out that he had killed a man in cold blood? A man she had helped him track down? A smarter man might have found a better answer to give, but Max fumbled into a joke.

“I lost my razor,” he said.

Whatever compassion he had seen on Niki’s face disappeared. “One favor, and that’s it.”

“You don’t—”

“Tell me now before I change my mind. And it better be worth it.”

Max couldn’t look at her eyes as he spoke, so he focused on her chin. “A friend… his daughter went missing. He’s beside himself with worry. I’m looking into it. There’s a bar up on North Lyndale called the Rook. I need to take a peek at their surveillance footage, but they won’t release it to anyone without a badge.”

“That’s why you came here—to use my badge?”

Max glanced up and noticed for the first time that Niki’s eyes looked red, as if she’d been crying. In all the years he’d worked with her, she had never cried.