Her lips twitched. “To climb out of the hole you keep digging deeper?”

He nodded, wincing. “You are smart. It’s just one of the things I like about you.” He blew out a breath. “It was a compliment. Just a poorly delivered one.”

She chuckled. “Then I’ll say thank you.” Backing away so that she no longer leaned over his arm, she regarded him thoughtfully. “So this whole hacker thing. Where did you learn it?”

He nearly sighed with relief at her topic change. She was asking him questions about himself now. Which hopefully meant that she wanted to know him better. That was a good sign. “Taught myself, mostly. They didn’t teach hacking in the comp-sci program at Carnegie Mellon,” he added with a smirk.

“I guess not. So . . . Carnegie Mellon. That’s in Pittsburgh, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Steelers fan, through and through. Sorry about that.”

“I won’t hold it against you,” she said. “When did you graduate?”

“Seven years ago, after I got a medical discharge from the army.”

“You served with Marcus,” she said quietly.

He wasn’t surprised that she knew that. Their circle of friends was pretty tight and nearly as tangled as the entities he’d just unwound. Her sister-in-law, Faith, was Marcus’s cousin, so it made sense that Dani and Marcus had crossed paths. “Yes. In Iraq.”

“That’s what Marcus said. He also said you saved his life.”

“He would have done the same for me.”

“I know he would have. But he also said you saved the lives of four other people and got hurt in the process. You spent a long time in the hospital, recovering. Which was why you used to have PTSD triggered by white coats.”

Not exactly true. His fear of white coats had started years before he’d been old enough to escape to the army. “The key words are ‘used to have,’” he said evasively. “I don’t anymore.” He’d overcome it. For her.

She held his gaze for a long moment. “I’m glad.” Then her eyes abruptly widened and she nearly dove at his computer screen. “White coats,” she said, scanning the list of entities strung out in an untangled line.

He leaned in to see where she was looking. “What about white coats?”

“That was the name of one of the businesses. APG White Coat Distribution.”

“Okay?” He frowned. “And?”

“I went to medical school at UC.”

“I knew that. Undergrad at Xavier, med school at the University of Cincinnati, residency in St. Louis.” She flinched visibly when he mentioned St. Louis, and he felt immediate regret when her eyes shuttered. What had happened to her there?

But then he knew. It was the same look she’d had when mentioning Adrian, her dead lover. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

She swallowed hard. “It’s okay. It’s just that St. Louis is where I met Adrian.”