“Yes.” He glared at her. “You made yourself a damn target.”

She sobered and he could see that under her nonchalance, she was deeply affected. “Yes, I did. You did it for me. So did Gideon. And so did Erin.”

He knew what she meant. Back in February, they’d all put themselves on the line when she’d been abducted by a killer. “We’re cops. We were doing our jobs.”

“No, you weren’t. Well, Erin may have been. I think she was the only one who followed any kind of procedure. You took chances. And Gideon . . . he would have traded his life for mine. Do you really think that I could have watched you all be picked off by Ephraim while I did nothing? Do you think so little of me, Rafe?”

Rafe opened his mouth, then shut it again when he realized he had no comeback to that.

She reclaimed her cup of tea, never breaking their eye contact, knowing that she’d made her point.

He rubbed his hands over his face, leaving them there. Hiding behind them like a little kid. Vulnerability was not fun. “You scared me,” he murmured. “I thought I’d lose you.”

She tugged one of his hands from his face, threading their fingers together. “I get it. But, Rafe, I stood up to him today. Well, I didn’t stand. I knelt. But I looked him in the eye and I didn’t back down. Don’t take that away from me. Please.”

His heart immediately softened. “All right. I won’t. At least I’ll try not to.”

Her smile lit her eyes. “I didn’t zombie out.”

He chuckled, both at her words and her delight in them. “I noticed that. What made the difference?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. In the airport, I wasn’t expecting him. Ephraim, you know.”

“I know.” Rafe had to tamp down his fury at the man who’d tried to take Mercy yet again. If he could have, he’d have broken Burton in two. “But you were expecting him today?”

“Yeah, kind of. I mean, you said yourself that I was looking around like I expected him to jump out from behind a tree.”

“And then he did,” Rafe said ruefully.

She shrugged. “It’s creepy, knowing he was following us. It’s creepy, knowing the store owner in Snowbush was on the phone as soon as we left. All of it’s creepy, but I’m so tired of being afraid. Today I wasn’t.” She made a face. “Okay, I was totally scared, but I held it together.” She hesitated, then showed him the scratches on the inside of her left wrist. “Sometimes a little jolt of pain is enough to derail the panic attack.”

He turned her hand, examining the deep gouges with horror. “You did this to yourself?”

“Yes. I don’t mutilate myself, Rafe. I’ve never done that. But I realized a while back that I could distract myself with a little . . . something. For a while I wore a snap bracelet. One of those things that smokers or cussers use when they’re trying to quit. Farrah gave it to me when I was trying to quit smoking a few years ago and one day some guy on campus got in my space. He’d been asking me out for weeks and I kept politely refusing. Then one day he got tired of asking, I guess. I was so scared and I think I’d already zoned out.”