His brows knit over that knot in his nose, and he reached out a hand to the opposite window frame to brace himself. His hand shook, but she suspected it wasn’t from her revelation. “Thank you? Though I’m not certain why you sound so angry about it.”

“Not now, after you came home. Then. Before.” She dragged in a breath, huffed it out. “Eighteen. God kept bringing the number to mind, ever since I decoded that report from Thoroton for DID. Not long after Dot and I met.”

His fingers bit into the wood like hers did into her palm. “Wait. That you decoded?”

“I’m not a secretary, Drake.” She spat it, hurled it at him, hoping it would hurt him and not quite sure why she hoped that. Or why she thought it would. She was nothing to him, and his preconceived notions being challenged couldn’t really affect anything. “I’m a cryptographer.”

“You?” Incredulity flickered across his face, chased by denial, amusement, and then simple blankness. “All right. You’re a codebreaker. And you decoded one of Thoroton’s reports for the admiral. So you read about Agent Eighteen and . . . ?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to be talking to him, frankly, but unfortunately the powers of her mind stopped rather short of moving her by sheer will through time and space, and there were far too many people between her and the door who wouldn’t let her storm out of her own birthday celebration. Blast them all. “And God kept bringing the number to mind at odd moments. Telling me to pray. That first day, the Tuesday. And then a Sunday in the park, after Mass. And—”

“Tuesday and Sunday,” he muttered. When she peeled her eyes back open, she saw his brows were furrowed again. “The day I ran into Jaeger in the warehouse. And then in the city.” His gaze clashed with hers, tangled. “Your prayers may well have saved my life those days.”

“Bully for you.” She jerked her head back toward the blank window again and folded her arms over her chest.

He shifted closer, something tense and pain-filled in his movement. His side, no doubt. “Do you really hate me that much? That you begrudge having prayed for me?” Or maybe not his side.

She pressed her lips together, but still pressure built inside her head. Blast and blast again. She shook her head. “Of course not. It isn’t you at all. It’s just . . .” She wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t tell him. Why should she? It was none of his business. He was nothing to her. Nothing but the brother of a friend.