Her throat continued to close but she forced the words out. “It’s the persona WITSEC set up. On purpose, I didn’t go back to who I was before. So divulging all the information, spilling out every detail, is a waste of time. All it does is mentally put me back there.”

“Hey, I get it.” He stood up and moved around the desk to stand in front of her. “But you need to point me in the right direction.”

His hands found her shoulders and squeezed. The comforting gesture came and went. That’s who Ben was. Dependable and nonthreatening.

He also had a job to do and as much as she wanted to ignore that part, she couldn’t. “Nothing is different from when I received the first note.”

“Your point being?”

“Someone wants to scare me.” She folded her arms across her stomach. “Believe me, it’s working.”

“Good.”

Of course he would say that because it fit his needs. “But no one has approached me.”

“Yet.”

She let her arms fall to her sides again. The energy bouncing around inside her didn’t let her stand still. She needed to move, to burn off some of the anxiety pumping through her veins. “Aren’t you the optimist?”

“It’s no longer just about you, though that would be enough for me to call in reinforcements. Connor could be in danger, too.” Ben exhaled as if he sensed an argument on the horizon. “My thought for your protection was, better the guy you know, one who understands your history, than a security guard without any background. That person is Evan.”

“Okay, but one question.” She waited for him to nod before starting again. “At any time during all this thinking did you wonder if you should ask what I wanted?”

“It’s a fair question.”

He capitulated so quickly that it put her on edge. She kept pushing her point, just in case. “I have a job and I’ve had to ask my back-up person to step in and take over the answering service for me the last few days, and I sense she’ll need to do it in the future because everything is so unsettled.”

“Until we know who is sending those notes it’s not exactly safe out there. You need to be careful, and if that means taking a few days off, is that really a big deal?”

She liked to have money, so yeah. “I feel like I’ve spent most of my life being careful.”

A small smile came and went before his expression switched to unreadable again. “You won’t even tell me what we’re dealing with, Maddie. I can’t protect you without facts. Evan has those facts.”

She hated that he used common sense against her. It was tough to battle that. “I just want to forget.”

“I understand.”