“You sound just like Catherine.”

Kara finished her beer. “Another?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I need to work through this tonight with Andy. We’ve gone through so much paperwork, even with everything we did yesterday, but there’s still more.” But he didn’t make any move to get up.

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

He spoke too quickly. He knew it. She knew it.

“I’m getting another beer. I am on vacation after all.” She got up.

When she was almost to the back door, Matt said, “Are you on vacation? Or mandatory administrative leave?”

She hesitated only a fraction of a second, then opened the door and went inside.

Kara stood at the refrigerator and stared at the beer bottles. Her grandmother didn’t drink beer—wine, Em was all over it, but beer was Kara’s preferred beverage. Staring wasn’t going to do her any good—they were all the same beer, a local craft beer she liked. She didn’t even want another beer.

Matt had talked to Bryce Thornton. Whether Matt dug around or Thornton heard about Kara’s adventures in Washington through one of the traitors at LAPD, Kara didn’t know. Did she care?

Yes. She did care. She’d asked Matt not to talk to LA-FBI and he had.

She grabbed two beers and went back outside.

She slammed down the beer in front of Matt. “What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t insult me by lying.”

“Everything.”

“I can’t tell you everything.”

“What can you tell me?”

“What did Thornton say?”

Matt was a good cop, but he didn’t have much of a poker face. She’d read the situation correctly.

“That fucking bastard.”

“Well?”

“I don’t know what he’s saying about anything. I never do. I’ll find out, but I skipped town before I had to deal with that federal bullshit.”

“A federal investigation into a deadly force accusation is not bullshit, Kara.”

“What?” Kara—who always controlled her reactions, even when she was angry, hadn’t even suspected. She would have laughed if she didn’t want to hop on a plane and punch that scumbag Bryce Thornton in his too-perfect jaw.

Break it, to go with the broken nose she’d given him eleven years ago when he was a measly, low-ranking agent. Damn, why did the pricks always rise to the top?

“Thornton said there was a federal investigation in your use of deadly force against an unarmed suspect.”

“Thornton opens an investigation into me every chance he gets. I’m his pet project.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Kara. The FBI is a bureaucracy. He would have to jump through hoops to open and reopen investigations into one individual.”

“Every time he comes after me, he loses. He’ll lose this time.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No.”

“Dammit, Kara—this is serious.”

She fumed. She would have told Matt—on her own terms—if she wanted to. She refused to discuss anything with a federal agent when she wasn’t 100 percent positive she could trust him. She’d thought Matt was one she could trust.