Couldn’t protect.

“I should have shot that bastard when I had the chance.”

“What happened?” Matt asked quietly.

She didn’t want to talk about it, but she was already agitated—at Matt because he listened to Thornton, at Thornton for trying to work with the bastard Chen to take her down, at herself because Sunny was dead and she couldn’t stop it.

“I was undercover as a buyer for a big box store. We had the store on board with us, vouching for me. I worked it for over a year. Chen was good. Wined and dined me. Took me fucking forever to get inside, but when I did I recruited Sunny. She didn’t want to help. She was scared. I pushed. I’m good at that. I’m good at getting people to work against their own self-interest. She helped, got me exactly what I needed to take down that bastard. Then he killed her before I could get her out. I arrested Chen because I had the evidence, I built the case, I didn’t need her to testify. But she’s still dead.”

Matt was watching her closely. She didn’t care. Maybe the feds all had a cushy life, never seeing the underbelly of society. Never looking a predator like David Chen in the eye and knowing he would kill her as soon as look at her. Thornton certainly never had.

“So he fell off a roof evading arrest and broke his fucking leg,” Kara said. “Boo hoo.” If only the roof had been taller, he’d have split his head open instead of only breaking his femur. “He was down and out and I was taking him into custody. His goon came after me with a knife. Fortunately he had bad aim or it would have been in my back rather than slicing my arm.”

Though he’d seen all her scars the other night, she pushed up her sleeve and turned around to show Matt the latest. It still itched, it was still red, but it was healing.

“I turned and fired. Completely justified.” She leaned forward. “And if Thornton wants to go toe to toe with me because I shot a man who had thrown a knife at my back, and I didn’t wait until he got out his gun or his backup knife, both of which I found on his person when I searched him, I’ll fight him. And now Chen is testifying against me to the feds? I call bullshit when I see it. And hear this—Chen killed my informant in cold blood. He was responsible for trafficking more than five thousand Chinese nationals—women, children, old men—to serve in sweatshops throughout the country for the last ten years. He ran the entire operation and I took him down along with a dozen of his cronies. And Thornton wants to give him a plea deal in exchange for testifying—for lying—against me? No. Never going to happen.”

She was pacing, a sign that she was both angry and nervous. She hadn’t wanted to tell Matt all that. But she was so damn mad that he listened to Thornton, that he called her on it, that he thought he had some claim to her what? Her life? Her integrity?