Page 20 of Echo, the Sniper (Men of PSI #2)

I dug out my phone and discreetly thumbed the screen a couple times. “Are you going to want to talk to Coates again?”

“Oh, the things I want to do with that man are vast and varied,” she practically growled, turning to face me with a dangerous gleam in her eye. “Do you know what enhanced interrogation techniques are?”

Um . “I’ve heard of them.”

“Can you teach me any? Like, maybe hitting people with a phone book so you don’t leave any marks?”

“Do they even make phone books anymore?”

“I’m sure they do. I mean, how else does a person beat someone up without leaving a mark?”

I sighed. “Rory, you’re not going to beat anyone up with a phone book.”

“If only because I have no idea where to get my hands on one. That jerk lied to me, Echo. Badly. And he kept lying badly—and therefore insulting my intelligence—even when I caught him red-handed at it. Honestly, the nerve .”

“So let me get this straight.” I stopped in front of her, delighting in how pink her cheeks got when she was pissed. If she threw a tantrum I’d fucking lose it. “You’re ticked off because he’s a bad liar?”

“At the very least he should have put some effort into it. Instead he just sat there expecting me to swallow all the flimsy crap he was dishing out like it was gourmet cuisine. I need a phonebook to wallop upside his stupid blockhead as a matter of principle.”

“Maybe we should let go of the idea of enhanced interrogation techniques. Or at the bare minimum, phonebooks.”

“What I’d really like to know is where he was the night of the fire. Oh!” She perked up and looked back down the hallway we’d just come out of. “That’s one question I really need him to answer.”

“Hold your horses, Sherlock.” I snagged her by the arm as she made a break for it. “How big and tall would you estimate Warrington Coates to be?”

Those amazing blue eyes with impossibly long black lashes looked up at me in a way that may have actually stopped my heart. “What does that matter?”

“Humor me.” And keep looking at me just like that for the rest of my life .

She huffed a little. “Six feet tallish, and he’s still pretty muscular for his age so... I don’t know. I’d guess he weighs in at around two-twenty or two-thirty. Why?”

“We have the footage of the firebug, and he’s no more than five-ten, with a pear-shaped, narrow build. Coates is too tall and his shoulders are too broad. There’s no way he could ever look pear-shaped, even in a hoodie. He’s not the guy.”

“Dane was kind of pear-shaped,” she murmured with a vaguely woebegone look on her face before she waved her bandaged hand and shook her head. “Sorry. I know you don’t like the sound of his name.”

“I don’t like how many times you say his name,” I corrected so quietly I doubted she heard it.

Then I pointed to a bench near the glass doors leading out into the parking lot.

“Park yourself there for a couple minutes, yeah? I need to check in with my employers and see if they’ve been able to find anything regarding the whereabouts of Josiah Armstrong. ”

Her brows went all the way up. “Edward Terwilliger’s PA? Why are you looking for him?”

“You said it yourself—if Edward’s going to be anywhere, he’s probably with Armstrong. Their relationship wasn’t publicly known. Since Edward went to great lengths to make sure that not even his business partner knew about it, I doubt the police even have Armstrong on their radar.”

“ Possible relationship,” she corrected, shooting me an alarmed glance that bordered on panic. “Echo, I could be wrong about the whole thing.”

“I get that—”

“No, no, no, no, you don’t get it. I swear, I never talked to Edward about his personal life, okay?

Never. It was just a vibe I got whenever I saw them together.

Little whispers, secret smiles, personal touches when they thought no one was looking.

But I never confirmed my suspicions about their relationship, so please, please don’t get mad at me if it turns out I’m wrong. Oh God, please don’t get mad.”

Holy crap. “Look, you don’t have to worry about me getting mad at you for being wrong, or right, or anything in between, okay? Calm down.”

“But you don’t understand, I could be wrong—”

“Rory, it’s all good. No one’s perfect, least of all me, so I don’t expect it from anyone else. That wouldn’t be fair, would it?”

“I-I shouldn’t have even said anything about Edward and Josiah. I never should have opened my mouth. I might not be right. If I didn’t get everything right, you’ll get... mad.” Her breathing increased to the point where I could hear it, her eyes darkening with a look I knew all too well.

She was suddenly, horribly terrified.

Because her ex had taught her that opening her mouth—and possibly contradicting whatever Dane-fucking-Grant said was fact—was something to be punished.

“You need to hear me now, okay?” I almost reached for her, then put my hands behind my back when she flinched away.

God damn , it was a complete mystery how that one flinch hurt more than any punch I’d ever taken.

“You were clear from the start it was only your opinion that Terwilliger and Armstrong were in a relationship.”

“I’m s-sorry—”

“No need to be sorry, baby girl. You’re allowed to have opinions, okay?

And hey, I’m grateful you trusted me enough to share that opinion.

If it’s a lead that bears fruit, that’s great.

If it isn’t, that’s still great, because we can mark Armstrong off the list. We’ll still learn something from it, so your opinion has value.

Every thought you have, everything you choose to share with me, has value. You have value to me.”

The shocked hitch in her breath broke my damn heart. “I do?”

“Absolutely, you do. So do me a favor and just breathe, yeah? You’re safe with me. Swear to God, you’re safe with me.”

She tried to take a breath, which hitched again. “I’m... okay. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Hell, yeah, it is.” I gave her a reassuring smile while the rage at Dane Grant and all the scars he’d lashed onto Rory’s fragile psyche burned that much brighter.

Jesus, she still looked like she fully expected me to smack her off her feet, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

“At the very least, Josiah Armstrong is a base that hasn’t been covered, so don’t worry about anyone having any expectations.

Right now all I want to know is if Josiah is five-ten and pear-shaped. ”

“He... might fit the description, now that I think about it.” Biting her lip, she headed toward the bench I’d indicated earlier. “Um, please take your time. I won’t go anywhere. I’ll be good.”

“Rory...” I bit back a sigh when her gaze snapped to me, clearly worried she had somehow upset me.

Fucking Dane Grant . “Just relax for a few minutes, okay? I’ll make this call, and then we’ll decide what our next move is.

” When she nodded and bit both her lips together, clearly shutting down, I moved to the other end of the lobby before dialing, then turned to look back at her to make sure she was okay.

I wanted to cuss a blue streak when I realized the tension visibly drained out of her the farther away I moved.

Fuck.

Cap Fogelmann picked up on the first ring. “Echo, just so you know, I’ve got Luke in the room with me, as well as Mary Jane. You’re on speaker.”

Aha. Luke Keyes, our resident forensic psychiatrist and freaky know-it-all when it came to human behavior.

And Cap’s daughter, former CID who had a penchant for hand-to-hand combat and world-class fine dining.

Weird combo, but for Mary Jane it worked.

“Were you able to hear our conversation with Warrington Coates?”

“We were,” Cap’s voice came through loud and clear. “I have to say, I’m less than impressed with Coates’s performance.”

“That makes two of us.”

“He certainly sounded rusty,” came Mary Jane’s voice, her tone implying a shrug. “It was obvious that player’s been out of the game a while. Guess you become dull out here in civilian life.”

“It didn’t help that your protectee is a bit of a mind fuck,” Luke offered, his voice farther away. Probably halfway down the conference room table where he usually liked to sit so he could observe everyone equally. “The looks and the brain don’t match up.”

I frowned and glanced Rory’s way again, only to find her nose in her phone. Good. She needed a distraction to keep herself from spiraling any further. “What does that mean?”

“I’ve got her photos sitting right in front of me, Echo.

Basically she looks like a delicate little doll—you know, pretty to look at but not much else going on.

Personally I call it the blonde blind spot.

Nobody expects any brain power from a pretty blonde.

My wife loves to take advantage of it every chance she gets. ”

“Your wife is terrifying,” I responded immediately, meaning every word. “But we’re talking about another blonde, Rory Grant, and she’s not terrifying at all.” Terrified, not terrifying .

“That’s debatable,” Cap put in. “Coates seemed to be shitting himself every time she opened her mouth.”

“That’s what I mean when I say Aurora Grant’s a mind fuck—her looks and her brain don’t match up in the minds of a lot of people in our culture,” Luke said.

“Someone like Coates probably took one look at her and expected absolutely nothing. Hell, I wasn’t expecting much when I sat down to listen in on that conversation, but boy was I wrong.

I’ll bet Coates dropped his teeth when Rory Grant started running circles around him. ”

I nodded like they could see me. “I’m learning fast there isn’t much that she misses, though I can’t say the same for myself. There are times when it’s difficult to get a read on her.” Like now, for instance.

“Why’s that?”

Of course that would be Luke. “Long story short, she’s got a shit-ton of trauma that makes her easily triggered, and I’m not just talking about the trauma of seeing her ex get shot.”