Page 100 of The Devoted Game

Ryan pushed forward onto all fours and moved over to where she sat. He kissed her nose, kissed her temple. “There’s only one kind of doctor I want to play with you, and it has nothing to do with your head.”

“You know.” She avoided his mouth when he would have kissed her on the lips. “This happens every time. We talk about me and never get around to talking about you.” He stretched out on the floor on his side, parked his elbow, and propped his head in his hand. “You know what happened. What’s to talk about?”

“Do you have any siblings? Parents? Children? Former wives?”

The lady didn’t ask much. “No siblings. Father lives in Detroit. Mother in Boston. The divorce happened a long time ago. And according to my former shrink, it’s the reason I can’t commit to anything but work. My parents and I don’t do holidays, but we do talk on the phone once in a great while. Every couple of years or so, anyway. I don’t have any kids that I know of. And no former wives.”

“What happened with Kevin Braden?”

The question—the one without a definitive answer. He’d worked hard for three years to drink all the theories out of his head. He thought it had worked. Until he’d come back here and faced the realization that it would always be with him.

“Worth was right about the evaluation report on me,” he admitted. Might as well; she’d bared her soul to him. “I wanted to save them all. I worked day and night, seven days a week. My success record was unparalleled. But it was never enough. I needed to solve them all. Putting in that many hours and focusing on that many cases, at some point I was bound to make a mistake.”

He thought about that, turned the idea over in his mind. Obsession had driven him ... the same way it did Fincher. Not a pretty story. “I knew I was skating close to the edge, but I couldn’t stop. Whichchild did I ignore and which one did I go after?” Ryan remembered those moments all too well. “It was a nightmare, a vicious cycle I couldn’t escape.”

“That had to be tough on you. I can see how you would’ve wanted to save them all.”

“But that night I was right. Quinn’s assessments were wrong. I was ready to move in on the location where the boy was being held. A covert retrieval was the only way to go, but Quinn insisted on going the negotiation route. He said I was wrong. That I was burned out, hadn’t had enough sleep.”

“The operation went sour and you got blamed,” she finished.

He toyed with a strand of her hair. “I guess it’s possible the same thing could have happened if the operation had been executed my way, but I don’t think it would have.” He relished the soft lines of her face, hadn’t let himself enjoy a moment like this in a long, long time. “We’ll never know,” he said, finishing the story. “Kevin Braden died. There’s no bringing him back.”

She looked at him as if she wished she could make it all better, could make it somehow go away. Now,therewas something he didn’t see often.

“They took everything from you.” She shook her head at the idea. “Your career, your reputation.”

“They did.” That he’d let Worth die today wasn’t exactly making him feel like the Bureau had made a mistake. Yet this time he understood that he’d done the only thing he could. Even if he could have reached Worth, which he couldn’t have, and had tried to save him, Grace would have fallen. He’d made the only choice he could. Even Worth had recognized it was time to call it quits.

“You still have a lot to offer, McBride. You should think about teaching at Quantico. A lot of agents could benefit from your expertise.”

He tugged her mouth down to his. “That’s sweet, Grace, but I’m not interested.” He kissed her, decided maybe he was up for another round ... Maybe on the deck ... in the dark.

Cell phones vibrated. Hers on the counter, his on the coffee table.

She got to hers first.

“Grace.”

Ryan didn’t bother going for his. The message would be the same. He put the empty pizza box and cola on the counter and walked over to where she leaned against the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.

“Yes, sir.”

She ended the call. “There’s an email from Fincher. We have to go in.”

Tension snaked through him. “Do we have a victim?”

“No victim.” Her gaze locked with his. “Yet.”

They dressed, stealing kisses between buttoning buttons and zipping zippers.

Ryan didn’t ever remember feeling exactly like this.

Content.

The strangest part was, he felt it in spite of looming disaster.

1000 Eighteenth Street, 11:35 p.m.