Page 47 of The Girls in the Snow

“It’s nothing,” she replied.

“How do you do it?” Rory sipped his beer.

“Do what?”

“This job. Your life is on the line every day. Not to mention the things you’ve probably seen.”

“After you find your parents murdered, you start to become desensitized,” Nikki said, and she realized the words came out harsher than she’d intended.

Rory looked down at the table, a lock of hair falling into his eyes. “Guess I set myself up for that.”

Nikki’s mozzarella sticks arrived, and she ate in silence for a few minutes. Why did she feel like the bad guy right now? Rory was lucky she’d even agreed to talk to him.

“You know that kid you were talking to was out protesting today.”

“He told me.”

“And you still spoke to him?”

Nikki dropped a half-eaten mozzarella stick onto her plate, irritated at the edge in his voice. “I was interviewing him. Why do I need to justify that?”

“You don’t.” His green eyes bore into hers, and a fresh wave of warmth spread through her body. She took another sip of club soda. Why did her brain get so muddled every time she tried to ask him a simple question? “You said you got tied up at a job. And then you show up while Bobby’s hanging around.”

He’d started to take another drink, but Rory slowly lowered the bottle. “What are you asking, exactly?”

“I’m just curious about your timing. Maybe you saw him show up to talk to me. And then you wait until the right moment.”

Rory stared at her for a few seconds, his expression more confused than angry. “For what, exactly?

“You knew he was a protestor. There’s a good chance the two of us argue. If you come in and break things up—save me, even—you might gain my trust,” she said. “Putting me in a position of owing you a favor might persuade me to look at Mark’s file.”

He leaned forward and folded his hands on the sticky table. “But I know you can take care of yourself. You carry a gun. You don’t need saving.”

His husky tone and unrelenting gaze made her feel light-headed. Did he turn this kind of charm on for everyone? “No, I don’t. But your timing—”

“I fired Ricky,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want to, but he admitted to me that he had been dealing at one of my job sites. He says he’s done, but I can’t allow that. I’ve worked too hard to risk my business and reputation.”

“You did the right thing.”

He peeled the label off the beer bottle, his gaze boring straight into her. “Nicole, I didn’t wait around to see what the protestor would do. I’m grateful you’re talking to me.”

“Fine.” Nikki believed him for now. “It’s the cop in me. I’m naturally suspicious.”

“So, what’s it like to be a mind reader?” Rory asked, still looking at her intently.

“We hate that term.” She felt bad being so blunt with Rory, unsure what he wanted to gain from making conversation with her. “We study behavioral patterns, in an attempt to understand how one piece of behavior predicts another and then another. It’s not mind reading.”

“And it works?” Rory asked, intrigued.

“It’s a tool. If it were a magic solution, Frost would be in prison.”

“You learned all of that from the FBI?”

“I have a master’s in psychology. I wouldn’t have made it into the academy without it, much less gone into profiling.”

“But you get why people do the things they do.” He said it flatly, and she realized where this conversation was going. That’s what they had come to do. Rory probably had little interest in her life outside of that.

“To an extent,” she said. “But that comes over the course of an investigation.”