Page 51 of Locked In Ice

Fine.He’d play her game.He’d learned a fucking lot tailing Memphis for the last few months.“You like stopping the bad guys.You see it as a mission.”

Her face lost all expression.

“You hunt, and I’m betting it’s because…something bad happened in your past, didn’t it, Ophelia?”Tell me.I want to know every dark part of your life.I want to know every part of you.

“I think it’s too late for us to talk.I should have stayed downstairs.”She turned away.

But his hand curled around her arm, and he stopped her before she could leave him.He wanted to know all of Ophelia’s dark parts, so it was only fair that she know his.“You know the bloody details of my past.My dad killed my mom right in front of me and Lark.”He’d never be able to forget that moment.“He started screaming at her, attacking her, and wouldn’t stop.Itriedto stop him.”

Now she shook her head.“You did stop him, Lane.I read the police reports on your father.Your mother was fighting to live.You ran up the stairs.You got a gun.You rushed back downstairs and ordered him to stop.But he grabbed your sister.He put a hand around Lark’s throat, and he raised his knife.Lark fought to get away.He was swinging his knife—you had to save her.”A fierce nod.“You save victims.That is what I know about you.You had to shoot to protect your sister.Just like you had to stop Thomas before he could take the cheerleader, and you helped me in the alley.You’re not some bad guy.I don’t care what others have said.”

“Police reports can be wrong.Especially when people lie.”His thumb slid over her skin.

“I-I don’t understand.”

But he could see in her eyes… “Yes, you do.”

She swallowed.“It’s really late.”

“You wouldn’t let lesson six be that there were no secrets between partners.So I’ll call it lesson seven.Trust has to start somewhere, doesn’t it?”This was important.He could feel it.This tense moment in the dead of the night.This woman.“I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger and killed my father.”

Her eyes widened.

“I didn’t want my sister getting in trouble.We were just fucking kids.Our mother was dead.Our father had been shot.I didn’t know what would happen.Couldn’t have Lark going to jail.”A scared-ass kid, that was what he’d been.“Lark was sent to a hospital after the attack.I…stayed there.Watched them bag up my mother.My father.And I said it was me.I told the cops that I’d done it.”Over and over again, he’d claimed responsibility for the shot that had killed his father.Hell, he’d even fired the gunafterLark had because he’d watched enough cop shows back then that he’d known he needed gunshot residue on his hands to look guilty.“Lark wasn’t going to suffer.Her life wasn’t going to be thrown away.I took the blame.”

“OhmyGod.”She blinked.“The original profile on you—the one that Oliver created—” She broke off.

“The one that helped get me locked up?”His lips pulled down.“Yeah, it was wrong.Built on a lie that I created.Oliver knows that, now.Lark told him the truth.I wasn’t going to do it.I would never put my sister at risk.”He would have carried the truth to his grave if Lark hadn’t told Oliver.

Ophelia searched his eyes.“You’re telling me right now.Why?”

“Because you think I don’t know what you’re doing?What Memphis wants you to do?”He had to give her credit, the woman had zero tells.Ophelia didn’t flinch.Didn’t change her breathing.Didn’t do anything but keep staring at him with her wide, pale blue gaze.

“I figured it out when you told me about the Forget-Me-Not killer.”And he’d called Oliver while he’d been in the guest room.Screw it being late.He’d needed answers.“Spoke to my brother-in-law after we came back home.”Home.That word had just rolled out.He hadn’t lived in a real home in longer than he could remember.Since my family was destroyed.Lane swallowed.Why the hell would he think of Ophelia’s creepy house as home?Shaking his head, he told her, “Oliver gave me some details about you.”

“Prying into my life, were you?No wonder you think you know me.”She tugged free of his hold.

He did know her.“Oliver said you were incredible at profiling.That you noticed things he didn’t.That you could have been better than he was—”

“First, I am better.Let’s just get that straight right now.”Her chin notched up.“Or at least, I’m certainly just as good as the infamous Oliver Foxx.But I don’t like being in a killer’s head twenty-four, seven.Messes with my own mind.So I can’t live the way Oliver does.I knew that, and I made the decision to get out of the Bureau.”Her lips twisted.“Pair up my dislike of being in a killer’s head every minute with my Bureauissues,and I think it’s clear that I wasn’t meant to be an FBI agent for long.”

She might not have been meant to stay in the FBI.But she definitely had a skill set.“You see killers when others don’t.That’s what Oliver kept saying.”

She didn’t speak.

So Lane kept going.Why not get right to the bloody heart of the matter?“Memphis wants you to find out if I’m going to slide off the deep end.”

Again, no tells.“Memphis wants me to train you.”

“Like you can’t do both at the same time?Profile me and train me?And here I thought you were a multitasker.”A furrow appeared between her delicate brows, so he said, “You told me that yourself, when you said you went off to hunt two predators at once in Atlanta.”He wanted to reach out to her so badly, but he also wanted truth between them.He needed it.“That brings me back to lesson seven.No secrets between partners.”

“Yes.”

Lane waited and realized as the silence ticked past that she wasn’t going to say more.“Yes—what?Gonna need you to expound on things there, Ophelia.”Why the hell did he like her name so much?He liked the way it sounded when it rolled off his tongue.

I like the way she tastes on my tongue more.

“Yes,” she repeated but added, “I can do both at the same time.Iamdoing both.”

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