Page 33 of Forbidden Need

“Can you think what she had to add?” Thurrock asked and got nothing. “What she might have told us?”

“What we know about the McDades now…” Wanstead said like it was a big deal. Asshole. They weren’t asking him to corroborate anything. They were making it seem like she’d rolled on him somehow. “She sure got deep with you, didn’t she? Bet it’s tough for a guy to hold his wad around a woman like that.”

“Attractive.”

“Oh, fuck, yeah, would be something to remember, getting a fit babe like that on her back.”

She cringed. Her brother stood behind her. Others in the room had to feel his tension, she sure did. Though some of it could’ve been coming from the silent man in the room they watched.

“Something only guys like us can dream about,” Thurrock said. “But we’ve got more of a chance than this asshole. What you think, Ire? Think her brother would let scum like you near her?”

“Nothing?” Wanstead. “That your answer, Ire? That’s what you are to this, a big, fat nothing?” They waited another few seconds. “That’s your chance.”

As the detectives pushed their chairs back, her hand leaped up on instinct. “Do rún.”

The desperation of her voice echoed through the speaker, stalling everyone. Except Lachlan who snatched her hand from the intercom.

Connel’s head turned, his eyes heavy and dark, somehow seeking hers through the one-way glass.

“Tell the truth,” she whispered to the man who couldn’t hear her.

“What’s that?” Wanstead asked, furious. “Some kind of signal? Why the fuck did we let her in there?”

His glare was on the glass too, in her peripheral vision. Connel still fixated on her. Was it anger? Was he mad? She hadn’t thought about revealing the secret and what it might mean for either of them. It was instinct. He was in trouble and didn’t need to be. She held the key to his prison, why wouldn’t she use it?

As his eyes closed, his head turned to the detectives. “What do you want to know?”

“What did she tell us?” Thurrock asked.

“The truth,” she said under her breath again, praying he’d feel her somehow.

“That she was in the club Monday night,” Connel said.

“That it?”

“She was in my office when your pigs showed up.”

“Not a crime,” Thurrock said.

“She didn’t commit a crime.”

“What was she doing in your office?”

“I didn’t ask,” he said.

“You’d think that would be important,” Wanstead said. “Daughter of the superintendent shows up in your office, that would make some guys nervous.”

Connel said nothing.

“She show up in your office a lot?”

“Not recently.”

“But she was in your office on Monday night? Why?” Still nothing from Connel. Wanstead dropped a hand onto the table. “You don’t give us something, you’re calling her a liar.”

“She’s no liar,” Connel said. “Whatever she said is true.”

He was holding back. Because he didn’t know what she’d said, or he still wanted to keep them a secret?

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