Logan waited until he was out of earshot.
Then he whispered, “You have no idea how bad this is.”
“For you?”
“For both of us.”
I held his gaze.
“There is no both of us.”
His face twitched.
“You’re angry. I get it.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Grace—”
“You stood there while your mother called me a deadbeat.”
He ran a hand over his mouth.
“She was emotional.”
“She was rehearsed.”
His eyes sharpened.
“What does that mean?”
“It means she looked at you for permission before she said the worst of it.”
Color rose in his cheeks.
“You always do this.”
“What?”
“Turn everything into an operation.”
I looked down the hallway at the photographs.
“Everything was an operation to you first.”
His mouth tightened.
“You think salutes and old war stories make you untouchable?”
“No.”
“You think Rhodes will protect you?”
“No.”
“You think an investigation won’t drag your name through mud too?”
I didn’t answer.
There it was.
Not a confession.
Not exactly.
A probe.
A man checking whether the trap he helped set had closed around my ankle.
I stepped closer.
“Did you know about the memo?”
His eyes held mine one second too long.
“No.”
Lie.
Smooth.
Immediate.
But not perfect.
The left side of his mouth barely moved.
Logan lied better when he had warning.
I gave him none.
“Who told you?” I asked.
His nostrils flared.
“I said I don’t know about any memo.”
“I asked who told you I’d be dragged into this.”
He looked past me at Rhodes.
“Keep your voice down.”
“There he is,” I said softly.
His eyes cut back.
“What?”
“The real Logan. Not the husband. Not the son. Not the officer. The man who only gets scared when someone hears the truth.”
His hand closed around my wrist.
Not hard enough to bruise.
Hard enough to remind me.
A bad habit from quiet kitchens.
I looked at his hand.
Then at his face.
“Remove it.”
He didn’t.
For half a second, the hallway became our house again.
His control.
My silence.
Then Rhodes’s voice came from behind him.
“Whitaker.”
Logan dropped my wrist as if burned.
