Dungeon Games (Masters and Mercenaries #6.5)(48)

“I married him. He died. What the hell else do you need to know?”

He dropped his hands, utterly at a loss as to how to deal with her. “Fine. You’re not my baby. You don’t want to talk about your husband. I’ve got that down now. Let’s talk about what you did before you came to Texas. Were you always a PI? Is that e-mail account associated with work you did in New York?”

He’d tried to be gentle with her, tried to be intimate, and she’d shoved him back as hard as she could. The least she could do was talk about the goddamn job.

“No.” She hesitated, seeming to want to say more, her hand starting to reach out to him, but she dropped it again. “That particular account didn’t have anything to do with work. That account was one I had when I was in college. I got married young and I went to school. I went to Brooklyn College. Sociology degree.”

It surprised him, but he could see it now. Now that he’d spent time with Karina, he could see her doing social work. “How would he have known about that account, Karina?”

He would be careful. Perhaps it was time to pull back, to treat her with a professional distance. He leaned against the car next to her, but careful to keep himself apart. He couldn’t do this dance again. He’d been right in the first place. He needed a sub who needed him, who brought him some modicum of peace, not a woman who made him feel like he’d gotten kicked in the gut every time he looked at her.

“I don’t know how he found out about it.” Her voice had gone quiet and it took everything he had not to reach out and haul her close, but he’d attempted affection and it hadn’t worked. “The address had my name in it. Maybe he got lucky.”

“I don’t like it.” Something was off. “He didn’t send e-mails to the other women.” Not victims. He wouldn’t call them victims because he couldn’t put Karina in that group. No matter what she did, he couldn’t imagine her gone.

“He’s evolving. He’s becoming more intimate with his victims.” Karina didn’t seem to notice that the word made him wince. “He might be getting frustrated because I changed my habits. He’s having to learn them all over again. I’m sure I was a much easier target before you moved in with me. Maybe we should think about that.”

He huffed a little. “Now I’m supposed to leave you alone? I ask a couple of questions and you want to kick me out?”

“You’re not behaving in a professional manner, Derek. Think about this for a second. If he decides I’m too hard a target, he’s going to kill someone else. Can you live with that?”

“Fuck, yeah, I can live with that.” He knew it was wrong, but if it was Karina or someone else, he would pick someone else. Anyone else.

“I don’t understand you.” Karina got in his space, her anger obvious. “Maybe you can but I can’t. So if you can’t treat me with some professional courtesy, maybe you should be reassigned.”

Was he really having it out in a parking lot? He wasn’t this guy. He was the calm guy who talked shit out. He did not throw down with his sub in a f*cking parking lot, except Karina seemed to bring out the worst in him. “I would love to see you try, sweetheart.”

“You don’t think I can? You don’t think I can get you booted right off this case?”

Anger, jealousy, all the nasty emotions he’d had churning in his gut, flashed through him. “You go ahead and make that call. Who are you going to bring in? You going to bring in O’Donnell? Maybe he can f*ck you for a while since Tag’s out of town. Or hell, maybe you haven’t f*cked Little Tag in too long. Their wives don’t seem to give a damn. Give you something to do. I know how much you need it.”

Her hand cracked across his face, damn near twisting his head around because Karina didn’t do the polite, lady-slap thing. No, when his baby got pissed she punched and hard. And he deserved it because he’d been way out of line. Even as the words had come out of his mouth, he’d known they were wrong.

Her eyes widened and she stepped back. “Derek, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”

He knew exactly why she’d done it. “Because I inferred you were sleeping with a married man?”

She nodded and backed away, her eyes shifting to the ground. Her breath came out in little panicked pants. “Yeah, the whore thing kind of gets to me. I really hate that.”

So Alex was right and he was a douchebag dickwad with infidelity issues. No woman looked that shocked when they had actually done the crime. She made him so crazy. “I didn’t say you were a whore, Karina. I didn’t even think that. I was just being a jealous idiot.”

“No, you just thought I was sleeping with my friends’ husbands.” She’d gone a nice shade of white and he would have done anything, anything to have kept his mouth shut.

“I’m sorry. God knows I’ve probably had far more meaningless sex than you have. It wasn’t fair or right for me to say something like that.” And he had to stop thinking that way. She wasn’t Maia. She didn’t deserve to pay for Maia’s crimes. “Baby, let’s go inside.”

She shook her head, stepping back from him again, hitting against the side of the car. “No.”

“I called you baby. I’m sorry.” He had to fix this. He’d made a f*cking mess of it. He’d just told himself it would be best to move away from her and the instant he had a real chance to do it, he panicked. He didn’t want to leave her. He couldn’t trust her to anyone else. “I don’t call you baby.”