His face shifted – not much, never much, but some of the calculated indifference melted into his usual regard. She didn’t know what it said about her that she found fondness and even sweetness in it. Low standards? Her mother would have said so. But she liked to think that Charlie was a dense, uneasily translated text that she’d taken the time to decipher.
“You’re very good at what you do,” Fox said, with the air of choosing his words carefully, and she found herself making a preemptive face. “No, you are, I’m being sincere.”
“For once.”
His grin broke loose. And his hand landed on her thigh. “But you’re very invested in this.” His brows went up again, and he left the rest tactfully unsaid:too invested.
She took a deep breath, and tried not to let kneejerk irritation get the best of her. She felt defensive – too defensive, in fact, and that wasn’t like her. She knew that’s what he was getting at. “I’m…”
He waited, and, honestly, she wished he wouldn’t, because the words, as they had so many times over the past few months, failed her.
“Charlie…” To her immense shame, her eyes started to burn.
She turned her head away, blinking furiously. She heard him sit up, but, thankfully, he didn’t touch her.
“Tea?” he asked.
She nodded, grateful that he left the room, and gave her a chance to pull herself together. She wasn’t a crier, by nature, but this was far from the first time she’d felt the sting of unshed tears in the last few weeks.
By the time Fox returned, two steaming mugs in hand, she’d regained her composure and was Googling on her laptop. “Ta,” she murmured, accepting the mug he pressed into her hand – then, with surprise, turned her head to face him when he hooked a finger under her chin and pulled her around.
His kiss was warm, and firm, and tasted of strong, un-sugared tea. It left her a little dazed when she pulled back, humming quietly, lips buzzing.
“You prefer coffee,” she observed, as he settled in beside her and took a sip from his own mug.
“Before seven a.m. calls for tea,” he said, and nodded toward the screen. “What’s that?”
She gave herself a mental shake, sipped her tea, and turned back to her Google results. “A missing girl that’s been reported in Michelle’s private chat room. The mother – possibly encouraged by other people in the chat – thinks the police might know more than they’re telling her about the disappearance. Michelle’s going to try and contact her and get more info. But.” She motioned toward the screen with her mug.
The girl was Kaylie Eckridge, twenty-two, University of Alabama student, blonde, blue-eyed, big-haired, and bearing a beauty queen’s charm and love of the camera. A quick search had pulled up her public Facebook page, as well as links to Twitter, Instagram, and several mentions in school publications.
“She has a blog.” Eden clicked on the link, and pulled up an outdated Tumblr space with a muted pink and white backdrop, white text on black squares that gave her an instant headache, looking at it in the dark.
“A blog?” Fox asked, and sounded genuinely baffled. A quick glance proved that he was staring at the screen with a notch between his brows, and his lip curled. “What would a college student need with ablog?”
She hid a smile in her mug, and scrolled down Kaylie’s page. “For the most part, it looks like she reblogs nature photos and aesthetic posts…let’s see…a few amateur book reviews. And she’s apparently really into this actor.” She tapped the screen over an artsy screenshot of a popular young British actor who appeared in a lot of period pieces.
“He’s not that good looking,” Fox said, deadpan.
Eden bit back a snort.
“When was her last post?”
She scrolled back to the top of the feed. “Three weeks ago, it looks like. And…” She expanded the post, and then several others. “It’s the only post where she hasn’t responded to the comments.”
“Hm.”
Eden sat back with a sigh, cradling her mug in both hands. “The thing is, it might be nothing. I think…I think that’s what’s been getting to me, a little,” she said, feeling like she was confessing, but that she needed to. “Here we are looking for the girls from Texas, and from here in Knoxville, and then we uncover what is a frankly monumental and devastating operation going on…and we have cases like this. Which could be related, or could just be more of the muck that exists the world over.”
She turned to him again. “The more I start looking, the more I realize there are tens of thousands of people – and that’s just in this country – who need help, and who I can never help. And I just feel…” She trailed off.Helpless. It sounded redundant, yes, but also silly coming from her mouth, former MI6 agent that she was.
Fox cocked his head, examining her with a few slow blinks, clearly surprised.
“It’s different, now,” she admitted, her voice small. “This isn’t down to not getting a warrant, or having to cut through political red tape. If I fail, it’s down to me. That’s…shit. I don’t like to fail, Charlie.”
Her eyes were burning again, and she hated it.
“Hey.” He took her mug, and she heard him set both of them down on the nightstand. Then his hands were on her face, at her jaw, beneath her hair, his thumbs sweeping up her cheeks. It was hard to tell, in the blue glow of the laptop, but he lookedfiercein a way she hadn’t expected. “When have you ever failed?”
