Free Shock Waves by Jenna Mills

truth could be a gift beyond compare, or a weapon of destruction.
    “You think otherwise,” Brenna observed.
    He lifted his gaze to hers, let his eyes look directly into the swirling blue that dared him to look deeper. “Sometimes our focus can become so singular it turns into an obsession. All we see is what we want. It defines us, drives us, blinds us to the world around us … and the consequences.”
    “Who are you talking about, Ethan?” She tilted her head, letting the tangled blond hair fall against her cheekbone. “Jorak Zhukov?” She paused like a skillful attorney, let the silence pulse and thicken between them. “Or yourself?”
    Ethan just smiled. This woman may have been sent by Jorak and she sure as hell was a distraction, but it had been a long time since anyone had so boldly held a mirror up to his face. He knew better than to enjoy her, the challenge she posed, but like so many other times, knowing better rarely stopped him.
    It was like playing chess, one calculated move at a time. The mystery, the anticipation was all part of the pleasure.
    “Does it matter?” he asked.
    “Very much.” Her quiet voice resonated with a strength and conviction that nudged against those defenses he’d hammered into place. “If you’ve let Jorak blind you to the world around you, if you’ve let whatever this thing is between the two of you shape you, define you, then he’s already won.”
    They sat side by side in thick, luxurious airline seats, their wrists bound together, their ankles joined. He couldn’t get away from her or she from him. Neither of them could charge the guards in front of the cockpit door. Somehow, though, somehow, with a few well-chosen words, with a penetrating stare that stripped him to the bone, she’d just backed him into a sharp and shrinking corner.
    The admiration trickled deeper. “Don’t talk to me about winning, angel. Not after what happened with you and your detective.”
    It was just a query, a probe, a test, but in the space of a fractured second the color drained from her face. Even the bruise, that nasty smear of green and purple and black, faded.
    He knew that look, had seen it countless times in the courtroom, when he leveled a point-blank question at a witness or defendant, a carefully worded query that forced them to dredge up ugliness they’d worked hard to sequester.
    “Whose fault was it?” he continued, despite the sudden sickness swarming his throat. His gut. “Whose fault was it the good detective ate his service revolver for dinner?”
    * * *
    Brenna went very still. Absolutely, horribly still. One minute she’d had the cunning attorney on the ropes, but in a heartbeat he’d turned the tables. His softly spoken question sliced through the defenses she’d stapled and glued and tacked into place, through the hardened layers of scar tissue, down deep, to that cold, dark place she kept hidden from the world.
    Dave Brinker. Young, hardworking, strong. A man capable of great devotion and driving passion, but of incredible acts of generosity and tenderness, as well. He’d been a good cop. Solid. Thorough. It was true he’d cared more than he should have, but victims hadn’t been mere case files to him, they’d been people, with lives and loves, hopes and sorrows, futures. Each one that fell took a piece of Dave Brinker with them.
    The edges of her vision blurred. She felt herself start to sway, the dimly lit, obscenely luxurious cabin around her rotate. The vertigo sucked at her like the cold vacuum of time and space, allowing the sludge of the past to bleed through. The punishing rhythm of her heart drummed in her ears. The breath she tried so hard to pull deep stalled in her chest. Her eyes slid shut, revealing the gun, the Glock Dave had always carried but rarely pulled, all shiny and well cared for.
    The report of a single shot threw her back against the seat.
    “Brenna?”
    The sound of her name came at her through a hazy tunnel, distant, warbled,