To my complete and utter shock, she yanked out a chair and plopped down in it with a huff, crossing her arms over her chest and sulking petulantly.
Leo spoke while I took a few much-needed seconds to calm the hell down. “Some shit went down tonight and it’s changed the state of play.”
“What happened?”
“Evan Webb was shot at point blank range in the back of his head while he was down on his knees,” I growled. “That’s what happened.”
Her whole frame jerked back while the color slowly leeched from her face and her chest heaved with rapid breaths. “What?”
“I take it you didn’t know.”
“Of course I didn’t know!” she cried. “Oh my God. He was asking questions. I didn’t know what he was doing, and I wasn’t gonna ask. I’ve been keeping my head down, trying not to draw too much attention, but I wondered what the hell he was up to.”
“So it’s like we suspected,” Leo said on a low grunt. “The kid showed his hand and got himself caught. Now he’s dead.”
“You’re out, starting now,” I demanded.
“What? You can’t do that,” she cried, slapping her palm onto the table.
I sat back down and leaned back in my chair, faking a calm I most certainly wasn’t feeling. “It’s already done.”
“This is bullshit!” she argued. “Now that Evan’s dead, I’m the only eyes you have on the inside. I’m not quitting now.”
“That’s not your call,” I replied flatly. “As of an hour and a half ago, it stopped being your decision to make, mainly because you were making all the wrong ones by not getting yourself safe.”
Giving up on me, she looked to Leo imploringly. “Leo, please. You can’t—”
“You’re out,” Dalton snarled. “Don’t fuckin’ test me on this. If I have to tie you up and lock you in my basement, I will.”
She ignored him and shifted her focus back to me. “Micah, come on. I can do this. I know I can.”
“People are dying, Charlie,” I stressed. “This motherfucker didn’t just kill a fellow police officer, he murdered his partner. You think he’d hesitate for even a moment to squeeze the trigger if he thought you were a threat to him? Not a chance. He’d put a bullet in your head without losing any sleep. I can’t let that happen. You might not care what happens to you, but I sure as fuck do. And so does Leo. We can’t sit back and watch you put yourself at risk like this. Not anymore.”
She surprised me again, and not in a good way, when she lowered her head on a sniffle.
“Sweetheart—” Leo started.
Then she looked back up at us, her chin trembling and her eyes glassy with unshed tears. I’d never seen this kind of emotion from Charlie before. I’d always pictured her too hard, too tough to cry, but clearly, I’d been very wrong.
“I haven’t done a lot of good in my life,” she said in a wobbly voice. “I put my trust in the wrong people over and over, and when they finally showed their true colors, instead of doing the hard thing or the right thing, I ran. I always ran.”
“Darlin’ this isn’t—” I tried, but she wasn’t finished.
“As long as I wasn’t the one being hurt, it wasn’t my problem these assholes were out there, breathing free and clear, able to do whatever the hell they wanted. It didn’t affect me, so it wasn’t my business, right?” She let out a self-deprecating laugh and shook her head in disgust. “The only person I’ve ever looked out for my whole life was me. Then I saw Darrin Callo’s girls.” All the air whooshed from my lungs, but she kept going. “If they’d had a mom as worthless as the one I’d been born to, more than likely, they’d end up on the very same path I’ve spent most of my life on. I saw them and I decided I was done running. I was done looking out for only myself. Greg Cormack took a good and decent man from this earth. He doesn’t get to breathe free and clear.”
Jesus, she was killing me. “You’ve done enough,” I told her, my voice low and gentle. “You don’t need to risk your life for anything else.”
“Better my life than someone who’d leave people behind,” she replied vehemently. “Micah, I’ve got no one. If something were to happen to me, it wouldn’t be any great loss. There’s no one to care if I’m not around anymore.”
“Jesus Christ,” I rasped, my chest feeling like it had been sliced open as I stared across the length of the table in bewilderment. “You really think that, don’t you?”
She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Just saying it like it is.”
“You think it wouldn’t fuckin’ torment me if something were to happen to you? You think Leo wouldn’t care? Or any of the goddamn men sitting at this table right now?”
“You might feel guilty for a little while ’cause I was your informant, but it wouldn’t—”
“Bullshit!” I thundered. “It wouldn’t have a fuckin’ thing to do with guilt or responsibility or any of that other fucked-up shit floating around in your head right now. It would just be loss, plain and goddamn simple, Charlie. You think just ’cause you started this as a CI we don’t care about you? We got to know you, and what we came to know, we grew to care about simply because you’re you. That means, informant or not, you get hurt, or God forbid, worse, it’s gonna fuckin’ destroy me. And I’m not the only one. You’re family, Charlie. And if something happened to you, you’d be leaving all of us with that pain.”
Her lips parted on a broken exhale as her eyes went wide in shock. I didn’t know if it was because she’d been stunned speechless or what, but she didn’t say a word in response.
“Same goes for me,” Leo grunted, and when I looked over, I could see how pissed he was that she’d be dumb enough to think she didn’t matter to him or any of us sitting in that room. “And you can call it selfish if that’ll make you feel better, I don’t give a damn. But that’s why you’re out.”
I looked across the room to where Dalton was standing, his back pressed against the wall, the sole of one booted foot propped on it, and his arms crossed over his chest. His stance might have appeared casual, but the rage rolled off his body in big, heavy waves. Out of everyone in this room, he might be the one most affected if something happened to her.
“It’s not as easy as just walking away,” she finally said in a small voice after a long, silent pause. “Cormack will know something’s up if I just up and quit taking his calls.”
“Then you’ve got two choices,” Lincoln stated, speaking for the first time since she entered the room. “The first one, we take you somewhere and keep you hidden ’til this shit’s over and done with. You’ll be safe, and no one’ll be able to find you.”
Her gaze shot to his and she gave her head a jerky shake. “That’s the same as running. If I disappear, he’ll freak. He freaks, other people could get hurt. What’s the second option.”
“You aren’t gonna like it,” I informed her.