Page 92 of Locked and Loaded

"Why Malta?" She reached for her clothes, still scattered on the floor where they'd landed last night. Her fingers found her shirt first, the fabric cool and slightly damp with desert night air. "That's a long flight for a helicopter."

"We’ll stop to refuel in Tunisia."

"That's not what I asked." She pulled the shirt on, not bothering to stand, not caring that her movements were jerky with the kind of anger she hadn't fully felt yet. "Why Malta? What's in Malta?"

He turned then. Finally. And the look on his face made her stomach lurch before he even opened his mouth. It was the flat line of his lips. The deep crease between his brows. The careful way he was holding himself, like he was bracing for impact.

She knew that look. She'd learned it faster than she'd learned almost anything else about him, because it was the look he wore when he was about to tell her something he didn't want to tell her. Something he'd been sitting on. Something he'd decided she needed to know only when he couldn't keep it from her any longer.

"The next auction is being held there," he said. "Under the cover of a climate gala." He dropped the duffel bag on the floor. The sound was heavy in the ensuing silence.

He met her gaze. "Valardi confirmed it last night. I had a call with Armand and others when you were working. They're trying to get me into the auction."

"Into the auction?" The words came out flat, her voice so carefully controlled that it didn't sound like her own. She stood up slowly, her jeans from two days ago in one hand, fingers curled against the anger unfurling in her chest, like something waking up. "And when exactly did you plan to tell me all this?"

He held her gaze. "I'm telling you now."

"No." She yanked her jeans on, the denim scraping against her skin. "No, you're not telling me. You're informing me. There's a difference. You're standing there announcing that we're leaving in an hour and tossing out a few details like I should be grateful for the crumbs."

"Lennox—”

"How long have you known about Malta?" She stepped toward him, her sneakers forgotten on the floor. "How long have you known about the gala? The auction? All of it?"

He didn't answer. The silence stretched between them, and every second of it was a confession.

The anger unfurled completely, flooding through her chest and into her throat, hot and tight and clarifying. She saw it all rearranging itself in her mind, the timeline clicking into place. The fight. The kiss. His hands on her body, his mouth on her throat, and all the while he'd been carrying this. He'd known. He'd driven her mad with desire and he'd known the whole time. Yet he hadn't said a word.

She pulled her shirt the rest of the way on, yanking it down over her hips with more force than necessary. "You've been keeping me in the dark. All night. While I was⁠—”

She stopped herself. The words caught in her throat and she couldn't push them out, because saying them would mean admitting what had happened between them, and right now she couldn't separate it from the betrayal.

"It's not like that," he said.

"Then what is it like, Maric?" She turned to face him, and her voice was cold now, cold enough to burn. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you decided what I needed to know and what I didn't. Again."

"There are a lot of moving parts," he said. His voice was measured, the same controlled tone he used when he was negotiating or assessing a threat. "I'm trying to coordinate logistics, get me into the auction, figure out who's pulling the strings behind this thing. I don't have time to run every development past you the second it happens."

"You had time last night,” she pointed out. He could have been talking to her instead of using his mouth— The words hung in the air, sharper than she'd intended, and she watched them land. Watched something flicker across his face before he shut it down.

"You needed sleep," he said.

"Don't." She closed the distance between them in two steps, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes, close enough that she could feel the heat coming off his body and smell the soap he'd used and see the tiny muscle jumping along his jaw. "Don't you dare use that as an excuse. You weren't letting me sleep. You were softening the blow. Sheltering me. Making decisions about what I can handle without asking me what I can handle."

"I was trying to protect you."

"I don't need you to protect me." She stabbed a finger into his chest, felt the solid wall of muscle under her fingertip, and didn't care. "I need you to help me. There's a difference. I need information. I need to be in the loop. I need to know what's coming before it hits me in the face. I need a partner. Not a bodyguard who gets to decide what I'm ready to hear."

His eyes went dark, the brown deepening to something closer to black. He caught her wrist, his fingers wrapping around it with enough pressure to hold her in place without hurting her. "I am helping you."

"No." She pulled her wrist free with one sharp tug that made him let go. "You're managing me."

She turned away and grabbed her sneakers from the floor. Her hands were shaking, the fine tremor of adrenaline and fury and something else underneath that she refused to name.

“I don’t need management. I need information so I can make the right choices to find my sister.” She looked at him then. Let him see it. Let him see all of it, the fear and the fury and the bone-deep exhaustion of being treated like she was too fragile to handle the truth.

He didn’t back down. Didn’t say anything. So she continued, her tone sharp. "I don't need soft landings. I need the truth. And if you can't give me that honestly, if you can't trust me with what you know, then I’ll figure it out on my own."

The words hung in the air between them. She didn't look away. She didn't take them back. She let them sit there, heavy and final, and she waited.