hear is why you didn’t tell me when you went out to Oceanside today.”
She instinctively braced herself. “It wasn’t necessary. I could handle it. You’d already left to go to the stadium and you might have found out something important. Did you?”
“Later. Why didn’t you call me and give me the choice? And what happened to that Harley emergency block?”
“Olivia was there when I got the message. She realized that this was something unexpected and unavoidable and there wasn’t much time.” She repeated, “And I knew I could handle it. The meeting was at the school in broad daylight for goodness’ sake. I thought I’d tell you how it went when you showed up tonight.” She frowned. “How did you find out about it anyway?”
“Metcalf. You called and told Griffin and him what you’d learned about Mr. Kim and Elaine from Ariel Jones.” He took a swallow of his whiskey. “You casually mentioned that I was following up on another lead and he called me an hour ago to see what luck I’d had with the Padres. He was a bit surprised that I didn’t know about Oceanside.”
Metcalf again, she thought impatiently. He hadn’t seemed in the least curious or critical when she’d given them the report, but that call to Lynch was a little too coincidental. “I told you, I was planning on telling you tonight. It’s not as if I was keeping something from you.” She was sounding defensive. It was beginning to piss her off. “And you have no right to charge in here treating me like this. I was following up on a lead and there was no reason for me to run to you when I could do it myself. As I said, the meeting was to take place at the grounds of the school, and I could have called out if there had been a problem. I’d taken Olivia’s gun so I was armed. In addition, Olivia came with me and brought Harley for additional protection.”
“One question. Did Olivia tell you to call me?”
“She suggested it. I told her I could handle it myself. The message sounded tentative, not threatening.” Her hands clenched. “And I did handle it. It turned out to be even less dangerous than I expected. A college kid trying to honor his grandfather and a little blind girl who had stumbled on something she didn’t know what to do with. I went to the meeting, I got the information, and no one was hurt. It was the right thing to do.”
“Like it was the right thing to do for you to go back to the poppy field that night in Afghanistan?” he asked coldly.
“Yes. Don’t go there, Lynch.”
“Okay, I won’t.” He finished his whiskey and set the glass on the bar. He came toward her, his words coming like bullets. “Because only the potential for risk was the same because you were so damn reckless. Shall we go down the list? You received the email very close to the time you had to meet. No time to make advance preparations, encouraging you to act on impulse. You felt safe because the meeting was to be at your old school? Didn’t you realize that was the most logical location for an attack to take place? Particularly for a professional with experience. I’d choose somewhere the target has been before and preferably has pleasant memories of, which would banish any sense of threat. A college-kid persona appearing would be perfect to lull her into thinking that everything is rainbows in Oz. The gun? You wouldn’t pull it unless you suspected something, and I would have had time to take it away from you and drag you into the bushes before you could get it out. You’re not unfamiliar with weapons these days but there’s no way you’re near to being an expert. Your backup? A blind woman who might be very sharp but has obvious drawbacks and a dog who I doubt would ever make a K-9 team.”
“Are you finished?” She glared at him. “Because your tearing my reasoning to shreds doesn’t alter the fact that my judgment was right and I got what I needed. If you’d shown up, Ariel probably wouldn’t have trusted me and run away. She’s not some mob hoodlum you can slap around or threaten with a damn runaway locomotive.”
“It wasn’t a runaway and it was the Tesla that I used—” He stopped and drew a deep breath. “We’re going to disagree on this no matter what