was no one waiting at home, and that she would be putting her body through air travel first thing in the morning.
She knew she would be sporting some pretty impressive bruises for the next few weeks, but there weren’t a lot of people lining up to see those either. At least the club hadn’t broken her skin or any bones. Fighting back and seeing the angles had given her just enough protection to avoid that.
“Definitely?” Flynn asked.
Zoe turned to look at him, taking her gaze away from Ford’s would-be victim, who was groggily talking to the EMTs as they loaded her into the back of another ambulance. She was going to be okay. Just like Zoe, she had a concussion—a much nastier case, which was going to require overnight monitoring. But she had no other injuries. They had managed to prevent that by getting there just in time.
“Yes, definitely,” Zoe said. She found her throat strangely dry at the fact that he cared enough to press the point. And he did care; he wasn’t just asking. She could see an unfamiliar look in his eyes that told her as much. “I just need to rest a few days, and I will be back to fighting fit.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go fighting anyone any time soon, just because you can,” Flynn said, a light smile curving the side of his mouth.
“You did not want to go with Ford?” Zoe asked, changing the subject. After the sheriff and the ambulances had shown up, Ford had been loaded into one of them and driven away, handcuffed to the stretcher he was lying on.
Flynn shrugged. “Sheriff Petrovski can handle it. We caught him in the act, so I don’t think the interviews are going to be very difficult. I wanted to stick around and make sure the victim was all right. And you.”
Zoe nodded slowly. “Thank you,” she said, belatedly realizing after a few seconds that this was probably the appropriate response.
They watched in silence for a little while longer. An army of deputies and CSIs in white suits were swarming over the house. Despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, they had turned up in full force, ready to work. Maybe a few of them had dubious hairstyles that were probably much more polished in the light of day, but they were here, all of them on call and ready to spring into action when they were needed. It was one of the things that Zoe liked about law enforcement, she realized. Not having to wait on traditional schedules and working hours. Being able to make something happen when it needed to.
“You did not pull your gun,” Zoe said, into the companionable silence. Something had shifted between them—some kind of realignment of their working relationship. They’d been through an attack together. Fought to save one another’s lives. That kind of thing made a difference in how you saw someone.
Flynn sighed. From the corner of her eye, Zoe saw him looking down at his hands, hanging his head. His hair, normally neat, hung down loose over his forehead. “I was afraid of what I might do if I had it in my hands.”
Zoe digested that for a moment. She had a feeling that she wasn’t supposed to point out that she had ended up shooting Ford anyway. It wasn’t about that, she thought. “Something to do with your trauma,” she said, recalling their earlier conversation. It was something he hadn’t much wanted to talk about, the first time. When he had pulled the gun and almost shot their suspect.
A good job, in retrospect, that he hadn’t. That suspect was now unequivocally innocent.
“Yes.” Flynn paused. Zoe could sense a struggle within him, a fight about how much he should reveal to a stranger. She could relate. It was a fight she had been battling most of her life, and silence almost always won. “I lost someone close to me.”
“Who?” Zoe asked.
There was a long silence. Flynn didn’t answer. She couldn’t blame him. His secrets were his secrets, and if he wanted to keep them, she wasn’t going to argue. It would have been hypocrisy. If he wasn’t ready to tell her, that was fine. If he was never ready, that was fine too.
It was at that moment Zoe realized she was thinking about Flynn in the continuous sense: that they would know each other after this, that they would work together again, maybe for the long term. It surprised her. Inevitably, it