to be that free?
“You can close it,” he said.
She thumbed over her shoulder. “I’m in the next room.”
Logan nodded. It was hard to look away from the blood staining her light gray pants and cream blouse. They’d been through a lot today. Logan hated to admit it, but at this point in his career, death didn’t bother him as much as it used to. But Kelsey? She was different.
“How are you doing with all this?” he asked.
“Okay.” She leaned a shoulder on the door frame.
“You sure about that?” Logan lifted his gaze to hers. “We shot people tonight.”
She shifted, but didn’t shy away from looking at him. “Yeah. I have to go in, talk to people tomorrow, but they said they’d work around what we needed to do here.”
“You okay with it?”
“Shooting at people?” She lifted a shoulder and grimaced. “It’s gotten easier over time.”
“How many?”
Kelsey licked her lips and crossed her arms loosely over her chest. “Before the Task Force? I was involved with nine shootings. Seven deaths. I used to know every one of their names. But, now it’s blurring.”
She had a point there. The night when they’d had to run for their lives from Felecia’s father and the men he’d sent after them would always be stuck in Logan’s mind. How they’d come through that with only some scratches was beyond him. And Kelsey had been caught alone and unaware by the attack. A lot of people had died that night.
Logan closed his eyes. “It’s always been a blur for me. I wonder if that makes it easier or harder?”
“I worry that I’m...getting numb?”
He lifted his chin and looked at her. She’d pulled her short hair back with a headband. The top buttons of her blouse were undone. She looked more casual. More real. The usual barrier between them wasn’t up yet. This conversation might be the first they’d had without an undercurrent of hostility from either one of them.
“The fact that you’re worried about it means you won’t,” he said.
“How do you deal with it?”
Logan shrugged. “In the beginning, it was war. You didn’t get to deal with it. It happened, and you either shot back or got shot. I didn’t want to die.”
“And now?”
He considered the question and let it sit in his head for a moment.
How did he feel about death now?
“I’ve been lucky that every time I’ve pulled the trigger I’ve known I was on the right side of the law and I believed in what we were doing. I never pulled the trigger when there was another option. I guess that gives me peace of mind?”
Kelsey nodded. “That makes sense.”
“I don’t know if I believe that Dixon deserves our protection or not.” Logan blinked a few times. He hadn’t meant to say that. Hell, that thought hadn’t been fully formed in his head, just a feeling. And now it was out there.
“I don’t think he’s a good guy,” Kelsey said without hesitation. “I do think he is a means to an end right now. I can’t trust him farther than I can throw him. It makes this all very frustrating. Protecting someone I think might be a bad guy from an even worse bad guy.”
Logan chuckled. “For once, we agree.”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “Hey, we agree on a lot of things.”
He felt his brows trying to crawl up into his hair. “Do we?”
Her narrowed gaze turned into a glare. “Don’t look at me like that. Yes, we do agree plenty.”
Did they?
Thinking back, all he could remember were Kelsey’s irritated glares and her sharp words. But disagreeing on how things should be done? Now that he thought about it, except for a few assignments where he’d put one of the guys on a duty over her, he couldn’t think of a time when she’d outright thought he was doing his job wrong.
He was beginning to realize that when it came to Kelsey, all he saw were the sparks and barbs. Everything else faded when compared to her brightness.
And now he knew what her lips tasted like. What her soft moans sounded like. He hadn’t truly felt her through his damn coat, but he wanted to.
She straightened. “So, um, I’ll just...”
“Do you think we’d agree about that kiss?” He had no idea where he was going with that question. The moment her lips had touched his was seared into his head for all time.
Kelsey blinked at him as if she hadn’t heard him. “I’m sorry, what?”
“That kiss?”
“What kiss?”
Logan snorted. “You mean to