Double Bind (13 page)

           
He shrugged, his hand sliding around her shoulder as they moved toward the elevators.
 
“What can I say?
 
You’ve made a bad man out of me.
 
I was so good, until you ruined me.”

           
“Me?
 
Ruin you?” Sarah said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

           
Their eyes met again, and Sarah had to remind herself to breathe.
 
She forced herself to look away, taking a deep breath.
 
His hand on her back suddenly seemed warm, and she was having a hard time thinking of anything else.

           
They stepped into the elevator and he removed his hand to press the button.
 
She shivered a little, wishing that she had an excuse for him to touch her again.
 
They sat in silence, and Sarah stared at the little number counter, her heart pounding.
 
This was it.
 
Rob had no more reason to bother her.
 
They might never run into each other again.
 
She realized suddenly that she was going to miss him.
 
She had gotten used to his irritating cocky smile, and his sharp retorts.

           
“
Detec
-”

           
“Ms. -”

           
They both spoke at the same time and then stopped together.
 
Sarah pressed her hand to her face, fighting a grin.
 
“You first,” she said.

           
“Okay,” he said, running his hand through his hair.
 
“Look, Ms. Gaul -”

           
“Sarah,” she said, raising her eyebrow.

           
He grinned.
 
“Sarah,” they both paused for a moment, and Sarah had to admit that her name sounded exceptionally sexy in his voice.
 
He continued.
 
“I kind of have a confession to make.”

           
She blinked.
 
That wasn’t exactly what she had expected to hear.
 
“Oh?”

           
“Look, I told you that I always knew you were innocent,” he said, pausing.

           
“Right,” she said.

           
“Well, I wasn’t exaggerating, or even saying that I had confidence in you or anything.”

           
“What do you mean?” She said.
 
The elevator dinged and the doors opened.
 
They stepped out together, standing on the street with the morning light washing across the street around them.
 
The air was brisk, and there was the sound of birds in the air.

           
Rob took a deep breath.
 
“I really did know that you were innocent.
 
We were just pretending to arrest you.”

           
She looked at him curiously.
 
“Pretending?”

           
“Well, not exactly pretending,” he said, his voice low.
 
“It was sort of like being undercover.
 
Only you didn’t know that you were part of it.”

           
She started to get an idea, and stared at him.
 
“But all of the evidence; the interrogation?”

           
He grinned then.
 
“Do you really think that we would have let you out without an arrest unless we knew you were innocent?
 
We had more than enough evidence to arrest you, even if we didn’t have enough to convict yet.”

           
“But, Angela said -”

           
“Angela had a long, private talk with my boss.
 
You see, we knew that someone in the force was tampering with evidence, and we didn’t want them to know that we knew what was going on.”
 
He suddenly looked very serious.
 
“Those people that we caught today killed a lot of detectives before.
 
A lot of them.”

           
“I know,” Sarah said, looking surprised.
 
“I saw the articles online, and I thought -” she suddenly felt very silly.
 
Of course Rob and the other officers would know what they were getting into.
 
She could have told him all along that she was innocent.
 
She could have gone to him with the evidence and no one would have been hurt.
 
“I was worried that you would get hurt.”

           
He rolled his eyes a little.
 
“Of course you knew.” He looked at her appraisingly.
 
“You know, if you ever want to leave your company, you’d make a decent junior detective.”

           
“Is that a job offer, Detective Snyder.”

           
“Rob,” he said, looking stern.
 
“If I have to call you Sarah, then you have to call me Rob.”

           
She grinned.
 
“Alright, Rob.
 
But you were saying -”

           
He shook his head.
 
“It’s a long story.
 
Do you mind if we catch something to eat while we are at it?
 
Sitting up all night tends to make me hungry.”

           
She smiled.
 
“You know, you can’t think of yourself all the time.”

           
He looked at her, confusion spreading across his face.

           
She shrugged, “I’m starving too.”

           
He laughed, and they headed down the street to the local diner.
 
On the way they argued about whether or not their coffee was drinkable or not.
 
In the end, Sarah decided that there was no way that she was going to convince him, but there was no way that she was going to drink it either.

           
At the diner, she settled for orange juice, and they ordered.
 
Once the waitress was gone, Rob looked serious again.

           
“Are you angry that I lied to you and put you in jail for no reason.”

           
“Of course I’m angry!” Sarah said, but then winked.
 
“That’s why you’re going to have to pay for breakfast.”

           
He looked chidingly at her.
 
“I mean it.”

           
Sarah shrugged.
 
“I get why you did it.
 
And it’s not like I didn’t pretend to be guilty at the end for the same reason.”

           
“That’s why you were acting so weird!” he said, his face lighting up.
 
“I totally thought -” he stopped and suddenly paled.

           
“You thought what?” Sarah said.

           
He shook his head.
 
“Nothing.”

           
She waited, but he didn’t say anything.
 
After a moment, Sarah started playing with her glass, looking at him.
 
He was looking at her too, and their eyes met.
 
For a moment it was like that first moment in the club, only this time Sarah wasn’t surprised, she was eager.
 
She wanted to feel his lips on hers.
 
She wanted him to lean in.

           
Unfortunately there was a table in the way.
 
He bumped his glass, nearly knocking it over, and caught it just in time.
 
They both scanned the table, looking anywhere but at each other.
 
Their food came, and Sarah took her plate relieved.

           
“One thing I don’t get,” she said, salting her eggs.

           
“What’s that?” He asked.

           
“How did you know that I was innocent?”

           
He laughed.
 
“How could we not know?”

           
She looked at him curiously, and he shook his head, then lifted his hand to tick off each point with a finger.
 
“First of all, anyone who can hack that good, can cover up their tracks enough to not get caught, especially not on a simple security camera, or with their own ID card.
 
Secondly, it involved too much planning for you to get caught because you flew out a day late.
 
You would have just gone straight to the airport from setting everything up.
 
And seriously, putting the money in your own account would just be stupid.
 
It’s not even an international account.”

           
Sarah blinked.
 
“Why didn’t I think of that?”

           
He laughed.
 
“Well, I would hope you didn’t think of all of that because you aren’t a mastermind criminal.”

           
Sarah smiled at him and he grinned back.

           
“It was actually good that you kept doing such suspicious things, otherwise our cover would have been blown right away.”

           
“What!
 
I didn’t act suspicious.”

           
He raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged.
 
“Alright, maybe I was a little suspicious.”

           
He grinned.
 
“The worst was when we got the security footage of Valerie breaking into the lab in that shirt,” he said.
 
“I was positive that someone was going to notice that she was so much taller than you.”

           
Sarah thought back to the footage, suddenly feeling foolish for not noticing that either.
 
Of course, Valerie was a whole 7 inches taller than she was, That should have been obvious on the footage.

           
“Well, I guess we were both lucky,” she said, grinning at him.

           
He smiled at her, and when their eyes met, Sarah felt a little flutter inside.
 
She had to admit, she was going to miss this silly hunk.
 
He held her gaze a moment longer than necessary, and she felt her face starting to heat.
 
She turned to her eggs, and took a big bite.
 
She must be crazy.

           
They chatted circles around each other over the rest of breakfast.
 
She felt a little awkward, after all, it wasn’t like they’d ever had a normal conversation.
 
It felt like she couldn’t seem to talk about anything other than the investigation.
 
She did find out that her brother had been released on the stipulation that he agree to work with the police on any future hacking cases.
 
Of course, that meant that all of his computer toys were to be returned, which Rob wasn’t exactly excited about.

           
After breakfast, things kind of ran into a lull.
 
Sarah didn’t want to say goodbye.
 
She knew that she would probably never see him again.
 
Just then, she couldn’t bear the thought.
 
She knew that she should probably go though.
 
They were both exhausted, and Rob had to be back at the station for his shift by 5.

           
They finally got up from the table and made their way to the front of the diner.
 
Outside they stood on the sidewalk for a little, watching the traffic and hustle and bustle pass by.
 
Sarah tried not to think about Rob’s hunky arms that were only a few inches away from her own.
 
He put his hands in his back pockets, and took a deep breath.