He was stunned. "I thought you'd be…."
"What?" she wheeled and stalked towards him again.
He wisely retreated and held up his hands to keep her from hitting him again.
"You thought what? You'd saved her? Like you "saved" me? Grow up Charlie. You aren't some fucking white knight. I had this under control. She was safe. She was cared for. She was loved."
He must have looked as stunned as he felt because she simply threw up her arms in frustration and walked away from him.
"You have no idea what you've done."
"Then tell me," he demanded suddenly angry. "Stop keeping secrets from me and tell me what I've done except put a little girl back with her mother. You – who clearly love her and she….she knows you. How does she know you? Was she ever even lost at all? What the hell is going on here?"
"Stop keeping secrets from you?" She scoffed and then stared at him, measuring him, weighing him and judging him. He'd never felt so naked in his life as Dani Reese tried to decide if he deserved admittance into her own private hell. He held her eyes and in those moments vowed he'd tell her everything, even things she didn't want to know - if only... Luck prevailed because he apparently he passed her test or maybe, like him, she was just tired of lying.
"I couldn't tell my parents," she began shakily. "So I asked Uncle Mickey to put her some place safe, some place I could still see her and no one could ever know."
There it was. The missing piece. The thing put it all together for him. It felt like a lightning bolt struck him. He wanted to sit down, but he couldn't move. Sarah was what put her on Mickey Rayborne's boat that day in that photo. Sarah was the thing she as hiding. Rayborne owned her; he had since before they'd even met.
Perhaps this was the reason they were partnered. Jack Reese didn't want him anywhere near his daughter, but Rayborne... He didn't care about people, he used them. They were chess pieces to him, even Dani Reese and Sarah. He knew that at first she was supposed to set him up when they began working together. He'd almost dared her to, but she didn't and that took guts. They held Sarah as leverage; just as they had Rachel before her.
However, when their gambit failed, it had also succeeded – because Charlie Crews had a thing for little lost girls. Rachel, Dani and now Sarah, were the one thing he couldn't let go of. When he fell for Dani, they'd owned him just as effectively as they'd always wanted to. Not by anything she'd done or would do, but simply by using her to get to him. Dani Reese was taken because of what they knew it would do - to him.
He realized Dani kept talking while he was buried inside his head and listened to her explanation. "He'd move her every couple years, but some place safe, secure and I got to see her from time to time. Then when Rayborne disappeared, I thought he was dead – everyone did. I didn't know where she was, but I knew at least she was safe. I thought I'd never see her again. It's been months," she sounded on the edge of tears, but caught herself.
She stared at him and he tried his best to project nothing, no judgment, no desire, nothing but support, calm and love. He hoped it worked.
"At the FBI, they told me you killed Rayborn…." She trailed off in deep thought, "but I didn't believe them, I didn't want to believe them."
"Because if I killed Rayborne then I was the one responsible for separating you from Sarah," he reasoned.
She nodded mutely wrapping her arms around her middle, protecting herself, covering her heart. She was frightened – of him.
"I didn't do this. I would never hurt you," he growled, "or your daughter. You have to know that," he argued. "Dani, tell me you know that."
She nodded just once and he stepped closer, but she retreated.
"Rayborne," he growled angrily. "He did this," he clenched his fists and his face was fixed in an angry snarl.
"No," she objected sharply. "I asked him for help," she argued. "He helped me."
"No," he ripped the words off with his sharp white teeth. Teeth that were honed on the bone and muscle of other men. He'd become a predator in prison and sometimes he still showed for the animal he'd been made to become. "Rayborne doesn't help people; he uses them. He uses their weakness; their love; the people they love – to control them."
"He never asked me for anything," she battled back.
"He wouldn't have to," he sneered. "It's not you he wants, it's me."
"Just how the hell would Sarah or I help him with that?" she argued testily.
"It wouldn't have – at first, but it will now….
"Why now?" she battled his assertion. In her brain, she knew the answer, but her stubborn heart wouldn't listen to it.
"Because he knows that I love you," he spat. It wasn't exactly the way he'd envisioned professing his love for his partner to her. But that cat was out of the bag. He winced as he realized what he'd said and the tone in his voice when he'd said it.
"Oh," was her only reply. She was now looking at the floor.
"Reese," he implored, realizing only know what he'd said so casually and with such a caustic tone. He took a shaky step towards her.
"Don't," she warned. He froze.
"I'm not ready for this," she intimated with a back and forth of her finger between the two of them. "Not nearly ready," she mumbled under her breath. There was a long pregnant pause, before he offered to take her home.
"Just give me the damned keys," she demanded. "I'll pick you up in the morning."
He handed her the keys and shyly told her, "tomorrow's Saturday."
"Oh," she said again thrown by events. Neither of them knew what to do next. They were in uncharted territory, but of them when it came to this stuff – Dani was the braver of the two. "Do you and my daughter have any plans for tomorrow?"
He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. "No, but…" he whined.
"Charlie," she turned to ask him a serious question on her way out the door. "Just what the hell did you think was gonna happen here tonight?"
"I dunno," he admitted. "Not this," he raised his hand to his face where the red angry welt in the shape of her handprint was becoming visible on his pale cheek.
"Just be glad I didn't shoot you. I've had to resist the impulse to do that since the day we met," she joked as she left; at least he hoped she was joking.