Tim didn't often think about the way he spoke. His accent was just a byproduct of his upbringing, nothing more. It may have earned him some ribbing during his Basic Training, but otherwise, it was just the way the information in his brain made it out of his mouth.

When he spoke with Delia, though, he noticed himself leaning hard into his rs and keeping his jaw screwed tight as he chewed on each syllable. There was something about her that made him want to sound mean, and so he had started talking like his father without even realizing it.

Tim knew it probably wasn't all that effective. He was sure Delia had heard rougher voices from crueler men, but it did make him feel more in control of the situation than he could ever hope to actually be.

He hadn't even restrained her, which he was now realizing had likely been a mistake.

He decided he'd have to take his chances because he wasn't about to go looking for a rope now.

"I didn't mean for Kat to take the blame," Delia said.

"Explain."

Delia took a deep breath and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. Tim half-wondered if she was waiting for someone from upstairs to come blow his brains out and liberate her, but he didn't hear anything, and he figured if there was anyone else in the house, they would have come down during the initial scuffle.

"I did hire Dawson, but he was supposed to make Romero's death look like a hit by the Russians he was working with."

Tim couldn't help the sneer that crept into his next words. "How strange that a scumbag assassin didn't follow your instructions." When Delia said nothing, Tim continued, "Why was he in Alexandria?"

"I was supposed to give him the rest of his money, which I did. And he told me something else."

"What?"

"He realized he could get information from Romero that might be lucrative. He tortured him before he killed him."

"What kind of information?"

"The kind that puts Kat in very real danger."

Tim wasn't surprised, but it was still a gut punch. "And what is he doing with that information?"

Delia leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap carefully, weighing her next words.

"When we met in Alexandria, he offered me the chance to buy him out of a contract." Tim could see exactly where this was headed, but he felt like a kid standing on the tracks—paralyzed by the inevitable train barreling toward him. "The Russians are paying him an exorbitant amount of money to kill Kat and anyone else involved in the fuck up in Daniel Boone. I don't have the funds necessary to bail her out of it."

"Jesus," he said, "so what now?"

"I sent Kat out of Kentucky, so it should buy us some time."

Tim didn't want to say the next sentence aloud, but he knew he had to. "She isn't in Tennessee anymore."

Delia's eyes snapped up to him. She looked like a serpent, perceptive and deadly, and at that moment, he knew with certainty that she would kill him if she could. "What the fuck did you do?"

Tim winced, despite himself, but he was done playing this game, and he wasn't about to apologize for Kathryn's decisions, even if he had motivated them. She could have stayed in Tennessee—she could have left him to deal with Anderson himself. It wasn't his fault she felt some misplaced desire to help him.

At least, he was going to keep telling himself that until he believed it.

"I'm not the one who put her on Dawson's radar in the first place," he said, finally, and Delia's shoulders settled a little as she uncoiled.

"Then what do you suggest we do, Mr. Gutterson?"

Tim wasn't entirely sure. He didn't even know exactly why he'd come here. Maybe just to show Delia he knew who she was. He wanted her to know he could upend her life as easily as she could upend his.

But the information she had about Dawson wasn't helpful, honestly. It didn't matter why he was after Kathryn, only that he was, and Tim had known that before he'd spent $20 on a pizza that was now grease staining Delia's entryway carpet.

The thought of ruining the cream-colored runner did bring Tim some amount of satisfaction, though.

"We need to get her someplace where Dawson can't access her," he said.

"What are you suggesting?" Tim looked at Delia, waiting for her to pick up his line of thinking. He saw the exact moment she figured it out. "No," she said, and her voice felt like a hammer—definitive and unyielding.

It was a good thing Tim wasn't a nail.

"I'm not sure we have any other choice. Unless you're willing to turn yourself in."

He watched Delia shift again, and he knew he had her. Because while it was obvious Delia was willing to kill for Kathryn—or at least, to pay people to kill for her—he was also pretty sure she wasn't willing to go to prison for anyone.

"She'd never agree to it."

"She doesn't have to."

Delia snarled, "A little cruel, don't you think, Corp—" she stopped short as Tim narrowed his eyes and minutely tightened his grip on the gun still in his holster, "cutting her out of a decision that's going to ruin her life?"

"Save it, you mean."

Delia snorted, clearly not convinced that was the case.

Tim didn't like the idea either, but how else was he supposed to keep her safe? Kathryn wouldn't sit still for more than ten minutes, and Dawson was not the kind of person to just give up because she went underground for a few days.

Without intervention, Dawson would find Kathryn, and he would kill her. It was that simple.

"I won't let you," Delia said, and Tim couldn't help the hateful smirk that spread over his face as he looked at her.

"I wasn't fucking asking your permission. Consider this a friendly heads up you're due to clean house. Agent Reed? He knows about Melendez and Fairway," he enjoyed the surprise on Delia's face when he mentioned her two other operatives more than he knew he should, "so you'd better get them off the grid, and soon. Once he has Kathryn, Reed's bound to broaden his scope, and if he's half as smart as I think he is, it's only a matter of time before he finds you, too." He waited a moment before he added, "Or before I tell him who you are."

Delia's posture straightened and Tim kicked off the wall he'd been leaning against. He hoped his boot left a scuff mark on the immaculate white paint.

"Why did you come here?" she asked.

Tim leaned as close to Delia as he thought was safe. "I wanted to see the look on your face when you realized I hold all the cards."

He turned and marched swiftly down the hallway, grinding a slice of the decimated pizza into the carpet on his way out.

He was glad he'd sounded more assured of his answer than he felt.

#

Tim didn't know whether he'd made the decision consciously, but now that he realized where he was driving, it made a lot of sense, and he wasn't sure why it had taken him so long to realize it was the right move.

Once he got off the highway, most of the roads were dark and empty. He took his time, driving slowly and listening to the radio even after it became cluttered by static; letting his mind drift over the conversations he'd had with Reed and Delia until they coalesced into something mostly firm and semi-tangible.

Her house was nearly on his way home, anyway, so it wasn't so strange that he would stop there, he decided. He knew from his discussion with Reed earlier in the evening that no one was watching it anymore; the task force had determined that Dawson was a better lead, and they didn't have the resources to sit on every place Kathryn might one day return to, even as they continued looking for her.

By the time he parked his car, it was late, and Tim sat for a few minutes in the driver's seat with his hand on the keys, debating whether he should just turn the engine back on and go home.

But he didn't.

Instead, he pulled them from the ignition and stuffed them in his pocket as he walked across the street.

The flowers in the garden beds out front were nearly all dead—brown from neglect and too much sun. As he reached to pull the screen door open, he jerked his hand back in surprise.

There, with a giant net spreading from the metal banister to the bluebells beside it, was the largest orb weaver he'd ever seen. The spider sat stoically in the center of her impressive web, swollen yellow and black abdomen stark against the white door, with dark purple legs poised to snatch any prey that landed in its exquisite trap.

Tim considered squashing the ugly thing. It would have been easy to slam his boot into it and mash it against the door, destroying its hard work as well as its existence in one fell swoop.

But he found himself wondering whether Kathryn would do that. He thought about her attachment to beautiful, deadly things and decided she'd probably leave it alone or even move it someplace out of the way where it could survive unhindered, snatching flies and moths out of the air in peace.

Tim certainly wasn't touching the fucking creepy crawler, though, so it would have to stay blocking the door for now.

Breaking in the back wasn't all that difficult, anyway; the plywood the Marshals Service had put in place over the busted glass panel was held up with a half dozen small nails at best. Kathryn was lucky she lived in a relatively decent area, or he imagined half her shit would have been stolen by now.

He resolved to secure the plywood better when he left, though it was a half-hearted promise made to no one in particular.

It's not like she was here; not like she would ever know if he didn't follow through.

As Tim made his way toward the basement door, he was struck by something he hadn't noticed when he'd been in her house previously, and he took a lap around the main floor to confirm his suspicions, opening drawers and cupboards as he did so.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the careful decorating, he had never noticed that Kathryn didn't have any photographs in her home of herself or anyone else.

She had artwork, of course; paintings and pictures of landscapes or whatever. But there wasn't a single candid with friends or Delia or anyone. Not even a snapshot of Kathryn in front of a waterfall or holding a cocktail at a pretentious bar. Nothing. Now that he was actually looking at it, the house felt like it was staged—there was nothing personal or identifying in it.

Even Tim, who had never thought about decorating anything, had a picture of him with his mom from his fifth birthday party on the mantel in his living room, and a photo of his grandparents next to it. Hell, he had a strip from the stupid photobooth at his buddy Ken's wedding last year stuck to the front of his fridge, even though he thought it was dumb and everyone in the picture—Tim included—looked absurdly drunk.

It was possible, he told himself, she'd simply hidden them, but he'd scoured the house when he watched it, looking for something just like that to give him an inkling as to where she might have gone. Even as he tried to reassure himself with the thought, he knew he wouldn't have missed a photo album, even if she'd buried it somewhere.

And there was nothing in her basement room, either, he realized when he finally made his way downstairs and used the key he'd kept in his wallet to open the secret door. He checked every folder and drawer, but the contents were all related to her work.

Even here, in the most private space in her home, there was no indication that Kathryn had personal ties to another human being. The most intimate item she'd kept here was now tucked in his bedside table—a newspaper clipping with her real name.

Tim ran his hands over his face. He was tired; felt like a canvas stretched too tightly over a frame, and the full realization of Kathryn's isolation made him incredibly fucking sad. It also made him feel guilty.

Kathryn was a woman balanced on razor wire. Her hold on her identity and purpose, he had come to realize, was tenuous at best. Delia's betrayal—the omission of truth regarding Romero's death—had likely been a significant blow to Kathryn's sense of self. Tim knew that because he had taken advantage of it in his need to feel something other than his own cavernous loss and brooding incompetence.

Her weakness at losing Delia had been the opening he needed to get laid and he was ashamed, now, that he'd taken the chance without a thought about how it might impact her.

What he knew about Kathryn's life made him angry; the way she'd been treated by everyone, Delia included, filled him with a sense of urgent and devastating fury. And now Matthew Reed was looking at her like just another tool he could use, too.

It seemed everyone but Tim was perfectly content putting Kathryn's life in danger if it meant achieving their personal objectives. No wonder she was such an ill-tempered and unpredictable pain in the ass. It almost made too much sense she had been willing to die in a field for a cause she believed in when he first met her. She had been groomed her entire life to believe her existence was only worth what she could provide to other people.

How could she have expected a complete stranger to value her life more than anyone else ever had?

Tim had felt the same during his last deployment—like a cello being tuned until it snapped in half. It was the reason he'd decided to join the Marshals service instead of completing another tour.

Tim realized, with deep dissatisfaction, that he was the closest thing to a partner or a true friend Kathryn had likely ever had. No one else had ever bothered sticking by her side long enough for her to truly trust them, except maybe Delia, and now that bond had been blown to shit, too.

The sudden understanding made what he knew he had to do next all the more difficult.

Tim reached for the landline and dialed Kathryn's cell number, hoping ardently that she hadn't ditched the phone, yet.

As it rang a third and fourth time, the raw feeling in his chest grew.

What if she hadn't ditched it? What if Dawson had already found—

"Why are you in my house?" she asked, and Tim couldn't help the relief that flooded his body at the sound of her voice, even if it was gruff and accusatory.

"You weren't answering my calls," he said.

"I was busy."

"Stealing people's clothes and cellphone chargers?"

There was a slight pause, and then she said, "I didn't take your charger." But her voice was too soft, and he could hear her shifting—whatever she was wearing sounded heavy, and the cloth made too much noise as she moved.

"Your flowers are dead."

The thought of her wearing his clothes no longer elicited a lustful response. Instead, it made his chest feel empty.

"You haven't been watering them for me? Some pal you are."

He remembered thinking she'd worn his t-shirt to fuck with him, but then her unwitting confession as he'd interrogated her had changed his perspective.

I knew someone was watching the house. I just didn't expect it to be you.

"I don't have time to be your gardener." Kathryn chuckled at his lame joke, and the low sound sent a pleasant buzz through his body.

She hadn't been trying to mess with him. She'd been trying to feel close to something.

She'd been trying to feel close to him, the same way he'd felt yesterday when he'd held her tightly against his body after she'd saved his ass.

"I need you to meet me," Tim said, as he tried without success to push the thought from his mind.

"Why?"

Tim slumped into Kathryn's chair and let his head fall forward into his free hand. He was careful not to let the defeated feeling in his body seep into his voice. "I have information on Dawson, but I need your help tracking him."

"Where?"

"Coffee Times."

"7 AM?"

"Fine, but don't get yourself killed before then, okay?" His plea, though he kept his tone light, was sincere.

She chuckled again, "I'll do my best, Deputy. And you, too."

And then she hung up and Tim was left sitting in her basement, wondering if she would ever forgive him.

Wondering whether he would deserve it, even if she did.