Chapter 8: Revelations

"You falling asleep?"

She'd gotten a bit lost in his voice. "Hmm? A little, I guess. But not because of your story. How long have we been talking, anyway?"

He glanced at his watch. "Three hours." At some point they'd changed positions; now he was leaning back against the sofa, seated on the floor with his legs stretched out, and she was lying on the sofa itself, on her stomach with her arms crossed and her chin resting on them, so their heads were close together.

"Wow." She laughed quietly. "Who'd have ever thought—"

"—that we could spend three hours talking about anything and everything, and have it seem like no time had passed at all?" He smiled at her. "Certainly wasn't anything I'd have called. Guess we just never got a chance to—"

"—spend enough time alone to allow the walls down." She shook her head. "Okay, I'm scared now. We're finishing each other's sentences. The blue-blood and the computer nerd; go figure."

Now it was his turn to laugh. "The last thing anyone would call you is a computer nerd, Tara. Cyber-goddess, yes. But never a nerd." He turned to face her suddenly, and there was no humor in his blue eyes. "You are a beautiful, strong, caring lady who deserves far more than a string of blind dates who haven't a clue what they're missing out on."

Her eyes widened again; she could see the sincerity behind the compliment, and she realized just how much depth there was beneath his usual iron-clad façade. Something else suddenly occurred to her as well.

"Can I tell you a secret?" She smiled mischievously.

A blond brow went up, wary. "Do I dare to say yes?"

Tara laughed again. "It's nothing bad; I just realized it myself. That string of blind dates you just referred to? I end up comparing almost every one of them… to you."

"You're kidding. And those are the ones that don't work out?" Both brows were halfway to his hairline now. "Why on earth would you want to date someone as cynical, and admittedly arrogant and overbearing at times, as me?"

"Because," she replied softly, reaching out to touch his shoulder, "—and I don't know how I figured it out before this assignment— beneath that arrogant, cynical, downright obnoxious at times, persona of yours, beats the heart of a knight and the soul of a poet."

If she expected a smile, she didn't get it; instead, for what seemed like an eternity, the expression she saw in his eyes could be boiled down to two words: sheer terror. But he didn't look down, and he didn't pull away. After a long moment, in reality, he spoke, his voice soft and shaking just slightly.

"You can't know that; no one knows that."

"Can't know it because it's not true, or because it's the one thing that, for some reason, scares you to death if anyone ever found out?" She was pushing; she knew it, and she waited for him to shut her out again.

This time he did look away, staring into the fire for a long time. But she didn't feel the wall slam down; it seemed he was just waiting for some subtle (or perhaps divine) confirmation that it was all right to say what he was feeling. On an impulse, she sat up and slid down to sit next to him; she laid a hand over his, not speaking but simply offering the comfort he'd shown her earlier.

"Did you ever wonder why I joined the Bureau?" The normally resonant voice was infinitely soft, almost tentative.

Tara didn't move, and she kept her voice equally soft. "As a matter of fact, yes; especially after seeing your relationship with Anne and hearing a little about your family. It doesn't seem like something they'd push you to do."

His breath came out in a short, harsh laugh, almost bitter. "Oh, they didn't, believe me." Now the bitterness was replaced with a tired sigh, and he made his decision.

"When I started at Harvard, I was on a fast track to a degree in corporate law— part of the family finance legacy. I thought…" He paused, then continued, his voice a bit heavy. "I thought that if I could just get to that point, then maybe, just maybe, I'd finally see some approval in my father's eyes, instead of always having to compete with Anne."

Her hand tightened over his. "What happened?"

His gaze stayed on the fire. "The summer between my sophomore and junior years, I did an internship in a criminal law office in New York— a friend of my grandfather's was a senior partner. Even though I was going into corporate law, my college advisor thought it would 'broaden my scope' a bit.

"One of the cases, the major case, that summer was the brutal rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl. Our firm was representing the defendant— a 20-year-old college kid with a family richer than mine. I learned the whole array of slick-talk and testimony manipulation. There didn't seem to be a great deal of evidence against him; this was before DNA tagging was as sophisticated as it is today, and eventually the kid was acquitted.

"When the case was finished, Mr. Crawford, my 'mentor,' asked me to pull together all the files and notes for the case, write up a summary of the outcome and then get it all ready to file away."

She caught the look in his eyes as he paused, and Tara drew in a long breath. "You found something in the case files, didn't you?"

Myles nodded, his eyes now directed at the floor; he gripped her hand as if it were a lifeline. "A police report, from the scene where they'd found the victim; I don't know, to this day, how it got overlooked by both the prosecution and the officers who'd worked the case. And the defense surely didn't make use of it. A single piece of evidence, a single angle that would have convicted the guy in a heartbeat— but because it was overlooked, a guilty man went free. I tried to tell Mr. Crawford…"

"But you can't try a person twice for the same crime," Tara finished for him. She slipped her arm around his shoulders. "It wasn't your fault, Myles. It wasn't your job to take care of details like that. Was it?"

He shook his head; still, she heard his voice break slightly. "Maybe not my fault; but all I could see was that girl. Dead. Brutally violated, beaten to a pulp and left to die ignominiously in a dark alley. Anne was just a year older than the victim; the one thought that haunted me for a long time was 'what if it had been Anne?' Even with the relationship we had, she's still my sister."

She nodded, and he continued. "I was never so glad to get back to school; vowed I'd never go near a criminal court case again. But something in me had changed— I watched the corporate cases we studied, the scenarios we ran defending big companies, advising them of ways to avoid legal problems, the whole drill. But all I could see was the brutality all over again; ruthless practices that walked the edge of legality, but certainly not of integrity. After a corporate firm internship the following summer, I just couldn't do it any more; I couldn't stand by and watch, or worse, help, while employees and shareholders and investors were violated almost as surely as that girl had been."

"You switched specialties, then?" She'd been gently rubbing his shoulders absently the whole time.

"Not exactly," he replied, relaxing against her touch a little. "Just added to it. There was a job fair at the start of my senior year; one of the booths was for the FBI. I got looking through some of their material, just out of curiosity, and I realized that here was a chance to make up for it— that one angle missed, that one chance to put away a murderer that didn't happen. I not only doubled my class load that year, I spent the next year after graduation working on my languages. French was already a family thing, but I knew the Bureau was particularly interested in stuff like Russian and Chinese. I managed to cram them both into a year's study before my 23rd birthday. Had headaches off and on for six months afterward."

Her eyes were very wide, but she was smiling. "You mean to tell me you ended up not only with a double-law degree from Harvard, but learned Russian and Chinese at the same time? I don't wonder you had headaches."

Now he laughed, and the past slipped back into its appointed place. "My classmates at Quantico kept trying to figure me out; I was headed exactly where I wanted to be, and wasn't about to let anyone or anything stand in the way— not my family's disappointment, the fallout from several of my Harvard professors, nothing."

"Wow." It all made sense now. "But I don't understand why you felt you had to close off from everyone. How come I'm the only person who knows this about you?"

A heavy sigh. "Couple of reasons. First, it was easier to set up a wall against all the fallout than to try endlessly to explain it. And then, my first assignment in Hartford was rough; our unit lost three members in the space of four years. The first one was my training agent."

"Oh, Myles."

He nodded. "It was just one of those things; but he'd been great, one of those people you feel you can talk to about anything, who you know is watching your back even when you're not, and whose first priority is to save you from your own stupidity during those first two years.

"The other two guys… they were friends, a lot like our team is now. We were a family; and then they were gone— just like that, nothing any of us would have done differently, except get the bad guys before it could happen. Maybe that's why I plow through cases like I do; the sooner a case is solved, and a perp is in custody, the less likely anyone else can get hurt."

He fell silent, and Tara let the quiet permeate them both; she thought back over the cases they'd worked together, and now she could see that single force driving him through all of them. But there was something else…

"Myles," she asked softly, "your training agent; did what happened to him…?"

He shook his head, a smile coming to his face. "No, thank heavens. He didn't get killed making up for my stupidity. I don't think I could have stayed in the Bureau after that. A sniper shot him as he was trying to help a civilian caught in the crossfire area."

She laughed a little. "Sounds like Bobby."

Myles gave her a stern look, though his eyes were still highly amused. "I swear you to the ultimate secrecy on this, but Caleb was a lot like Bobby. In some ways, the team I'm on today brings back a lot of the good times from back then."

Now Tara laughed merrily, making an "x" over her heart with her right hand and then raising it. "You have my word. They'll never hear it from me."

He laughed with her; then his expression changed a bit, a mixture of surprise and a fondness that made her heart flip slightly. What's he thinking all of a sudden? she thought. After another moment, she decided she couldn't stand the suspense.

"Penny for your thoughts. Or, in your case, how about a silver dollar?"

He wrinkled his nose at her. "Very funny. Actually, I just realized how many nights I've spent on a first date wondering what you're doing and hoping it was more fun than I was having."

"Ok, now I know you're putting me on. No way. You're looking for someone elegant, sophisticated, intelligent…" She trailed off as he caught her chin in his hand. The look in his eyes could be read a thousand different ways, so she just waited.

"Tara, you are one of the most intelligent women I know— and certainly the most fun. Who else could get away with dragging me out of the house to go miniature golfing in a rainstorm with the words 'Chopin will wait,' all to alleviate the tension surrounding the McNeil case? No one. You are unique, and funny, and totally spontaneous, and if I don't stop right now I'm going to end up kissing you."

It was a perfect opening for any number of quips, but she could only think of one. "We've been stage-kissing for two weeks now; you think I'm going to stop you at this point?"

"I'm not referring to a stage kiss, Tara." He sounded a little shocked, himself.

Her voice was as soft as her eyes in the firelight. "I know." She felt the hesitation in him still, so she was the one who closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his.