His hand pinned my jaw. Leather on my wrist. Pulse in my throat. Breath and scent and heat. "Don't." His hand slams the lid before I get the tray sealed, and the match stem rolls against the steel like it's got somewhere to be. "Get off my evidence." I don't look up. I've got gloves on, a chain-of-custody sheet half-signed, and a security supervisor built like a door standing so close I can smell cedar and gun oil coming off his jacket. "You're contaminating a scene, Mr. Hale." "You're standing in mine." Knox Hale doesn't move his hand. His knuckles are white where they're pressed flat against the tray, right next to my fingers, close enough that the cold off the steel and the heat off his skin fight for the same half inch of air. "That stem doesn't leave this vault." "It's already logged." I flip the sheet around so he can see the timestamp. My voice comes out steadier than I feel, because my pulse is doing something stupid, ticking up the second his shoulder blocks the light. "Chain of custody started the moment I photographed it. You want to argue with the state fire marshal about that, be my guest." "I don't argue with fire marshals." His mouth does something that isn't a smile. "I argue with the people standing between me and my own door." Then he reaches past me — not fast, not rough, just final — and slaps his palm flat on the panel by the frame. Red light. A hiss somewhere over our heads, water pressure dying in the sprinkler line, and the vault door doesn't swing shut so much as it seats itself, steel kissing steel with a sound like a vault actually being a vault. "What did you just do." "Sprinkler override." He says it like he's telling me the time. "Forty-eight hours, minimum, before the fire panel resets and lets that door cycle again. Casino policy. Suppression fault, full lockdown, nobody in or out till the system clears itself." "You just locked us in a room with an active fire scene sample." My hands are shaking a little, and I hate that, so I set the tray down harder than I need to. "That's not policy, that's you covering something." "Or it's me making sure that stem doesn't walk out of here in your pocket before I know what it says about my family." There it is. I file that away — *my family* — while I check the door with my palm, feeling for a seam, a gap, anything. There isn't one. It's cold under my hand, wet already from the dump the sprinkler line took before it died, and it doesn't give a single millimeter. "There's a wash corridor," I say. "Your crew's on the other side of it. They hear us in here—" "They hear you screaming about evidence and they open this door themselves, box goes into somebody's coat pocket, and you never prove a damn thing." He says it flat, like he's already run the math. "You want that? Or you want to talk to me instead." I turn around and he's right there. Closer than a man has any business standing, close enough I have to tip my chin up to keep his eyes instead of his collarbone, and God, the collarbone's not helping — open shirt, a burn scar tracking pale up the side of his neck that I'd bet money matches an accelerant pattern I've seen in a case file. "You set that fire," I say, quiet, testing it. Something moves behind his eyes. Not denial. Calculation. "Prove it." "I don't have to prove it to you. I have to prove it to a judge, and I will, the second that door opens." "Then I guess," he says, and his hand comes up, slow, not grabbing, just resting along the line of my jaw like he's testing whether I'll let him, "we've got forty-eight hours to figure out whether you walk out of here with that box, or whether you walk out of here with a different problem." His thumb drags along my cheekbone. Once. My breath catches somewhere behind my ribs and I hate that too, hate that my back's found the cold steel of the vault door on its own, like my body already picked a side before I got a vote. "That a threat, Hale?" "That's an offer." His voice drops, rough at the edges, and the leather-and-cedar smell of him is everywhere now, filling up the space where the air conditioning should be. "You keep your evidence. I keep my door. We spend the seal figuring out who blinks first." "I don't blink." "Good." His jaw ticks, and his palm slides from my cheek to the side of my throat, not squeezing, just *there*, thumb resting right over the pulse he has to feel jumping under his skin. "Neither do I." Somewhere past the door, metal bangs against metal — his crew, hammering on the wash corridor side, voices raised, somebody yelling his name. He doesn't look away from me. Doesn't move his hand. "They're going to try the manual release," I say. "They can try." His forehead drops an inch closer, close enough his breath ghosts hot across my mouth, close enough I can count the singe marks on his collar like a confession he hasn't said out loud yet. "There's only one door code that actually works on that panel tonight. And it's mine." The banging gets louder. My hand finds the tray behind me on instinct, fingers closing around the edge like I can protect it just by holding on, and his eyes drop to that motion, then back up to my mouth, and he doesn't step back. "So say it," I whisper. "Whatever you're standing here not saying." His lips part. The banging stops dead, like the crew outside just heard something worse than a locked door — and Knox goes very still, very fast, like a man realizing the only person who can open this room from the inside is standing an inch from his mouth, holding the one thing that could burn his whole family down. The seal held on count 1; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 2; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 3; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 4; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 5; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 6; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. He covered me, mouth on my mouth, and I couldn't move.