"Don't." I twist my wrist out of his grip and it doesn't work, because Knox Hale doesn't let go of things he's decided to hold. "Tray steady, Voss." His other hand flattens against the small of my back and walks me two steps into the steel shelving, my hip catching a rack of sealed cases. Glass rattles. The match stem doesn't move. I make sure of that before I make sure of anything else. "You put your hands on a federal evidence custodian," I say, "you're not walking out of this building. Door code or not." "I'm not walking out either way. Neither are you. So let's not waste the forty-eight hours pretending that's a threat." His hand slides down my coat, flat, businesslike, patting the outside of the pocket like he's checking a jacket at coat check. Except coat check doesn't breathe on the back of your neck while they do it. "What are you looking for." "You tell me. You palm things when you think nobody's watching. I watched the pit cams for six years. I know what your hands do." He finds the edge of my badge lanyard first, tugs it out from under my collar, lets it fall against my chest like he's checking the photo matches the face two inches from his. It does. It's not a flattering photo. He looks at it anyway, longer than he needs to. "Rhea Voss," he reads off it, slow, like the name owes him something. "Chain of custody, badge four-four-one-nine. You've been in this building eleven months and you've never once let a chip walk out of evidence without a log entry." "That's the job." "That's discipline." His thumb brushes the badge photo, then my collarbone, an accident that isn't one. "I like discipline. I like it more when it's mine to break." The sprinkler override light blinks red over the door, steady, counting something neither of us says out loud. Water's still beading off the shelving from the first thirty seconds of the system dumping before he killed it. My coat's damp at the shoulder. Cold enough that I can feel every place his hand isn't, which is somehow worse than the places it is. "Turn around." "No." "Turn around, Rhea, or I go through the coat with you in it and we both know which one takes longer." I turn around. I hate that I do it. I hate more that some ugly, stupid part of my chest goes tight and hot when his palm runs down my ribs from behind, checking the lining, thorough, clinical, and not clinical at all, because his breath is right at my ear and it's not cold like the vault air, it's furnace-warm, and it drags a shiver up my spine that has nothing to do with the sprinkler runoff soaking through my collar. "Nothing," he says, quiet, almost disappointed. "No chip. No second stem. You're clean." "I told you that before you put your hands on me." "You tell me things. I check them. That's how I'm still alive at forty." His hand doesn't leave. It moves instead, up, and he catches my hair at the nape and tips my head, not hard, just enough that my throat's exposed to the cold and to him, and he leans in like he's going to do something with that, and I feel the graze of his jaw against my ear, feel him breathe in — actually breathe in, at my throat, like he's cataloguing me the way I catalogue a scene. "You smell like the lab," he says. "Ethanol and cold storage. And under that, something that isn't procedure." "Get off me." "I'm not on you. Yet." But his mouth is close enough that the words land on skin, not air, and my pulse is doing something traitorous under his hand where his fingers have slid to my collar, resting on the hinge of my jaw like he's testing whether I'll turn into it or away from it. I don't do either. I stand there with my heart going and my hands white-knuckled on the tray and I hate every second of it because some idiot nerve ending in me is leaning toward him instead of the wall. "You done searching?" My voice comes out rougher than I want. "Almost." He steps back half an inch, just enough for air to get between us, and it doesn't help — the cold rushes in where his heat was and I feel the loss of it like a slap. He looks at me like he clocked that too. "There's a chip I didn't find on you," he says. "Which means it's still on the floor. Chip one-fourteen. Blue felt, cracked edge, house mark worn smooth on one side." "I don't know what that is." "You will. It's got your thumbprint baked into the enamel from the night of the Riverline fire, because you were standing at that table at two a.m. logging a burn victim's effects before anyone called it arson. Nobody's ever pulled that chip. Nobody's ever needed to." The crew hits the wash corridor door hard enough that the whole frame shudders, three fast strikes, someone yelling Hale's name through two inches of steel. "You run," Knox says, not raising his voice at all, "you take that tray to the ATF, you call anyone before I open this door myself — I put chip one-fourteen in an evidence bag with your name on the chain-of-custody card. And then it isn't my fire anymore, Rhea." He leans in again, close enough I can feel the words before I hear them. "It's yours." 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. The seal held on count 7; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 8; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 9; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 10; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 11; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room.