All That Glitters. Mary Brady

there anything you want to tell me?”

      His shoulders stiffened and he drew in a breath. “You have all your facts and you’re looking for that personal touch to make your story more sensational.” Again his words were not angry.

      Under his assessing gaze, she suddenly felt as if he knew exactly who and what she was. As if he had been there that day when her source in Afghanistan had been exposed as a liar.

      She felt the humiliation try to submerge her again, as if he was qualified to judge her.

      She gathered her wits. “You did what you did and I came here to try to make some sense of it. To try to understand.”

      In Afghanistan she had been stupid and too eager. She had almost caused others to lose their lives, and that might make her as morally corrupt as he was.

      Disgust and repugnance aimed at herself suddenly seemed much worse than it had ever been. It made her sick to her stomach, made her head flood with the images floating around on the internet that portrayed her to be the lowest kind of life-form.

      She looked up and he was standing almost toe-to-toe with her.

      “What do you think you will be trying to understand?”

      His question brought her back into reality, the loft, the hurricane, the many people this man had cheated. His words had been soft as if trying to assess her again, not to challenge her.

      “How—how things started. I thought you might tell me how things started.”

      He stepped away but watched her warily.

      With both palms pressed to the counter she continued. “Did it start out as a swindle?”

      She expected him to smile at this, to pull out his charm to deflect her. Perhaps put on enough of a show to make her believe he had been wronged, to make her go sit in the four-poster room and use what she already had about him, type up a tidy article that looked just like everyone else’s.

      Not to dig around inside his head for deeper motives. Maybe his mother withheld love. Maybe his father exiled him to the military academy he attended for four years and supposedly hated.

      He didn’t smile at all. He looked tired. He had a right to be exhausted. She’d give him that. He had been out saving boats and rescuing women who wanted to tear his life apart. And that was exactly what she wanted to do, to tear his life apart as he had torn apart her sister’s.

      She wanted to disassemble him.

      Limb by limb, she thought and then asked, “At what point did you realize things were spinning out of control? That you were going to have to distance yourself from the fray so as to look innocent?”