She clicked her seat belt closed and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “I doubt Long Acre has a cab company. You’d have to wait for a car from Austin, and that’d take forever. Plus, if the guy didn’t retract his statement, I was going to give one of my own. He was in the wrong, too.”
“I should’ve handled it better.”
“You think?” she said.
The tension in his shoulders eased a bit, her sarcasm comforting him somehow.
“And you’re right, it doesn’t change what you did to know why, but maybe you should clue me in. You went after that guy like you could kill him.” She turned to him, her gaze full of questions. “What happened?”
He looked back to the road, picking through what he could and couldn’t tell her. But before he could get anything out, his cell phone rang. Private Number flashed on the screen and he cursed, knowing who it was. The cops had made him get his boss on the line to confirm he was FBI. Billings had been brief and all business with them, but Finn had known that wouldn’t be the end of it. Billings’s response had been the equivalent of Finn’s mother saying, Just wait ’til we get home, when he’d acted up in public. If he didn’t pick up the call, he’d make it worse.
“I need to answer this,” he said, reaching for the phone, but the car’s Bluetooth picked up the call first, responding to the answer command.
Before he could switch the phone off Bluetooth, Billings’s voice boomed through the speakers. “Goddammit, Dorsey, you just started your break, and you’re already getting yourself arrested?”
Liv reared back at the yelling and looked Finn’s way.
“Sir, just give me one second—” Finn tried to get the call onto the cell so Liv wouldn’t hear all of it, but his boss was already on a roll.
“I am not giving you a damn thing. I trust you to keep a low profile and acclimate back to society, and a few hours after our talk, you’re beating some guy for looking at you the wrong way?”
“It was a photo—”
“I don’t care if it was a goddamned film crew. You could’ve handled it by flashing your badge and confiscating the phone. Think, Dorsey.” Billings sighed heavily. “This just tells me I should’ve trusted my instincts. You were under for too long. I want you back in Virginia. We’ve got people here that can help you reset. I don’t need you accidentally killing someone because they tick you off.”
Liv’s eyes had gone wide, and Finn gave up on trying to make the call private. Too late.
“I’m not… I don’t need to come back, sir. It was a momentary lapse in judgment. I wouldn’t have taken it any further than I did. It was just a little scuffle.”
Liv’s brows went up,
silently calling him out on his lie.
“That’s not what the witness said. He said you looked like you wanted to kill the guy. He said—”
“He was protecting me, Mister… Uh, sir,” Liv said, boldly jumping in.
Finn stiffened.
“Hello? Who’s that?” Billings barked.
“Olivia Arias. I’m”—she glanced at Finn—“an old friend of Finn’s. We were having coffee together, and I freaked out when I saw the guy taking pictures. Finn was…protecting me. It wasn’t as bad as the police made it sound.”
Billings went dead silent on the phone. “You have a woman in the car?”
Finn winced, slightly horrified that Liv had talked to Billings, but smart enough to capitalize on the obvious opportunity. “Yes, sir. Liv picked me up from the police station. Like she said, we were having coffee together before we were supposed to meet some high school friends for breakfast.”
Billings was quiet again and Finn glanced at Liv, unsure why she was helping him.
“Miss?” Billings asked finally. “I need your honesty. Did you see Agent Dorsey as a genuine threat to anyone this morning?”
Liv gave Finn a tense, questioning look but then wet her lips. “Well, sir, no, not exactly. I mean, he’s a cop, so always capable of being a threat, but this was just a minor dustup. That guy was being an absolute douche canoe. I wanted to hit him myself.”
Billings was silent for a long moment and then made a noise that might’ve been a chuckle if it had escaped his throat. “I see.”
He doubted Billings had ever heard the term douche canoe, but something unlocked in Finn’s chest, and he was able to take a breath. “It won’t happen again,” Finn assured him. “My plan for the rest of the summer is very low key, like I told you. Staying at a lake house, reconnecting with old friends, and tackling a few minor projects. If anything else happens, you have my word that I’ll return to Virginia. But this was just a one-off, an unfortunate incident.”
Billings didn’t rush with his answer, leaving Finn worried that he was about to get yanked back to headquarters anyway. But when Billings finally spoke again, he was as direct as usual. “Okay. I’ll take your word, Dorsey. For now. But I want yours, too, Miss…”