With an easy shrug, she kept going. “Heading back there. I want to go through the cases between the first and this one more carefully, start calling names on the original interview lists. We just need one break, one goddamn crack, and we can bust it. I know it.”
He said nothing as they wound through the bullpen, into her office. “Want c
offee?” she asked, then frowned as he closed the door. “Problem?”
“How come you didn’t come to me with this?”
“With what?”
“This new theory.”
“Well, I—” Sincerely baffled, she shook her head. “I just did.”
“Bullshit. What you did was come out as primary, as team leader, you briefed and assigned. You didn’t run this by me. My case, you remember? It’s my case you were using out there.”
“It just popped. Something York’s boyfriend said clicked on a new angle for me. I started working it and—”
“You started working it,” he interrupted. “Going back over my case. A case where I was primary. I was in charge. I made the calls.”
Because the muscles in her belly were starting to twist, Eve took a long, steady breath. “Yeah, like I’m going to go back over the others. They’re all part of the same whole, and if this is an opening—”
“One I didn’t see?” His tired, baggy eyes were hard and bright now. “A call I didn’t make while the bodies were piling up?”
“No. Jesus, Feeney. Nobody’s saying that or thinking that. It just turned for me. You’re the one who taught me when it turns for you, you push. I’m pushing.”
“So.” He nodded slowly. “You remember who taught you anyway. Who made a cop out of you.”
Now her throat was drying up on her. “I remember. I was there, Feeney, from the beginning when you pulled me out of uniform. And I was there for this case. Right there, and it didn’t turn for us.”
“You owe me the respect of cluing me in when you’re going to pick my work apart. Instead you roll this out, roll it over me, and you push me off on some bullshit Urban Wars research. I lived and breathed this case, day and night.”
“I know it. I—”
“You don’t know how many times I’ve dug it out since and lived and breathed it again,” he interrupted furiously. “So now you figure it’s turned for you and you can rip my work to pieces without so much as a heads-up.”
“That wasn’t my intent or my purpose. The investigation is my priority—”
“It’s fucking well mine.”
“Is it?” Temper and distress bubbled a nasty stew in her belly. “Fine, then, because I handled this the best I know how—fast. The faster we work it, the better Rossi’s chances are, and right now they’re about as good as a snowball’s in hell. Your work wasn’t the issue. Her life is.”
“Don’t tell me about her life.” He jabbed his finger in the air toward her. “Or York’s, or Dagby’s, or Congress’s, Waters’s, or Weitz’s. You think you’re the only one who knows their names?” Bitterness crackled in his tone. “Who carries the weight of them around? Don’t you stand there and lecture me about your priorities. Lieutenant.”
“You’ve made your viewpoint and your feelings on this matter clear. Captain. Now, as primary, I’m telling you, you need to back off. You need to take a break.”
“Fuck that.”
“Take an hour in the crib, or go home and crash until you can shake this off.”
“Or what? You’ll boot me off the investigation?”
“Don’t bring it down to that,” she said quietly. “Don’t put either of us there.”
“You put us here. You better think about that.” He stormed out, slamming the door hard enough to make the glass shudder.
Eve’s breath whistled out as she braced a hand on her desk, as she lowered herself into her chair. Her legs felt like water, her gut like a storm inside a violent sea.
They’d had words before. It wasn’t possible to know someone, work with someone, especially under circumstances that were so often tense and harsh, and not have words. But these had been so biting and vicious, she felt as if her skin was flayed from them.