Chapter Four

Marlie glared at Agent McGarry. "No!" she repeated.

"Why not?" Noah gripped her arm.

"I'm sorry." The sad look in the boy's eyes killed her but didn't change her decision. "I just can't." Not without reexposing her head and her heart to excruciating emotional pain. She couldn't live through that again and survive. If she could even call this surviving. A life alone, without…anything.

She tugged Noah's hand from her arm. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Deep down, she knew that would never happen. Even if Noah was still at North Metro tomorrow, she had no intention of seeing him again. Talking with him in the first place had been a huge mistake. She'd thought she could handle it. She'd been wrong.

Pushing past McGarry, she dragged the rolling trash bin into the hallway. How she'd get through the rest of her shift, she didn't know.

With her head down, she passed the nurse's station. Tish was deep in conversation with Dr. Tori Sampson, one of the few doctors who actually took the time to say hello to the hospital's custodians.

"Marlie," Tish called out. "How did it go?"

"Fine," she answered quickly, rolling the garbage bin in front of her.

Dr. Sampson smiled as she went past the desk. "Hi, Marlie."

After a brief nod and what she hoped looked acceptably like a smile, Marlie kept going, relieved at having escaped more socialization. All she wanted was to get back to her work duties and escape behind her comfortable cloak of invisibility.

High heels clipped behind her. No such luck.

"Wait!" Tish stopped her with a gentle hand. "How did it go with Noah and the FBI?"

"Um, like I said. Fine." She felt like a child, unable to meet her friend's knowing perusal.

"Uh-huh. Sure." Tish crossed her arms. "What aren't you telling me?" When she didn't respond, Tish pressed, "Marlie?"

She looked past Tish to see McGarry and Kinnemara, along with Blue, McGarry's German shepherd, leaving Noah's room. McGarry had a phone pressed to his ear.

Might as well get this over with. "The FBI wants Noah to help them find the place where he was taken to."

Tish shook her head. "I thought he was being held in the basement of a house."

"Apparently, he was somewhere else before he was drugged and put in that basement." She couldn't imagine what Noah had been through. "He must have been so scared," she whispered, more to herself than Tish.

"Hmm." Tish pursed her lips. "Noah is a minor. Currently, he has no foster parents. If the FBI wants to take him from the hospital, he'll have to have a legal guardian."

"I know." Noah was an unaccompanied minor. The federal government couldn't just whisk him away. "They want me to go with them, but you know I can't do that."

Tish held open her arms. "Why not? You've been through the training. You could be his guardian, and he likes you."

She'd completely forgotten she and her ex had gone through the foster care program. "It doesn't matter." She shook her head. "Besides, Dr. Strobie said he'd go."

"Noah hates Strobie. The man's a jackass."

"Then why did you hire him?" The question must have come out louder than intended. From the other end of the hallway, McGarry watched her, his lips moving and the phone still pressed to his ear.

"He looked good on paper, and he interviewed well," Tish countered, pointing a finger at her. "If you want someone to blame for him being here, look in the mirror."

Marlie sighed. Indirectly, it was her fault North Metro was stuck with Strobie. "I couldn't have taken the job, and you know it." Maybe someday the time would be right. Today wasn't that day.

"Yes, you could have. Haven't you been saying a change is needed in your life?"

Reluctantly, she nodded. But this wasn't the change she'd been considering, not by a long shot. Not that she'd had anything particular in mind. "This is too much. This is…" She didn't know how to say it.

Yes. She did.

Her body temperature felt like it had soared five degrees. Sweat began trickling down her back and temples. The thought of working with the FBI on this case— a missing children case —terrified her.

"What this is," Tish said, lowering her voice as a couple walked past, "is an opportunity to step outside those rigid walls you've erected around yourself. This isn't the life for you. It's time to start living again, and you know it."

She did know it, yet her mind spun with all the reasons she couldn't do this. "I can't just take off and go gallivanting around Denver with the FBI. I have a job here. I need the money." Because her personal resources were tapped out.

"I can take care of that," a deep voice said.

Agent McGarry . She hadn't noticed he and his dog had snuck up behind them. Even the dog was stealthy.

"Take care of what ?" She glared at the man, both annoyed by his eavesdropping and uneasy at the sudden chill whipping through her. His voice might be calm, gentle, but the fiery determination in his steel-gray eyes was as subtle as a Mack truck.

"The FBI can pay you as a consultant. I've already run this up the chain, and it's been approved."

Marlie parked her hands on her hips. "You did that without asking me?"

He arched a dark brow. "I told you I won't take no for an answer."

"Of all the—" She bit her lip to keep from speaking her mind: arrogant, overbearing, and that was just the beginning of the list. "It doesn't matter. If I leave for an indefinite period of time, there are no guarantees I'll still have a job to come back to. The hospital would have to replace me."

"Actually," Tish interjected, holding up a finger, "I'd have to ask the board, but I might be able to get you a special-circumstances leave of absence. Your job would still be here when you get back."

Did she want it to be?

Of course . Again, she needed the income to pay rent on her tiny apartment.

Maybe .

Maybe not . Because deep down, could she really see herself continuing this way?

McGarry watched her. Silently. But she could practically hear the gears turning in his head. He was biding his time, waiting for her conversation with Tish to play out.

"Look at it this way," Tish continued. "You won't even have to tap into your vacation time, which, by the way, you've barely used. This is a chance for you to get out of here and do something else, even if it's just for a few days."

Marlie frowned at her friend, but she was right about one thing. In the two and a half years she'd been working at North Metro, she'd used only a few days here and there, and then, only when absolutely necessary. Because she didn't want to be alone at home with only her grief for company. Yet some of what Tish said struck a chord. It had taken three years to get to this point, but the realization smacked her in the face as surely as if someone had physically struck her.

Inside, she was dying. A slow, painful death by tiny increments. She could feel the life bleeding out of her every day, every week, every month that passed.

"As I said," McGarry added, "if necessary, the FBI will pay your salary while you're working with me. We'll expedite the paperwork to make you his legal guardian."

"You can't possibly do that in time." No one worked that quickly.

"I can, and I will," he answered flatly. "The FBI is the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country. We won't stop until we have every resource needed to get the job done."

We won't stop? Or he won't stop?

Regardless of to whom he was referring, it was the same outcome in her book. This man would move mountains to get what he wanted, and right now, he wanted her.

Noah's sad, lonely face swam before her eyes. Could she really do it, help the FBI? "No," she whispered to Tish. "Even if I wanted to work with the FBI, my foster training credentials had to have lapsed by now, and it takes time for the court to approve a legal guardian."

"I can fast-track any legal approvals needed." McGarry continued watching her with an unnerving intensity that made her want to squirm like a worm on a hook.

The huge German shepherd also seemed to be staring at her with the same alarming concentration.

"I don't know." The legalities were just an excuse. The real impediment was her own reluctance to put herself out there, for any thing or any one . Though part of her secretly resented having become such a coward.

"This is a priority case," he continued. "Anything involving children is a priority."

"I know that, dammit ." She pounded the rim of the garbage bin with her fist.

McGarry pressed his lips together, narrowing his eyes, and in that moment, she felt as if he could read her thoughts and knew exactly what she'd been through. Well, duh . He dealt with distraught parents all the time. He'd be experienced at this. Maybe he could see right through her.

"I need you, Ms. Foxe. Noah needs you. Without you, I don't think he'll open up, and I need him to help me find that camp ASAP. Do this for him and for all the other kids there."

"I-I don't know."

He took a step closer, as did his dog. "Think about all those families whose children are missing. How frantic their parents must be."

Again, she swallowed, but not from fear. He'd hit on something she knew all too well—exactly what those parents were going through.

The man's dark brows rose. "Whatdya say? Will you help us?"

She glanced at Tish and caught the subtle upward twitch of her friend's lips. The dog, Blue, nudged her hand with his nose, as if pushing her to say yes. No fair. Three against one .

But this wasn't about her. She was being selfish, wallowing in her own misery. Noah did need her, and if she could help the FBI find those kids, maybe their parents wouldn't have to suffer the way she had. And still do.

"What—" She broke off, her voice coming out like a strangled cry. She cleared her throat. "What exactly do you want from me?" God, was she actually considering this?

Yes . Those dice had already been rolled. While McGarry's hands remained at his side, he might as well have done a fist-pump.

"I want to take Noah to the farmers markets in Denver. Once we find the one he was at, I want to try to get him to remember enough to backtrack to the camp."

She must be out of her mind. After all her hard work at distancing herself from anyone—especially children—she was taking a leap that might very well kill her.

"The families left behind never stop grieving. Do they?" he asked quietly, his steel-gray eyes going as soft as a dove, yet still laser-focused on her.

Now she was sure of it. He knows .

Aside from Tish, whom she'd known for over a decade, no one she'd encountered in the last three years ever suspected a thing. In less than an hour, this one man had figured it out.

"Marlie." Tish's hand rubbed her back in slow circles. "You can do this. You're stronger than you think you are."

She hoped so. Prayed it was so. Because the only other time she'd been more scared in her entire life was the day she'd received the call from the police. Aiden had been found. Dead.

"We need you," McGarry said. "Noah needs you. I need you."

Knowing she'd run out of excuses, she looked at him and glimpsed something unexpected in his tired eyes, something she wasn't completely certain of. Sorrow?

Whatever it was, it didn't last long, replaced again by that fiery determination she'd accurately identified earlier.

"Okay," she whispered, swallowing and trying to sound stronger when what she really felt was exposed.

Agent McGarry had ripped off every single one of her carefully placed Band-Aids, exposing the raw, still-bleeding emotional flesh.

In that moment, she hated him more than she'd hated anyone in her life.