"I'm sure Vin has already contacted the lawyers from inside the panic room," Faith comforted him. "And rallied the troops. He doesn't need anything from you right now but to be here for Anthony."
Anthony nodded. "I'm gonna go up to the surgery floor and wait," he informed them.
"I'll be right here. Come and tell me when you know anything," she told him, but there was a pleading in her tone.
"Chin up, sweetheart, worry isn't a look I like on your face," he told her, touching her hip and moving away.
"Coffee," Faith declared, moving across the space toward the waiting area where soda machines sat beside a giant hot beverage machine. Hospital coffee was every bit as bad if not worse than police station coffee, but she wasn't going to be too picky. "Shit," she said, patting all her pockets in frustration.
How the hell had she forgotten her wallet? Granted, things had been crazy, but that was so unlike her.
"Here, baby," Daniel said, hip-checking her slightly and reaching for his own wallet, putting a dollar in the machine and hitting the coffee button.
"Stop calling me baby," she said, but most of the fight seemed out of her voice.
"Stop acting like you don't like it," he shot back, handing her a coffee and turning to add money and hit the button for his own.
"Daniel, it's over," she said, sipping her too-hot coffee, getting a sick kind of comfort from the burn.
"No, it's not. And if you would get your head out of your ass for two minutes, you would see that too."
"You lied to me."
"Jesus Christ, so the fuck what?" he asked on a hiss, making her jerk back, surprised.
"And by that, I'm pretty sure you meant 'yeah, that was a dick move and I'm sorry'."
"Look, am I sorry that things happened this way? Yeah, babe. I'm sorry. But my intentions toward you had nothing to do with the job. That was all me. When I was alone in your apartment, I didn't snoop. I didn't overstep. I didn't do anything that you could consider not genuine. What? Should I be sorry about my job? See, that would be problematic seeing as the only reason we met in the first place was because of my job."
"You have been trying to lock up Vin and his sons."
"Yeah, sweetheart, they're criminals. Half of the agencies want to lock them up for one thing or another. That being said, I had no fucking idea they actually meant something to you. Half the time, you were snapping at them."
"And you would have had me locked up if you found anything illegal on me," she said, putting her coffee down on a nearby table, maybe not trusting herself to not scald him with it if things escalated.
"Faith..."
She shrugged. "Let's test it out, shall we? I work at Vin's because I am blackmailing him to let me do it. Because of that, he lets me snap at him and his sons and his customers. He also pays my mother's medical bills without so much as a flinch. You going to lock me up? I just admitted to a crime."
"What the fuck could you blackmail a man like him with?" Daniel asked, ignoring her attempts to goad him.
"Something you and every cop, special agent, states attorney and any other number of people I don't know the names of would kill to get their hands on." She watched his brow raise, but that was the only reaction she got. "Are you going to drag me down to the station and try to get the information out of me?"
"Faith," he tried to cut in, but she was on a tear.
"I've also broken a man's kneecaps with a tire iron once for stalking his ex. I knocked three teeth down the throat of a potential rapist in an alley about three years back. Oh, this week I beat the ever-loving hell out of a man who was trying to keep a woman's son from her..."
"Faith," he tried again.
"My first two guns were illegal. I used to do target practice in an abandoned brick building in Brooklyn. Let's see... oh, I once..."
"Faith, I quit."
Those words, so unexpected, made her sentence trail off, her lips still parted, but no words coming. He quit? He quit his job? Why would he quit his job? Because of her? She couldn't quite bring herself to believe that. It was too crazy, too over the top a reaction.
Hell, they barely knew each other.
"What was that?" she asked, shaking her head a little to clear it.
"I quit the Bureau. They haven't quite accepted the resignation yet, but now that Max's cover is shot to shit, I will make it clear to them again."
"You, ah, quit for me?" she asked, each word so separate from the other that they were each practically their own sentence. "Daniel, that's, well, that's crazy."
"Don't flatter yourself too much, sweetheart," he said, teasing smile in place. "It wasn't all you. Though, that was a part of it."