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locked it. She got shakily to her feet.
    “I have no idea why you’re so angry.”
    “Don’t you? You think I didn’t see your face when I told you where that e-mail had come from? Do you really believe you’re so in control, Dr. Jones, that the devastation doesn’t show?”
    It was killing him. Her complexities and complications were killing him. He didn’t want them, he thought furiously. He didn’t want to find himself constantly compelled to fight his way through to her.
    “I don’t believe I in any way attempted to kill the messenger,” she began.
    “Don’t take that private-school tone with me either, it doesn’t work. I saw your face when your mother walked in. How everything inside you went on hold. Cold storage.”
    That got through, and stung. Brutally. “You asked me to accept the strong possibility that my mother used me, betrayed me, had me terrorized. That she’s involved in a major art theft that’s already resulted in three deaths. You asked me to do that, then you criticize the way I choose to deal with it.”
    “I’d rather have seen you shove her on her ass and demand an explanation.”
    “That might work in your family. We’re not quite so volatile in mine.”
    “Yeah, yours prefers the carefully iced blade that slices bloodlessly. I can tell you, Miranda, heat’s cleaner in the end and a hell of a lot more human.”

    “What did you expect me to do? Goddamn it, what? Scream at her, shout and rage and accuse?” She swept an arm over the desk, sending neatly arranged papers and carefully sharpened pencils flying. “Was I supposed to demand she tell me the truth? Confess or deny? If she hates me enough to have done this, she hates me enough to lie to my face.”
    She shoved her desk chair, sent it crashing into the wall. “She never loved me. Never gave me one free gesture of affection. Neither of them, not to me, to Andrew, or to each other. In my whole life neither of them ever said they loved me, never even bothered to lie so I could have the illusion. You don’t know what it’s like never to be held, never to be told, and to ache for it.”
    She pressed her hands to her stomach as if the pain centered there was unbearable. “To ache so hard and long that you have to stop wanting it or just die.”
    “No, I don’t know what it’s like,” he said quietly. “Tell me.”
    “It was like growing up in a fucking laboratory, everything sterile and perfectly in place, documented, calculated, but without any of the joy of discovery. Rules, that’s all. Rules of language, conduct, education. Do this and do it this way and no other, because no other is acceptable. No other is correct. How many of those rules has she broken if she’s done this?”
    Her breath was heaving, her eyes blazing, her fists clenched. He’d watched, he’d listened, and hadn’t moved or raised his voice. The only sound in the room now was her own ragged breathing as she looked around her office at the destruction she’d caused.
    Stunned, she shoved at her hair, rubbed her hand over her hard-pumping heart. For the first time she became aware there were tears streaming down her cheeks, so hot they should have burned her skin.
    “Is that what you wanted me to do?”
    “I wanted you to get it out.”
    “I guess I did.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Tantrums give me a headache.”

    “That wasn’t a tantrum.”
    She let out a weak laugh. “What would you call it?”
    “Honesty.” He smiled a little. “Even in my line of work I’m vaguely acquainted with the concept. You’re not cold, Miranda,” he said gently. “You’re just scared. You’re not unlovable, just unappreciated.”
    She felt the tears, stood helplessly as they overflowed. “I don’t want it to be my mother who did this, Ryan.”
    He went to her, nudged her fingers away and replaced them with his own. “We have a good chance of having the answers within the next couple of days. This will be over.”
    “But I’ll have to live with those answers.”
     
    He took her home and persuaded her to take a sleeping pill and go to bed early. The fact that he barely had to bully her into it only proved to him that she was running on fumes now.
    When he was certain she was asleep, when Andrew was closed off in his own wing, Ryan changed into the dark sweater and jeans he preferred for nighttime breaking and entering.
    He slipped his tools into his pocket, chose a soft-sided black briefcase with shoulder strap, in