She didn’t know if it was the rain or tears streaming down her face that made it hard to see. She only knew that she needed to get away from the house. Away from Braden and the way he looked at her now that he knew all her deepest secrets.

She hurried down the path leading to the beach, made her way onto the private cove near the dock where the boat was tied. The moon was hidden behind a solid wall of cloud cover, but enough light leaked from the house to give her a view of the angry waves crashing onto the sand. She watched them surge toward her feet before they withdrew to gather more power from the storm churning at sea.

Her clothes were soaked, clinging to her skin, but she was too numb to feel the cold. She stood there for a moment, sobs racking her body, the urge to flee so overpowering she wanted to jump in the boat, point it into the darkness, hope for the best.

It was a foolish idea, so she turned for the rocks lining the shore instead, hurrying along the sand, anxious to get out of the light spilling from the house before Braden came after her.

She reached the rocks and picked her way among them, glad they were high enough to avoid the most ferocious of the waves. The process was meditative — looking carefully for the next place to step, placing her foot on the flattest part of the rock, propelling herself forward to the next one. She was too busy making sure she didn’t fall into the surf to think about Braden. About the fact that he was working for the same people she was supposed to apprehend. About the fact that Mike — for all his faults, her friend — might be dirty. Most of all she didn’t want to think about the shame of Braden knowing about her sister’s addiction and death, the decision by her brothers to abandon their family legacy in favor of something not unlike what Braden was doing now.

The rocks became more spread out, the amount of space increasing between them until she found herself standing back on solid ground, a grove of trees hugging the shoreline. She ducked under one of them, aware now that she was shivering, her hands aching from the cold. The tree’s branches gave her a respite from the rain, and she stuffed her hands into her armpits as she caught her breath.

The lack of movement brought everything back, made it impossible to avoid the truth; she was a fraud, pretending to care about the law when every day she knew her brothers ran a high-end personal services firm that was really a front for their own strain of vigilanteism. A way to save people like their sister outside the bounds of the law.

She’d known for years and she hadn’t done a thing about it. She’d lived in fear of being found out, of having her connection to their activities revealed in spite of the legitimate businesses that acted as fronts for their off-the-books work.

But she hadn’t reported them. Hadn’t taken her knowledge to Alvarez or anyone else at the Bureau. Had never told a single soul.

She thought about her father, about the sadness in his eyes. She’d been telling herself it was because of her mother’s death. Because of what had happened to Erin. But while those things were a part of his burden, she had always known that he was aware of her brothers’ illegal activity. Wasn’t that why she’d joined the Bureau? Tried to keep alive the family’s commitment to justice? Kept her brothers’ secret?

Or was it something else? Was all that talk about honor just cover for the fact that deep down, she knew what she did wasn’t enough? Knew that people like her couldn’t save everyone like Erin in the world?

Wasn't her silence an implicit stamp of approval on her brothers’ business? And how could she be angry that Braden had chosen the same path when she’d kept quiet all these years about her brothers? When she’d sheltered them from consequences?

The questions threatened to overwhelm her, and she felt her brain shutting down along with her body. She thought about Shields instead, a surprisingly manageable quandary in light of everything else.

Was it possible he was dirty? That he’d been informing to Kalashnik about the arms raid all along? She replayed the moments they’d spent together on the case, tried to remember if there had been anything suspicious, anything he’d known that he shouldn’t have known.

There was nothing. He’d behaved exactly as she expected, with the disarming combination of flirtatiousness and competence that had been his hallmark since she was first assigned to the L.A. office.

And yet it didn’t seem possible that Braden was lying. He’d chosen a path that was counter to the one she was on at the Bureau — but he was no liar.

It was all jumbled together in her mind: Braden’s going rogue, his suspicions about Shields, the man who’d shot at them, the fact that Braden knew everything she’d worked so hard to hide.

All the things she’d anchored herself to were drifting out to sea. All her conviction, her faith in the law, in justice, in the truth. How could she lay claim to any of it when she was willing to turn her back on what she knew about her brothers? When even now she was thinking about how to protect Braden?

Because that’s what it came down to — it was easier to imagine herself protecting him than giving him up.

It wasn’t just the hypocrisy of it. After all, she hadn’t disowned her brothers. She still saw them at Christmas and in the summer, still texted them and sent pictures from California, still pretended their business was above-board even when they all knew it was a lie. All things that now made it difficult to claim the moral high ground with Braden.

But if she was being honest with herself — and it was time for that kind of honesty — it wasn’t the hypocrisy she couldn’t live with.

It was the idea of leaving him. The thought of living without him.

For years she’d kept her distance. Had been careful not to brush up against him when they were alone. Had avoided asking about his personal life. Had never told him a thing about hers.

Then he’d left the Bureau and the floodgates had opened, first on the beach and later when she’d spent the night in his arms, opening her body to him.

Her soul.

It had been easy. Frighteningly easy. Like her heart had been standing at the brink all those years, waiting for a strong wind to tip it into his hands.

He had it now. She suddenly knew it with more certainty than she’d ever known anything. He had her heart, and it wasn’t an easy thing to imagine taking it back, cutting him out of her life because he’d failed a purity test that her own family chose to ignore.

That she chose to ignore.

Because couldn’t she admit that there were times when she felt the futility of their work? When it seemed pointless to take one bad guy off the streets only to see him replaced with three more? To watch them go free because someone forgot to file a motion by a certain date or get permission before looking in someone’s trunk?

The part of her mind that had been trained at Quantico rebelled against the idea. It was true that she struggled with feelings of futility, but she hadn’t abandoned the quest for justice. She’d chosen something different than her brothers. Something different than Braden.

She’d chosen to keep trying. To do what she could.

Did that make her right and them wrong? Was it possible they both served a purpose? How was she supposed to know when to buy into the absolutism of right and wrong and when to fall back on the belief that the messy truth was somewhere in the middle?

Everything you need to know is right in front of you.

She wished her mother was here. Wished she could tell her mother that it wasn’t true. All the things she needed to know were hidden good and deep, so far under the surface Nora didn’t know if she would ever find them.

There was only one thing she knew for sure and that was the way she felt about Braden. It was complicated and dangerous, probably doomed to fail. Maybe even doomed to destroy them both.

But none of those things made it less true.

She pushed off the tree and stepped back into the rain, headed for the rocks that would lead her back to the house. Back to Braden and all the unanswerable questions that stood between them.