“You wanted to talk,” she said softly. “So, talk.”

“Ain’t some heartless bastard that’d stand aside, let you be brutalized,” he finally muttered. “That what you think o’me?”

“No, I don’t think you’re a heartless bastard. Quite the opposite, actually. But you didn’t answer the question.”

Derrick was chewing his thumbnail, and he finally broke eye contact, looking down at his boots. “Don’t know what the fuck you want me t’say.”

“Tell me why you brought me here.”

“’Cause you was alone.”

“That why you kissed me, too? Because I was alone?”

–from The Infiltrator