Page 89 of His Wall

I made it just how she liked it. Milk. No sugar. The bad Bureau coffee did not deserve either, but it did not matter. I handed her the mug.

She took it. She did not say thank you.

Torres was watching us from the table.

He saw it.

I did not look at him. I did not need to.

I followed her back to the table. I sat down beside her again. My hand went back to her knee.

Her knee remained under my palm.

Evening. The light through the curtain had gone orange. Torres was in the other bedroom on his own laptop.

Leah was on the couch with her head in my lap.

I had Declan's email pulled up on my phone in my left hand — the draft of the voluntary disclosure he wanted me to review by morning — and my right hand was in her hair. She had her eyes closed. Her dark hair was loose across my thigh. The watch on the inside of her wrist ticked against the cushion.

My right hand moved from her hair to her shoulder. To the line of her jaw. The pad of my thumb ran along the bone there. She turned her face into my palm and kissed it without opening her eyes.

Her phone rang on the coffee table.

She opened her eyes. She sat up. She picked it up.

"Calder."

She listened.

"Confirmed?"

She listened.

"When."

She listened.

"Understood."

She set the phone down on her thigh. She turned her head and looked at me.

"Conrad's passport hit a private airfield outside the city three hours ago. He boarded a chartered flight to Geneva. The plane is wheels-up. He is gone."

"Gone?"

"Out of jurisdiction. With his banking infrastructure frozen and the judge under investigation, his next move will be from outside the country, through proxies. The immediate physical threat is reduced. With Conrad out of the country, the shooter risk drops significantly."

I waited.

"Harlow is recommending you return to your apartment with periodic Bureau check-ins. You can go back to the office in the morning."

I should have been relieved.

I was relieved.

She was sitting on a Brooklyn safehouse couch, and her head had been warm on my leg ten seconds ago. Outside this apartment, we were not two people on a couch. Outside this apartment, we were a billionaire and the federal agent who had lied to him for five months.

"And what about us, Leah?"