Page 9 of His Wall

I didn't break first. I never broke first. I had watched him say no across a conference table to a man twice his age, and I knew what his no sounded like when he meant it.

"I wanted to do that for you, Mr. Cross. You've been working late recently. I wanted to make things easier."

He didn't answer.

The lamp hummed. Somewhere on the far end of the floor, a vacuum started up and went again. He rocked from one foot to the other; the keys in his palm clinked once.

He nodded. Slow. Once.

He crossed to the desk. Reached past me — close enough that the wool of his jacket brushed the sleeve of my blouse — and lifted the Whitfield folder off the corner where I had set it for him. He tucked it under his arm. The smell of him came with the motion.

My stomach dropped.

He stepped back and looked at me again, closer now.

"Declan canceled dinner. His daughter’s sick."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I'm heading out."

"Of course."

He turned half a step toward the door. Stopped. "I can give you a ride. I drive past Midtown."

Every line in my body went still.

Midtown was the address on Claire Kent's lease. Midtown was the apartment the Bureau had set up — a one-bedroom in a building with a doorman who had been told that the woman in 4C worked long hours and traveled often. Midtown was a forty-minute drive in his car with him beside me. Forty minutes of him asking small questions. Forty minutes of me answering as someone else.

"Thank you, Mr. Cross. I'll finish here and take the train."

"Claire."

"I prefer the train."

"It's not a big deal. I'm going right past it."

"No. Thank you, Mr. Cross."

He held my eyes a second longer. Then he lifted his free hand, palm out, in a small surrender. The grin came back. Something quieter, something I hadn't seen before.

"Good night, Claire."

"Good night, Mr. Cross."

He turned and walked out.

I listened to him.

Down the hall. Past reception. The doors. Then the silence of an empty floor on a Monday night, with a vacuum running in some other corridor, and the lamp on his desk humming a quarter-inch from my hip.

I leaned back in his chair.

The leather creaked.

I opened the watch strap with my thumbnail and slid the microdrive into my palm. My fingers were steady. I did this for a living and was good at it.

I closed my hand around the drive.