Page 175 of The Lonely Road

“I’m not afraid of you, Mason Brooks.”

The ghost of something—not quite a smile, but the shape of one—moves through her face and is gone before it arrives. It looks and feels like progress.

CHAPTER 42

taya

Griffin picks Cache Cache—most definitely to make a point.

The French bistro on Hopkins Avenue has been in Aspen since 1989 and has the authority of a place that has outlasted trends by simply being exactly what it is. It offers warm lighting, white tablecloths, excellent cuisine, high-end service, and a wine list that rewards people who know what they’re looking for.

Griffin took me here the first time he wanted to impress me. He always confused familiarity with intimacy, which is one of the many things I understood too late and now understand completely.

I know the maître d’.

His name is Philippe, and he has the elegant discretion of a man who has been seating powerful people for thirty years and has seen every version of this lunch.

He greets me by name when I come in and leads me to the table Griffin has reserved—a corner one, sight lines to the door, the power seat already occupied by my ex, who stands when he sees me.

Two tables down are Mason with Kaz’s partner, a woman from New Orleans who looks like a supermodel.

Agent Romy Boudreaux.

At the bar is a man I met this morning with Kaz—he’s also an agent.

Kaz, I know, is outside in an unmarked van, listening to us.

“Taya.” He leans in to kiss me, but I don’t let him and take a seat quickly. I don’t need Mason to blow our cover, and the way the man harped on and on and on about me doing this on our way to Aspen, there’s a chance that could happen.

Griffin looks well.

He’s twelve years older than me, silver at the temples now, the polished fitness that comes from having a trainer and the time to use him. His suit is Italian. His watch is the same one he has always worn. A Patek Philippe.

I am looking forward to talking to Griffin—to interrogating him without his knowledge so that those who are listening to our conversation can bring him and his new employer down.

I didn’t have to wear a wire.

Romy explained it to me when we met at the FBI office in Aspen. She has a brisk efficiency about her with a Cajun accent.

She set a small case on my desk, opened it, and showed me what was inside, which was not, notably, anything that resembled the wire I had been preparing myself for.

“We don’t really do that anymore, sha,” she drawled.

She held up something that looked like a garden-variety brooch—almost plain gold, shaped like a small magnolia blossom, the kind of thing a woman might pin to a lapel without anyone looking twice. “Goes on your jacket. Or your dress. Wherever it reads naturally.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” She fixed it on my dress. A black sheath number, simple and one that shows my legs, which I know Griffin has a thing for. “Range is sixty feet. Audio quality is better than anything a body wire gives you, and there’s nothing to find if someone gets close enough to look.” She stepped back to assess her handiwork. “We’ve come a long way since the seventies.”

I looked at it on my chest. “It’s a magnolia.”

“I’m from Louisiana. I have opinions about brooches.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It is,” she agreed. “Also extremely illegal to replicate without a federal license, but from the outside—just a brooch.” She looked at me steadily. “You’re not going to touch it?”

“No.”