“Fin what?”
He looked over both shoulders and stuffed his hands farther into his pockets. “The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,” he said in a slightly lower voice. “It’s a division of the Treasury Department.”
She nodded again, but didn’t speak. Tension-filled seconds continued to tick away as they maintained this awkward tableau. What should he do? Should he move toward her? Should he offer to relieve her of the shopping bag she held? Should he accept that this is how things would end and say goodbye?
No, he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t leave without clarifying any misconceptions she might have about the operation he’d conducted here. At the very least, he had to make sure she understood that he hadn’t set out to use her.
“Samiah, can we…can we go up to your place?” He raised his hands. “I just want twenty minutes to explain to you what happened.”
“I don’t need you to explain anything. I already know what happened,” she said. She clasped both hands around the shopping bag’s handle and sent it on a gentle sway. The crinkle of the plastic hitting her thighs was the only sound in the lobby.
“Not all of it. It wasn’t all a lie,” he whispered past the emotion clogging his throat. “I need you to know that, Samiah. Please,” he pleaded. “Give me twenty minutes.”
She pressed her lips together, her expression evolving from pensive to conflicted to, thankfully, one of acquiescence.
“No,” she answered.
Daniel’s head jerked back. “No?”
“No,” she repeated. Then she turned on her heel and left him standing in the middle of the lobby.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Samiah gathered the collection of blue Post-its outlining the procedure for data integration for the Android version of her app—one of the last steps before beta testing—and placed them in order on her kitchen island. She’d glimpsed only the tiniest pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel, but when she considered how long she’d been on this journey, it felt as if achieving her dream of building Just Friends was finally within her reach.
Her decision to use one of the many vacation days she’d accumulated was the best thing she could have done. Apart from a quick visit to Denise’s early this morning to welcome Baby Aislinn home, Samiah had sequestered herself in her condo and disconnected herself from all social media.
She’d made a concerted effort to expunge thoughts of everything but her app from her mind. It had worked for the most part.
If only her brain would refrain from its constant, annoying attempts to continue the conversation in the lobby downstairs last night, that would be great. But her brain was having none of that. It insisted on asking questions she didn’t have the mental bandwidth to properly examine right now.
What if she’d allowed Daniel to continue with his explanation last night? Would he have revealed that he’d been under duress and had no choice but to lie to her? Would he have apologized?
Does it even matter?
“You know it does,” Samiah acknowledged.
After giving herself a few hours to wrestle with her thoughts, she’d finally reached a place where she could accept that things were possibly not as they seemed. Until she granted Daniel the opportunity to explain his actions, she would never get answers to the questions that plagued her. Maybe she would give him that chance the next time she saw him.
Ifshe ever saw him again.
A sharp ache pierced her chest at the possibility that his shocked, wounded expression just before she left him in the lobby might be the last image she saw of him. He couldn’t disappear forever, could he? In this day and age of zero privacy, she would eventually be able to track him down. But not until she was ready.
Just as Samiah returned to the sticky notes lined along her kitchen island, her phone chimed with a text. She’d set it to Do Not Disturb, which meant only texts from the few people saved to her favorites list could get through.
It was from Taylor.
Emergency! Need you at botanical gardens at Zilker Park.
What’s wrong? Are you hurt?Samiah texted back.
Just get here. Please.came Taylor’s reply.
“What in the world…”
What kind of emergency could she have gotten herself into at the botanical gardens of all places?
Samiah’s stomach pitched as she recalled a conversation she’d had with Taylor a couple of weeks ago. She’d suggested that the serenity of the rose garden would be the perfect spot for Taylor to hold a tai chi class. Had she gone there and hurt herself doing tai chi?
