“You’re being very nice to me.” He murmured, flipping through the pages and signing wherever he saw a sticker, far too quickly to be reading anything. “You don’t have to be. I would prefer if things just continued as normal.”
“I’m a nice person. You just say stupid things,” Evie shot back without thinking. Her fight with Alex had made her more easily irritated than usual. “Negging doesn’t work on women who are intelligent and confident in themselves.”
“Negging?” Aaron looked up and furrowed his brow. “What’s that?”
“Backhanded compliments,” Evie explained, not sure she believed he didn’t know what he was doing. “You said, ‘This is why you’re a tech girl, not a field operative.’ It sounds like you’re complimenting my tech skills, like I can’t kill someone, but I know my tech. But then you added, ‘no situational awareness.’ In other words, I ignore my surroundings to my own detriment.”
She set her tablet aside and crossed her arms. “You’re trying to make me seek your approval. Or you believe what you’re saying and have no respect for me.”
“I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing.” Aaron’s frown deepened, and Evie almost believed him. “I have a ton of respect for you. I think it’s cute that you get so into your work that you don’t notice what’s happening around you. You want to make sure we’re all safe and can do our jobs effectively, and you’re one hundred percent focused on it.”
“Uh-huh.” She eyed him suspiciously, watching him flip yet another page without reading it and sign where the sticker indicated. “Are you reading any of that or just signing off on it?”
Aaron ran his hand through his hair and looked at her in exasperation. “Did you put this together?”
“Yes.”
“And you followed what she wanted?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Then I’m sure it’s great. Or as great as a funeral can be.” His face tightened, and for a second, he looked like he was about to cry. He dropped his gaze back to the paper he was signing. “Did, did Nissa find out how she was caught?”
Evie winced, not wanting to be the one to tell him. She felt it would be better coming from Nissa, since she was the one who gathered the information and could answer any questions he might have, but he’d asked, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him to ask someone else. “I don’t know everything. You’ll have to talk to Nissa if you have questions, but according to the people she questioned, Paula wasn’t hiding why she was there.” She nodded at the folder in his hands. “Nissa’s report is in there, the last two pages.”
“She was trying to get back at me.” Aaron laid the folder on her desk and played with the pen, watching it roll between his fingers. “I loved her so much. I was willing to do a lot, give up a lot. I cut contact with my mom for this woman. I planned to be a lawyer and wanted to be with her so badly that I switched my career goal and became a CIA agent to spend more time with her. I did all that for her, for us. I wanted to start trying for kids right away, and she wanted to wait five years, so I agreed. I just wanted kids with her.”
His face hardened, and he glared at the pen like he could see Paula’s face on it. “We were going to start trying next year. She had a ten-year copper IUD implanted four months ago after we had a pregnancy scare and didn’t tell me. I found out whenI overheard her on the phone with her mother. I left the house and met up with my best friend, Beau. He’s a sniper in the army and is the person who taught me to shoot and fight, so I’d have a better chance of being accepted into the CIA. He’s going back to Iraq in a few days, but he was going to Costa Rica with some of his army buddies for a few weeks first. He saw how upset I was and invited me along.”
“Paula hated Beau. She didn’t want me to go, and I told her in no uncertain terms that I was. She didn’t like that and said I’d regret it. I regretted marrying her at that point, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to say something hurtful that I couldn’t take back. Beau and I were supposed to leave the day after she was killed. She got herself captured on purpose so that I wouldn’t go.”
He tossed the pen on top of the folder and leaned back in the chair, staring angrily at the front of her desk. Evie didn’t know what to say, so she stayed quiet and let him get it off his chest.
“And Beau, the guy she hated so much, he dropped everything, lost a ton of money on his flights and accommodations, and risked getting into a lot of trouble to help me find and take out her killer.” He looked up at Evie. “I’m so angry with her. And then I miss her, and then I get angry again because if she hadn’t gotten so vindictive, I wouldn’t be missing her. I wasn’t planning to go to Costa Rica for the full trip, just four or five days. Was that so bad and selfish?”
“No. It wasn’t.” Evie shook her head. She didn’t think it was selfish at all and didn’t understand why it had been such a big deal. “Getting an IUD… well, her body, her choice, but she shouldn’t have hidden it from you. That was selfish.”
“She got the IUD because the doctor wouldn’t tie her tubes without me signing off.” Aaron scoffed, shoving his handsinto his pockets and hunching his shoulders in on himself. “I would never force her to get pregnant. All she had to do was tell me she didn’t want that anymore. Yes, I would have left, and it would have broken my heart, but I want to be a dad. It’s been my dream for as long as I can remember, and she took away my ability to choose.”
Evie felt her heart break for him and stood up, coming around the desk to hug him. “I’m so sorry, Aaron.”
He hugged her back. “Thanks for letting me get it off my chest.” When she let him go, he picked up the folder to finish signing the papers. “Just go ahead with your plans, Evie. I’ll stand wherever you tell me to.”
“There is one thing I haven’t been able to do.” She reached for the folder containing Paula’s end-of-life instructions and opened it to the right page. “She must have missed a question when filling it out, and no one noticed. Did she tell you where she wanted to be buried?”
“She wanted to be cremated.” Aaron handed back the folder with all the signed documents. “Done.”
“Thanks.” She took the folder and set it aside. “But she checked the burial box.” Evie flipped the document around and showed him. He looked at it, frowned, and shook his head.
“That must be a mistake. She hated the idea of being buried. She wanted to be cremated. Some companies mix the ashes with glass and make figurines, and she wanted her ashes made into figurines for her mom and me.”
“Oh. Okay.” Evie paused, considered her options, then made the change on the paperwork. “Can you please initial next to that so I won’t get into trouble?”
Aaron nodded and did as she asked. “So what’s next?”
“I’ll contact the funeral home and have them cremate her.” She tilted her head at him, concerned about his lack of interest in everything. “Are you sure you’re okay with me handling all of this?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, looking around her office as if he hadn’t seen it hundreds of times before. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
