"I'm building a record." She looked at him. "For when Ray asks what I did today instead of answering his motions."
Jake grinned. "Tell him you were in the field with your investigator conducting surveillance on known associates of a federal target. It's accurate. It's documentable. And it sounds better than 'I rode around in a Range Rover eating sandwiches.'"
"I also ate a sandwich that I'll be thinking about for the rest of my life."
"Anna has that effect."
"Anna has a lot of effects." Emily paused. "She told me things about you that you didn't choose to share."
"Yes, she did."
"And you're not bothered by that."
"I brought you there," he said. "I knew what she'd do. Anna doesn't perform. She doesn't have a version she puts on for company. What you saw is what there is." He glanced at her. "I wanted you to see it."
"Why?"
"Because I can tell you who I am all day, and you'll listen and process it and file it away the way you file everything. But if you see where I come from, the people, the places, the parts that aren't in any file, that's different. That's evidence you collected yourself."
Emily felt the precision of that. He'd used her language. Her framework. Not as a technique, but because he understood that Emily Callahan trusted evidence she gathered over testimony she received. He'd given her primary sources instead of a closing argument.
"You're very strategic," she said.
"I'm very honest. Strategy is what it looks like from the outside."
He turned onto her street and slowed, and Emily saw Claire before Jake did.
She was sitting on the front steps, phone in hand, the posture of someone who'd been waiting long enough to move past worried. When she saw the Range Rover, she stood.
Emily knew this look all too well. “Uh oh."
Jake glanced at her. "She looks like she has questions."
"I haven't checked my phone all day."
He pulled to the curb, killed the engine. "If I were Claire, I'd have questions too."
He got out and came around to open her door. Claire was walking toward them, and Emily watched her best friend's face settle into the expression she knew better than any other. The one that meant she'd been worried and was now deciding whether to be relieved or furious. Claire's eyes moved from Emily to Jake and back, cataloguing the same way she'd catalogued every bad date, every hard case, every situation that had put Emily in a position Claire couldn't control.
But this was different, and Claire knew it. She'd spent an evening at The Anchor watching these two orbit each other. She'd seen how Jake looked at Emily and how Emily forgot to look away. She knew exactly what happened today. She just needed to hear Emily say it.
Jake raised a hand. Easy. Unhurried. The wave of a man who understood he was being assessed and welcomed it.
Claire held the look. Then Jake's openness cracked her resolve. She shook her head and waved back.
"Goodnight, Em." Jake smiled. "Best Tuesday I've had in years."
He got back in the Range Rover and pulled away. Emily watched his taillights until they rounded the corner, standing on the sidewalk in the last of the afternoon light, making no effort to move.
Claire closed the distance between them. Arms crossed. Studying Emily with the diagnostic precision of a woman who'd known her for a decade and could read her as fluently as Jake read rooms.
"Where have you been?" Claire's voice was controlled, but Emily could hear everything underneath it. "I've been calling you. I texted. I went by your office and Maria said you left this morning with some man and never came back."
"I was in the field."
"For twelve hours."
"It was a long field day."
