He picked it up. Typed back.Good. Claire's grilling me.
Three dots. Then:She says you're being charming...
I'm just being me.
The response was almost instant.STOP being you.
Jake set the phone down. He was smiling. Couldn't help it.
"That was her," Claire said.
"She told me to stop being me."
"Good advice." But Claire was smiling too. She picked up her wine glass, turned it with care. "Jake."
"Claire."
"I'm glad she found you." The warmth in her voice had no edge to it. No warning underneath. No if-you-hurt-her subtext waiting to deploy. Just a woman who loved her best friend, speaking the truth. "I've been waiting a long time for someone to see her. Not the prosecutor. Not the resume. Her."
"I see her."
"I know you do." Claire took a sip. "That's why I came to lunch."
They split the check because Claire insisted and Jake learned quickly that arguing with Claire Harper about money was like arguing with Emily about case law. A losing proposition delivered with a smile that made you feel stupid for trying.
Walking back toward the federal building, Claire fell into step beside him. The afternoon was warm and bright, the kind of Florida Monday that made the rest of the country seem like a bad idea.
"Same time next week?" Claire said.
Jake looked at her. "You want to make this a thing?"
"I want to make this a thing." She pushed her sunglasses down. "Emily's always going to be buried on Mondays. Somebody should make sure you eat."
"I'm perfectly capable of feeding myself."
"I'm sure you are. Same time next week."
Jake shook his head. But he was still smiling when they reached the building, and Claire was already texting someone, and the sun was high and the day was good and he had thedistinct sense that his life had just expanded by one person without anyone asking his permission.
He was fine with that.
CHAPTER 12
Ray's text had come at seven-fifteen, the same clipped cadence Jake had been reading for twenty years.My office. Eight sharp.No context, no warning, just the assumption that Jake would show up because Jake always showed up. That was the deal. That was who he was.
He'd been thinking about Emily on the drive in. Thinking about how he'd tucked her in and locked the door on his way out. Thought about the texts and phone calls and one lunch at her desk where she'd eaten a salad and he'd stolen her croutons and she'd threatened to prosecute him for theft. What was building between them that felt bigger than anything he'd let himself want in a long time.
He was still thinking about her when he walked into Ray's office and found three men he'd never seen before seated at the conference table.
The room was expensive.
Not the furniture. Federal offices didn't do expensive furniture. But the men in it were expensive. Three of them, seated across from the empty chair that was clearly meant for Jake, and everything about them announced budget. The suits were cut better than government standard. The watches wereBreitling, not Garmin. The lead one had credentials clipped to his belt that read DEA but carried the influence of a more layered authority. Crew cut going gray at the edges, the control of someone who'd spent time in rooms like this on the other side of the world.
Jake read him in two seconds. Operator. Career track. Fifteen years minimum, probably more. The kind of man who'd done things and didn't talk about them and recognized others who'd done the same.
The other two were support. Analysts, maybe. The infrastructure that made task forces run. They had the look of men accustomed to being in rooms where decisions happened without being the ones who made them.
And at the head of the table, seated like a man presiding over his own generosity, Jasper Marchand.
