Emily looked at her files. At the window. At her own hands, still on the desk in front of her.
She thought about Jake Walsh turning around in that doorway. Not the phone call, not the agent, not the professionalcalculus of what he'd interrupted. Just the turn. The decision in it. The way his whole body had committed to the choice before his mouth caught up.
She thought about the smile she'd let slip. The one Claire had seen. The one that had felt, for half a second, like the truest thing she'd done all day.
She picked up her phone. Typed a text to Claire.
Which blue dress?
Three dots. Then:You know which one. See you at seven.
Emily set the phone down. Looked at the ceiling.
One hour ago she'd been a federal prosecutor with a clear trajectory and a five-year plan and a life that made sense. Now she was going to a bar she'd never heard of to see a man she'd known for one morning, wearing a dress she'd been telling herself was too casual for years.
She should be furious.
She wasn't.
She was reaching for a word and couldn't find one big enough to hold it.
CHAPTER 3
The bell above the door chimed the way it had chimed for thirty years, and Anna looked up from the crossword she wasn't really doing.
Jake crossed to the counter. Same walk he always had, that unhurried confidence that made people think he had nowhere else to be even when he had a dozen places. He sat onto the stool at the end, the one he'd claimed when he was seventeen and hadn't given up since.
"Dos Equis," he said.
"It's one in the afternoon."
"It's been a morning."
Anna studied him. She'd been watching Jake Walsh since Ray Crawford dragged him through that door two decades ago, a hungry kid with angry eyes and no one waiting for him at home. She'd watched him ship out and come back, ship out and come back, until the day he came back and stayed. She knew the difference between Jake on a regular Monday and Jake on a Monday that had left a mark.
This Monday had left a mark.
She pulled the Dos Equis from the cooler, popped the cap, set it in front of him. Then she leaned against the counter and waited.
Jake took a long drink. Set the bottle down. Rotated it a quarter turn the way he did when he was organizing his thoughts.
"You going to make me ask?" Anna said.
"Ask what?"
"Whatever put that look on your face."
Jake's hand went to his face, like he could feel the expression from the outside. "What look?"
"That one. The one you can't turn off." Anna crossed her arms. "I've known you since before you could legally drink that beer. Out with it."
He laughed. The real one, not the polished version he used on people he was working. Anna had always been able to tell the difference.
"Okay," she said. "What did you actually come here for today? Spill it, Jake."
He met her eyes. That look she'd seen maybe three times in twenty years, the one that said the ground had moved and he was still finding his footing.
"I met a girl this morning."
