“Don’t shoot him!” I say, and rub the bridge of my nose. “He’s not dangerous. He’s just an idiot.”
Bertram has shoved me behind him again, as though pulling me out of a valley of flames. There’s a concerned crease on his brow, much like the one he had when he coaxed me out of my broken-down car.
Was my engine dying also Waylen’s doing? I stare at him, not fighting Bertram’s protective force field. I see a glimpse of the man he was before we were married. Soft-spoken and mild, until suddenly he wasn’t. It was that unexpected edge that lured me in, made me give myself tohim. It’s the reason we ended up conceiving Collette one winter night beside a roaring fireplace in his apartment.
But he’d put that side of him away when we said our vows and he gave up this life. I had forgotten it existed—almost.
“You know this man?” Bertram asks. “He works for—”
“He doesn’t work for Annie,” I assure him.
“Who?” Waylen asks, when the driver finally lowers his gun. But he at least has the sense not to take another step, and to keep his palms visible.
“He’s my husband.” I sigh, and turn on Waylen. “What are you doing here?”
He hesitates, but the anger in my eyes—despite my cool tone—scares him more than any gun ever could.
His shoulders drop, and then his hands. He sits on the concrete. The sight of him in his pressed khakis and white blazer—which he so lovingly ironed with the Sunday laundry—is distressing and yet somehow so romantic in a way that only I would see. He’s broken.
“Please, Margaux,” he says, staring down at the ground. It’s stained with puddles of old oil. “Please, I just want you to come home.”
Bertram doesn’t stop me when I approach Waylen, perhaps because he’s too perplexed by the sight before him.
I crouch in front of Waylen, my thighs burning because I refuse to sit on the dirty concrete in my clean dress.
He won’t raise his head to look at me, but I see the bleariness of his eyes. Are those—tears?
I want to hug him. To pity him. To revert back to the young twentysomething I was when we met and his eyes could melt me like a puddle. But I have been married tothis man for more than a decade now, and I know what will happen if I turn soft. We’ll go home, make reckless, passionate love in the middle of the day, and he’ll hope that my hazy post-sex brain will forget all about it. That’s what he wants. That’s who he thought he was marrying, and if I give up my vigilantism, my edge will go along with it.
At least, that’s what he thinks.
“Waylen, really,” I say. “What are you trying to do?”
“I just want you to come home,” he says.
I grab his chin, forcing him to look at me. He swallows hard. “Collette is a mess, can’t you see that?” he says. “You’re forcing her to socialize with Elodie’s horrible daughter, and don’t get me started on Elodie. The choices you’re making, the things you’re getting up to. I don’t even recognize you anymore.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I say, staying firm. “That was you at the hospital, too, wasn’t it?”
I feel a sick dread at the thought of him following me with that AirTag, knowing everywhere I’ve been. Has he figured out that Mr. X is in the hospital? If so, he’ll wonder why I’m going to visit him when I’ve never met with him in person for our missions together. He’ll want to know why I’m speaking to his doctors, why I care so much about his health. Worse, if he finds out how sick Mr. X is, he’ll be glad. He’ll hope this means that my spy work will die with him.
I can’t let him find out about my past. I can’t let him know that Mr. X is my brother. He’ll piece too many things together and ruin everything.
Isn’t it enough that I’ve given you my stupid, traitorous heart, Waylen?
I would prefer he accused me of an affair than know the truth about my past. In his mind, Mr. X was never more than a boss to me. I thought about telling him the truth, but I can only stand to share so much.
But if Waylen is wondering what I was doing at the hospital, he doesn’t ask. He only nods. “Yes. Yes, it was me.”
“Every time?” Bertram asks.
Waylen doesn’t look at him, seeming almost to have forgotten he was standing behind me. “Yes,” he says. “All of it.”
“Why are you following us?” Bertram asks the question before I can get the words out.
I stand, and when Waylen doesn’t follow suit, I grab his arms and force him to come up and face me. There’s a flash of something angry in his eyes—something jealous and dark—and then it’s gone, traded once again for contrition. Nobody saw it but me. I’m the only one who ever looks closely enough. Blink and you’d miss it.
He looks at me like a man defeated, as though I hold the strings to his heart and the fate of our marriage. “I did it for us,” he tells me, ignoring the fact that it was Bertram’s question. “I hoped you would finally see how dangerous this all is, and it would scare you into quitting.”
