Twenty minutes later, Linda’s key turns in the lock. The door opens. Linda steps inside, reaches for the light switch?—
And freezes when she sees Ruth sitting in her living room.
“Jesus, Ruth.” Linda’s hand goes to her chest. “You scared me.”
“Sorry.” Ruth doesn’t move. “We need to talk.”
Linda closes the door slowly, sets down her bag. “About what?”
“About your colleague’s thriller novel. It’s doing so well that some intrepid reporter has noticed the similarity to 1991 and is sniffing around, asking questions.”
“You can’t think I had anything to do with that.”
“Of course not,” Ruth says. “We had a deal.”
She watches Linda’s expression for any sign of fear, guilt, anything. But her face is a mask.
“Yes. We did.”
“Good.” Ruth’s tone shifts, lighter now. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Just wanted you to be aware.”
She stands and brushes past Linda on her way out. She clocks Linda’s involuntary shiver. For a nanosecond, she pictures herself taking Linda’s face in her hands and kissing her. Just once more. But there’s too much water under the bridge.
“How’d you get in here anyway?” Linda asks.
Ruth walks out the door without answering.
Linda sinks into a chair after Ruth leaves. Her hands shake. She doesn’t know if Ruth believes her. She doesn’t know if it matters anymore, anyway.
The Lighthouse, 1996
The first time they worked together had been in 1989. Linda was young and idealistic. Ruth only a few years older was, pragmatic, already disillusioned by what she’d seen in the field.
They bonded over late nights in the archives. Over shared frustration with leadership that cared more about optics than accountability. Over a belief that someone needed to remember what everyone else wanted to forget.
The intimacy grew slowly. Trust first. Then friendship. Then something deeper that neither of them named.
When the purge came in 1996, Linda stood beside Ruth, both of them feeding files into the flames as instructed. Operation Colonial Shield. The field test that proved pipeline vulnerabilities by executing a controlled attack on American infrastructure.
“This feels wrong,” Linda said, watching intelligence work curl and blacken.
Ruth didn’t look at her. “It’s necessary.” She fed another folder into the fire. “So we forget this ever happened. All of us.”
But Linda grabbed Ruth’s hand, pulled it back. “Don’t.”
Ruth turned to argue, and Linda silenced her with a kiss.
“We can’t destroy these documents, Ruth. It’s wrong.”
“What do you propose we do, then?”
“Keep them.”
“Keep them,” Ruth repeated slowly.
“Yes.”
After an eternity, Ruth stepped back from the fire. “Okay.”
