Knowing would have allowed me to trust him without hating myself for it. I wouldn’t have felt like a horrible person for falling in love with a man I was supposed to fear.
Had he lied about what he felt for me? Was that just a part of his cover too? A convenient character arc in the story he wove?
The last thing in the bag was a notebook.
It wasn’t mine. It was one Jude had kept to himself while we were at the cabin.
Most of it was daily logs. What we did. Timestamps. Notes of suspicious things that happened. Physical descriptions of the guys he had seen snooping around the cabin. It read like a police report.
I guess that tracked.
But the last few pages were different. Small verses of poetry littered the page. Tally marks ended some of the lines—probablywhere he was counting syllables to fit the meter. Small slashes crossed out words. He had listed synonyms in the margins as he revised his work over and over again.
I sank into the corner of the floor and wall, letting the darkness take me under as I read the most recent draft he had penned.
Unassuming, the way poison ivy
blends in until it marks you. Delicate.
Clever little foxglove; hidden power
beneath a petal men call frivolous.
Dangerous. Full of spice and bitterness.
Still. I’d drink her—begging and beholden.
Most dangerous of all, cyanide eyes
I believed were blue skies. Her smile as sweet
as nightshade, satisfying my hunger.
My clever girl. My delightful demise.
37
JUDAH
Friday, August 22 | 7:43 p.m.
The train to New Haven was packed as college freshmen from campus as they trekked into New York City to explore it for the first time.
They were insufferable.
I sat back and closed my eyes as another mind-numbing day of clerical drivel came to an end.
At least I had a purpose when I was undercover.
Observe. Record. Report. Occasionally beat someone up.
What was I even doing here?
All I had done for the last eight hours was transcribe reports from other UCs. It was a tease. My chain of command was torturing me with the knowledge of how much progress other operations were having. At least once a day, I overheard conversations about “the Valentine situation.”
Iwas the Valentine situation.
It was bureau humiliation at its finest.
