“A woman in Florence who was trying to get me killed. But she meant it as a compliment.”
“Did she succeed? In getting you killed?”
“Clearly not,” he said, dry as chalk.
“Pity,” she quipped.
He laughed. Short. Real.
She had not expected that sound from him. It transformed his whole face. The hard lines softened. His eyes crinkled.
For a second, he looked like a man who had not spent a decade doing what spies did for a living. But then the laugh was gone, and he was himself again. Still, she had seen it.
She filed it away with the turned back and the coat and the rest of the evidence she was collecting against her better judgment.
He was in shirtsleeves now. The linen was wet, and it clung to him, but she was not looking at that. Rather, she was looking at the rain. The rain was very interesting. Very wet.
“You’re staring at the rain,” he noted, stretching one arm along the railing.
“It’s very interesting,” she said, not looking at him.
“It’s water falling from the sky.”
“Yes, well, I find that fascinating.”
He did not say anything else, but the corner of his mouth twitched. She wanted to hit him.
“I like a game,” he said. “Want to play something while we wait?”
“What sort of game?”
“Riddles.” He leaned back. “I ask one, ye ask one. The first person who can’t answer owes the other an honest answer to any question. No lies.”
“Fine. I go first.” She thought for a moment. “What has a river but no water?”
“A desert.”
It took him ten seconds.
“What has all four walls facing south?” he asked.
“A house at the North Pole.” She did not even pause. “Too easy,” she added, shaking her head.
“Harder, then.” He cocked his head. “What has cities but no houses, forests but no trees, and water but no fish?”
She frowned. “A map. What disappears the moment you say its name?”
“Silence,” he said.
“I would have gotten there.”She pulled the coat tighter. “And I would have gotten it faster if it were mine to answer.”
“Doubt that.”
“Three years of silence. I know it well enough.”
He fell quiet at that. Not the awkward quiet of someone who did not know what to say, but the respectful quiet of someone who knew exactly what she meant and was choosing not to push.
She appreciated that more than she could express. Gordon would have pushed. He would have asked her to explain, and then he would have used the explanation against her later.
