I was so tired of clean.
“Because I’m not just a rich party boy,” I said. “I work for Interpol. I have for eleven years. Khaos Inc. is real, the consulting is real, we’re just contracted to a different client than anyone knows about.” I looked at the remains of the ceramic vase on the far side of the room. “Ivan Morozov is my assignment. Has been for eighteen months. Polina was… she was supposed to be the access point. The way into his house and his network. I was supposed to use her to gain access and plant a program on his computers.” Saying it out loud felt worse than I expected. I said it flat, the way it deserved to be said. “That was the plan before I met her.”
The room was quiet.
Declan did not react the way I had always, in the back of my mind, imagined this conversation going—no shock, no outrage, no recalibration performed visibly. He sat with it the way he sat with everything, with the weight and patience of a man adding information to a picture he had been building for a long time.
“The plane,” he said finally. “Two years ago. Untraceable.”
“Yes.”
“The trips. The gaps.” He nodded slowly, not to me, to himself, filling in spaces that had apparently been waiting for content. “I always thought there was something.”
“You never asked.”
“You would have lied.”
“Yes,” I said. “I would have.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved in his expression. Not anger, something more complex than anger, the specific expression of a man recalculating a long friendship through a new lens and finding that most of it still held even with the new information in place.
“The woman,” he said. “Polina. She doesn’t know.”
“She knows I’m holding something back. She doesn’t know what.”
“And you didn’t plant the program.”
“No.”
“Because of her.”
It wasn’t a question.
Declan set down his glass with the deliberate care of a man choosing his next words. “You should have told me,” he said quietly. “Not about Interpol. I understand why you didn’t. I don’t agree with it but I understand it.” He held my gaze. “About her. You should have told me about her.”
“I know.”
“Because then I would have told you then what I’m going to tell you now, which is that you have been walking around this group for eleven years like a man with his hands in his pockets and his coat buttoned up and that was fine, that was your choice, but you are not fine right now, she is not fine right now, and the fact that you are standing in my living room having thrown my grandmother’s vase against the wall is the most honest thing I’ve seen from you in a decade.”
I had nothing to say to that.
The door from the back hallway opened.
Marissa stood in the doorway. She was wearing one of Declan’s shirts over her own leggings, an observation I catalogued and set aside for later with the specific effort of a man who had just had the largest conversation of his adult life and didn’t have the bandwidth for what it implied, and she was looking at me with an expression that said she had heard more of this than the last thirty seconds.
“How long have you been listening?” I asked.
“Long enough.” She came into the room without apology, which was how she did everything, and looked at me with those direct eyes that had always had the quality of seeing exactly what you were trying to not show. “I have one thing to say and then I’ll leave you to it.”
I waited.
“You have told every single person in this group,” she said, “for as long as I have known you, that when the right one comes along you do whatever it takes. No hesitation. No calculation. Whatever it takes.” She tilted her head slightly. “Are you telling me that you’re the one who’s going to blink? That being a secret agent matters more than getting your woman out of that house?”
“It’s not that simple—“
“I know it’s not simple.” Her voice was even. “Nothing worth doing is simple. You know that better than anyone.” She held my gaze for one more second. “Don’t let complicated become your reason.”
She turned and went back through the hallway door without waiting for an answer.
