Caleb had called at three.The federal authorization was locked.All twelve sites, simultaneous execution, Monday oh-six-thirty.Mitch’s perimeter team was staged.Mason Thompson had the evacuation protocol loaded into the hospital’s safety drill system.Everything was in place.Everything except the part where he sat at a woman’s dinner table thirty-six hours before the most dangerous operation of his civilian life and tried to talk about something other than the thing that could get her killed.
He picked up the bottle of wine off the passenger seat, climbed out of the truck, and walked to the front door.
Maren opened the screen door before he’d touched the handle.She looked at the bottle, then at his hands.
“I was fixing the latch on Wes Charles’s gate.He’d been asking me for a week.”He held up the wine.“This was already in the truck.”
“There’s soap under the kitchen sink.”
He stepped past her and went straight to the sink.He turned the water on and worked the soap between his fingers, slow, because she was watching, and because moving slowly in her kitchen was the only piece of discipline he was sure he still had access to.
“What are you making?”
“Chicken.Rice.Whatever didn’t go bad in the produce bin.”
“That a recipe?”
“That’s Saturday.”
He leaned against the refrigerator while she moved between the stove and the cutting board.The kitchen was small enough that they had to negotiate space, and he noticed she gave him room without being asked — stepping left when he reached for the dish towel, shifting her weight when he opened the cabinet for two glasses.A nurse, accustomed to working bedside with three other people in eight square feet.
“You can sit down,” she said.“You don’t have to stand at attention.”
“I’m not standing at attention.”
“You’re standing like someone evaluating the structural integrity of my refrigerator.”
“It’s making a noise.”
“The compressor cycles every forty minutes.It’s fine.”
He sat.The table was pushed against the wall — two chairs, a stack of unsorted mail at one end, salt and pepper shakers that looked like they’d come with the rental.He moved the mail to the counter without asking and set the wine bottle in its place.
“Corkscrew,” he said.
“Second drawer down.”
He found it.The drawer stuck.He worked it open with his thumb and forefinger and pulled the corkscrew out, and when he turned around, she was watching him with the expression that said she’d been planning to warn him about the drawer and had decided not to.
“You knew it would stick.”
“I wanted to see how you handled it.”
“How did I do?”
“You figured it out.”She turned back to the stove.“Most men try to force it.Then they break the drawer track.”
“Most men have something to prove.”
“And you don’t.”
“Not to a kitchen drawer.”
Her shoulders moved with a small laugh she didn’t turn around to share.He poured the wine.
* * *
She set the plates on the table at six-twenty.
