Page 31 of His Wall

He laughed, shook his head, and walked to the car without looking back.

I stood on the sidewalk and lifted my hand for a cab.

I arrived at the apartment. Lamp on, bag by the door, lasagna in the fridge. I unzipped the navy dress in the bedroom, let it fall to my hips, stepped out of it, and laid it across the foot of the bed. I stood in the shower as hot as I could make it.

I felt his leg against mine. His breath on my neck. His eyes on my mouth. The quarter-inch lean I hadn't stopped. The fact that the only reason I hadn’t kissed him was because his best friend honked a car horn.

I shut off the water, dried off, and pulled on sweats. I put chicken soup on low, sat at the counter with my laptop, and opened the Bureau channel.

A priority flag from Harlow.

I clicked it.

Subject Cross has accessed the following file types in the last seventy-two hours: founding-era financial records (eight pulls), pre-2012 archived account transfers (four pulls), shell-entity registry data (three external queries). Pattern is consistent with active investigation of the same architecture identified in the surveillance subject of this embed. Multiple records overlap directly with Conrad Weiss’s known network nodes.*

Bureau read: Subject is engaged in independent activity touching the same financial architecture under federal review. Two interpretations: (1) Subject is preparing a defense in anticipation of disclosure; (2) Subject is actively attempting to obscure or modify records. Either interpretation is consistent with knowing involvement.

Recommend acceleration of access strategy. Need depth.

I read it twice. Three times. My stomach dropped.

Two hours ago, his mouth had been 6 in. from mine. I had leaned a quarter-inch toward him and hadn’t stopped myself. The only reason his mouth hadn’t been on mine was a car horn.

And the screen in front of me was telling me that the Bureau’s read on Julian Cross was that he was exactly what I had been sent to prove he was.

SEVEN

JULIAN

The vinyl had been spinning for an hour when Declan called.

Coltrane. "A Love Supreme," side two. The morning sun was doing the thing it did this time of year, coming in hard through the floor-to-ceiling windows and laying long bright bars across the floorboards. I was at the kitchen counter in joggers and a gray T-shirt I had owned since college, two days of stubble at my jaw, my hair still pushed back from sleep.

The phone rang. I picked it up without looking.

"Talk to me, Dec."

"It's 6:58 a.m."

"I'm aware."

"I have been awake since 5:00 a.m. Thinking about napkins. Get a pen."

I had a pencil between my fingers already. The leather sketchbook was open on the counter beside the espresso cup. I had been drawing a building — narrow, twelve stories, a ridiculous number of windows, a building no one was going to commission, and I was going to file it in the kitchen drawer with the others by the end of the morning.

"I have a pen."

"The venue is locked. The Carlyle Ballroom, August 14. The caterer's the one we used for the firm anniversary, the woman who did the lamb. The florist is doing white peonies and the green stuff that looks like baby's breath but isn't. What is it called?"

"Hellebore."

"Hellebore. Quartet for the cocktail hour, eight-piece swing band for after dinner. Open bar. We're at one hundred and twenty-two on the guest list and I would like to keep it under one hundred and thirty. Do you think one-twenty-two is enough or am I going to get yelled at?"

"Dec."

"Tell me."

"It's enough."