Page 76 of His Wall

"Last night. Was that the assignment too?"

She did not answer right away.

I watched her face. For the first time in five months I was not reading Claire Kent. I was reading whoever the woman in the kitchen actually was. The mask was off. There was nothing left to perform. She looked tired. She looked guilty. She looked like a person who had been holding a grenade with the pin out for a long time and had just let go of it.

"No."

One word.

"Last night was not the assignment. The park was not the assignment. The terrace was not the assignment."

A breath.

"Those were the problem."

I sat with it.

I thought about the last stretch. The way she had set the coffee down on the corner of my desk and let her hand stay on the rim a half-second too long. The way she had called me Mr. Cross like a wall she kept rebuilding before lunch. The hot and cold. The freeze after the gala, the thaw, the retreat after the kiss in the office, the one in the park and after the dinner at the restaurant on Mott Street.

I told myself she was the most confusing woman I had ever met.

I was wrong.

She was not confusing. She was losing a war with herself. Every time she pulled back, the agent won. Every time she stayed, the woman did.

I looked at her in the kitchen. Jeans. Gray sweater. The watch on the inside of her left wrist. Her hair was still messy at the nape from where my hand had been in it.

Claire Kent had been a puzzle.

Leah Calder was the answer.

"So your name is Leah."

"Yes."

"Leah Calder."

"Yes."

"FBI."

"Yes."

"And you have been spying on me for five months."

"Yes."

"You installed software on my laptop."

"Yes."

"You photographed my files."

"Yes."

"You believed I was a criminal."

"Yes."