Page 87 of His Wall

I set it back in the cradle.

Leah was in the doorway.

She had her shoulder against the frame and her arms folded loose across her chest. Her dark hair was pulled back at the nape in the low knot.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I am."

She crossed the room. She stopped in front of me at the edge of the bed.

"We're going to nail him, Julian. He is not getting near your company."

I reached for her hand.

She let me take it.

I pulled her toward me. She stepped between my knees. I wrapped my arms around her waist, and I pressed my face against her stomach through the wool of the sweater. Her hands came up into my hair slowly.

We stayed there.

Quiet.

She leaned down and kissed the top of my head.

I tilted my face up.

I kissed her properly. Slow. Warm. My hands sliding up her back over the wool of the sweater. She braced one hand on my shoulder. I pulled her down onto my lap and her knee came up beside my hip and she settled on me with her arms around my neck and kissed me deeper.

My hand found the bare skin of her lower back under the sweater.

"I could get used to the safehouse life."

"Don't."

"Too late."

A knock at the door.

She was off my lap and across the room with her right hand on the holster at the small of her back before the second knock landed.

I stayed where I was on the edge of the bed.

She crossed to the door. She checked the peephole. Her body changed.

It was not the alert change I saw in the garage. It was not the operational change I watched when I told her to stay. She did not pick up her phone and call for backup. This was a heavier thing. The shoulders went down a quarter-inch. The jaw went tight. The hand on the holster did not move, but the arm around it relaxed.

She unlocked the door.

She opened it.

The man who walked in was tall.

Dark hair, cut short, gray at the temples. A charcoal jacket. A white shirt with the top button open. Dark trousers.

I knew him.

Rafael Torres.