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She takes another bite of her croissant, clearly enjoying herself. And I suddenly realize I’m becoming a little too focused on a certain Russian.

“You’re not up here seeing someone, are you?”

“Isla.”

“It would make sense,” she rushes out defensively. “I mean, you were just up here. Meeting someone⁠—”

“An informant!”

“Was he sexy?”

I bite down on the automatic response: yes. The man I met was, in fact, sexy. But he was not THE informant. Either way, I can’t tell Isla any of that.

“A drug runner who dipped into the stash, so you guess.”

Her nose wrinkles, and I focus on tearing my croissant into little buttery strips, annoyed when I feel a blush on my cheeks.

“Sorry, Matty. Really. I guess I was just hoping to live vicariously through you.” She sighs, propping her chin up and looking suddenly a little tired. “It feels like I’m just back and forth between the apartment and the clinic these days, and Mike is wrapping up the semester.”

Something about Isla feels different.

I can’t put my finger on it at first. She’s chatting away, talking about the frustration of their shower still heating up too quickly, Mike’s insistence that they should stay in this apartment even after they’re married because he can bike to campus, the clinic’s decision to charge more for routine services even though it’ll price out loyal patients.

She smiles when telling a story about a parrot with a cough that was just mimicking its owner. But there’s still a slight hesitation underneath everything, and I follow the thread to where I suspect it might lead:

“So, how’s Mike?” I ask.

Her smile falters.

“Like I said, just busy.”

“Finals and all that?”

“Mmm. And he’s working on a research paper with some colleagues, about isothermal amplification⁠—”

“Wait, isn’t that what you were doing? That’s what you were working on the year you graduated, right?”

Her cheeks and forehead turn a splotchy red. “Yeah. That wasn’t me, though, like not my idea. I just worked on it.”

“Right. But, is he asking for your advice or anything?”

She takes a sip of her coffee, cheeks bulging for a moment as she shakes her head, brows knit. When she finally swallows, she says: “No. I wouldn’t be much help, Matty. That was years ago, and Mike is a professor. His office is literally right next door to the research labs.”

“So? That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be helpful. And what exactly did Mike focus on in his presentation?”

She hesitates, then answers: “The conditions of the stables for the Central Park horses⁠—”

“Right.”

“That’s important, Matty. Did you know that the death rate for those horses rises every year?”

Isla’s heated now, on a passionate tangent that I do, in fact, already know about because it’s come up often. Accidents, colic, overheating, fungal lung infections. At this point, I know way more about horses in the city than I’ve ever wanted to.

But something is still off. Eventually Isla changes the subject, asking about my caseload, the “vacation home” I’m staying in, and if I’m doing anything in my spare time up here.

I snort as if I have spare time. But I let her pry and prod, the balance between us settling back to normal. Or as normal as it can be when I’m blatantly lying.

I have enough problems without adding whatever is happening with Mike to the list. Besides, my brain keeps circling back to the financial records waiting for me at the lake house and the fact that Vasily still hasn’t explained where he’s been disappearing to.