“They haven’t gone yet?”

“They had to postpone.”

“Huh.”

“So state your business, please.”

“I told you. I’m planning—”

“You can’t go on a trip!” she exclaimed, slapping her hand onto the glass desktop. “I know you were being sentenced today. Gif said—”

“You talked to Gif more than once?”

“He said you agreed to plead guilty if Rudkowski would lay off him and Mike.”

He shrugged. “I was the corrupting influence. If not for me, they wouldn’t have run afoul of the law.”

“Rudkowski reluctantly agreed not to touch them, but tacked on several more charges against you. Horse poop, Mike called them.”

“You’ve talked to Mike, too?”

“He said that with those additional indictments, you could face up to five years.”

“I got two.”

“Oh,” she said on a catch of breath. The starch went out of her posture. She looked down.

“Suspended.”

Her head snapped up. “What?”

“Surprised me, too. Sent Rudkowski into orbit. The judge read the sentence, then suspended it because of extenuating circumstances.”

“Which were?”

“Rudkowski being an incompetent asshole. I’m putting words in the judge’s mouth, but that was the essence of it. Additionally, I had a lot of people who defended my questionable actions.”

“Locke and Menundez, I’m sure.”

“Them. Their chief. Plus the SAC in Columbia. People at my workplace in Lexington put in a good word for me.” He walked over to the desk and picked up the crystal formation, studying it from various angles, watching the rainbows it created as he turned it one way, then another. “What is this supposed to be?”

“Nothing. Put it down. So the judge just let you off?”

“Uh-hum. What really worked in my favor, what his honor found most compelling, was the affidavit you videotaped and sent to him.”

Standing suddenly, she grabbed the objet from him and returned it to the desktop with a decisive thunk. “You were never supposed to know about that! Mike swore to me that—”

“Mike swore. Gif said. Just how often do you and those two busybodies put your heads together? What all have you talked about?”

“For one thing, your work.”

“Work?”

“Foolish me. Because of the indictments against you, I was worried that you might be fired from your job. I wondered if you were financially able to pay your legal fees. As it turns out, my concern was misplaced.”

“Which one of the blabbermouths told you?”

“You sold a patent when you were twenty years old? Twenty? For millions?”

“I didn’t do anything for it. It fell into my lap. Literally. When I was sorting through Dad’s stuff after he died, I upended a drawer, and all these engineering drawings fell out. Scores of them. I didn’t even know what they were, had to ask someone. He had designed a thingamajig that went on a doodad that would improve the performance of a piece of machinery.”

“A piece of machinery essential to the construction and maintenance of the Alaskan pipeline. And about a hundred other industries. Shipping. Forestry. Earth moving.”

“I didn’t know that when I filed the patent. I didn’t have a clue what Dad had been doing all those long, dark nights when he shut himself off in his bedroom. He was the engineer, not me. I never even made a prototype of the thing.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“No. While I was still at Missoula, manufacturing companies started calling me, wanting to buy the patent. I negotiated for months and sold to the highest bidder. To this day, I’m unclear as to what the gizmo does.” He raised his hands. “Wasn’t my field of interest. I carried on with what I wanted to do, got my doctorate, and went to work at the security company where I’m still employed.”

“Coaching mega-conglomerates on how to screen potential employees so they don’t hire embezzlers, pirates, spies, and such.”

“Every day a criminal thinks up a new way to be one. It’s a constant learning curve. I get paid for trying to outwit the outlaws. It’s a great gig. I love the work.”

“A gig.” She placed her hands on her hips. “You’re a major shareholder in a company that has eight branches nationwide.”

He was going to kill Mike and Gif. “I go to the office every day, eat lunch in the campus cafeteria, and, just like everybody else, take my two weeks’ vacation.”

“Two weeks at a time. About six times a year.”

“Every employee gets—”

“Stop it, Drex.” She blew out a gust of breath in exasperation. “‘How much more inept and underachieving am I going to feel?’” she said, quoting him from the day they had met. “And to think I felt sorry for you, a struggling writer living in that ratty apartment.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, the one in Lexington is about that ratty. I’ve been preoccupied for the past fifteen, twenty years.”

Her annoyance plain, she gnawed her inner cheek. “Why couldn’t I find anything about you, the whiz kid, on the Internet?”

“I filed the patent under an LLC. Once it sold, the LLC was dissolved. I’ve conducted my other business behind blinds like that. I didn’t want my name floating around out there in case Weston Graham ever got wind of it.”

She assimilated all that and seemed to find it a satisfactory answer. “Is impersonating a federal agent still your hobby?”

“I was sternly admonished by the judge to give that up for good. But I was done with it anyway. Because he’s done. It’s over. Your words, Talia.”

“What else don’t I know about you? Are there other surprises in store?”

She was entitled to be angry. He wasn’t. But a man could only take so much before becoming riled. “No,” he said. “And I must say that you’re very well informed for someone who, the last time I saw you, told me that you didn’t want to hear anything I had to say, and, since then, hasn’t answered or responded to a single call. Or email. Or text. Nothing!” He ended on a shout.

She matched it. “What would you have said?”

“I would have asked you to forgive me.”

“Never!”

“Fine! Don’t forgive me. Will you fuck me?”

Her lips parted. A soft breath puffed out.

He backed down and lowered his volume. “Sorry. I’d be more romantic, but that takes more patience than I’ve got right now.” He moved aside the crystal thing so he could lean toward her.

“I have no right to ask. I never did. You were married, and I was deceiving you with every word and deed. But any time I’ve been near you since I first saw you coming up the hatchway of that boat, I’ve wanted to claim you in a way that’s…hell, almost primitive. And I honestly don’t know how much longer I can stand here looking at you without acting on that impulse.”

Later they would argue over who had moved first in order to get around the desk. After a brief but mad round of kissing and a wrestling match to pull out shirttails, unbutton plackets, get his knotted necktie over his head, and unhook her bra, they were against the wall, hands competing to cover the most bare skin in the least amount of time.