She pulls him close. It’s like he’s got a gravitational orbit around him, and she can’t stay out of it no matter how hard she tries. Maybe it’s because the bathroom’s tiny, or maybe it’s because she’s so glad to see him. Or maybe it’s because the energy surge she’s been feeling since she recovered from the explosion has intensified her desire.

She doesn’t know. Right now, she doesn’t care. What she cares about is that he smells like that woodsy soap he uses, and his chest looks broad and solid enough for her to sleep against while he runs his fingers over her almost shaved head. And those things sound nice. Very nice.

She’s still holding him when he says, “Charley, if he’s calling telling me who I can or can’t arrest, he’s running this town. And if he’s running this town, then he’s running our lives.”

“You want me to talk to him?”

“Not yet.”

“What, then?” she asks.

“I want us to pay attention to everything he does. Or doesn’t do.”

“Deal.”

“You’re not just saying that so you can kiss me some more?” he asks.

“No, if I’m going to resort to deception, I’ll be after more than kissing.”

“Well, you do kinda need a shower.”

“What? I smell bad?”

“No,” he says, “you’ve got hair all over you.”

“Good point.”

“You want me to step out?” He starts to pull away before she can answer. When she responds by grabbing him by one shoulder, he smiles in a way that makes her neck get hot.

“That’s a no,” she says.

“One second, then,” he says.

He opens the door partway.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Hey, guys!” he shouts.

“Yep?” comes Marty’s reply.

“Go home!”

Then he shuts the door before they can protest.

24

“Four weeks is a month,” Cole says.

He’s been swiveling back and forth in his desk chair during Julia Crispin’s unnecessarily protracted lead-up to this announcement. Now he stops the chair with one foot, raises a hand to his earpiece as if he didn’t hear her right because it’s coming loose. It isn’t.

“I’m aware of that, thank you,” she answers.

Too many people play fast and loose with the definition of the word irony, but he’s pretty sure his late father’s mistress talking to him like she’s actually his mother qualifies. He’s always considered it a strange credit to his dad’s character that he married a piece of vapid arm candy and carried on a lengthy affair with an accomplished woman of substance. But of late, Julia Crispin has become a lot more to Cole than an old family secret.

She’s the inventor of TruGlass, the device that allows him to monitor Charlotte Rowe’s every move during an op. She was also one of the original members of The Consortium, a secret alliance of defense industry contractors who pooled their resources so they could fund Project Bluebird 1.0 without traces of it showing up on the ledgers of their respective companies. Until Cole pulled the plug after the first four test subjects literally tore themselves apart.

“Then why not just say a month?” he asks.

“Would you also like me to say it in French?”

“You speak French?”

“No,” Julia answers, “I’m implying, in plain English, that I don’t think it’s the number of days or weeks that’s bothering you here.”

“It’s a while.”

“These are busy men with companies to run. Philip has meetings in Zurich and Dubai, and Stephen can’t get out of the UK for two weeks at the earliest. In four weeks, also known as a month, everyone will be free and we’ll all sit down at Philip’s ranch in Whitefish and discuss what’s in front of us.”

Cole doesn’t say anything. He wants to spin the chair around again, but then he’ll catch his reflection in the wall of glass behind his desk, which might confirm his suspicion that he’s currently pouting. He’d hoped his former business partners would be more impressed by the footage he shared of Charley’s takedown of Pemberton and now her overpowering of Richard Davies. If Julia presented it to them with the fire of the newly reconverted, so much the better.

And yet they’re making him wait a month.

“Perhaps you could thank me in French,” Julia finally says.

“I thought you said they were impressed.”

“They were. The explosive finale gave them some pause, even though I tried telling them that was all part of the test.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I know. And they weren’t convinced, so it’s a moot point.”

“Fine. A month.”

“Still no thank-you?”

“I was hoping for more excitement,” he says.

“They’re excited.”

“Then why aren’t they calling me?”

“You hate Philip. You actually want to talk to him on the phone?”

“Philip hates me because he thinks anyone who doesn’t kill, skin, and cook their own lunch every day is soft. And personally, I think men who shoot deer for fun are trying to hide the fact that they have tiny corkscrew penises.”