“Sam, I thought you were all done with that stuff.”

“I am,” he said, still watching his videos. She couldn’t believe the way he was just sitting there staring at his computers.

“Hello?”

“What?”

“If you were done, you wouldn’t be watching that stuff over and over again.” She moved across his hotel room, trying to decide where she would sit. There was no way she was sitting on the bed. Not when it invoked the kind of images currently running through her head. Sam, naked, lying between her spread legs, his head buried in her folds, making her come all over his face before he slid up and thrust his cock deep into her body. Clara shivered. Sam was still at his computers, his face practically glued to them. For a man who was supposed to notice stuff, he was been supremely fucking dense.

Yep, the bed was the last place she felt like sitting.

“I’m just . . .” His voice came out quietly, distant, his syntax half a step behind usual. Without removing his eyes from the screen, he said, “I’m just trying to . . .” And then he trailed off again, retreating back to his careful study of old news footage.

“Just trying to what?” She walked over to him. He needed a little punch or something. Yes, he definitely needed something. A kick to the head perhaps, to let him know how badly he was behaving. A little slap on the back. She felt compelled to lay her hands on him and break him out of his trance. “Huh? What are you trying?” She reached down at his side, right above his hip, and grabbed a handful of where he’d previously admitted to being the most ticklish.

His only reaction was to slap her hand away with a quick and terse, “Wait.”

“Wait?” Clara backed off before she really did punch him in the head. Hard. She circled back to his bed, looking at it, and then moving over to sit in one of the chairs by a small table.

“Wait,” he said again, this time a little more urgently. “Wait, what was that? What the hell was that?”

He was talking to his fucking screens.

“I don’t know, Sam. Why don’t you tell me?”

No answer.

“Why don’t you communicate?”

He suddenly stood up like someone had cattle-pronged him. “I’m sorry,” he said, this time with direct eye contact. Clara could hardly believe it. The cyborg had detached from its mother ship.

“What the hell’s going on?” She was tempted to get her phone out so that she could stare at her own screen, so that he could feel what it was like to be ignored.

But he looked too white in the face. Too . . . scared?

“Sam?”

He paced around, taking deep breaths. “Okay,” he said. “Sorry.” His breathing slowed a little. And then he walked over to her and sat in the chair opposite. “Okay. Everything’s okay.” he said, smiling. And then laughing a little.

“I still don’t buy it,” she said. “You’re a terrible liar, Sam. That’s why I like you so much.”

“No, I just had to finish up something. I saw something, um . . . I was looking through the old footage.”

“I could see that. Isn’t that a little morbid?”

“And I think I’ve identified two additional suspects.” He started rooting around in his pants pockets, finally pulling away two hands full of smart phones, pens, beer-bottle caps, and an odd-looking laminated card on a string. He overturned his palms and dumped everything on the table. He sighed and said, “Okay.”

“Sam, are you working this case for your company?”

“What case?”

“The terrorist attack. I know you feel connected to it because of me. I know it’s personal. But is this your job now?”

Sam was about to say something, but then he stopped himself. And then he frowned. “It’s not really my job, no.”

“Then why are you . . .?” She trailed off as she looked over some of the stuff he’d just dumped on top of the table. She reached over and picked up the card thing. “What’s this?”

“A press pass.”

“For what?”

“It’s a fake. Got it express-mailed here from D.C. Actually, express-hand-delivered.”

“Why?” It was starting to bother her now. “Actually, no. Forget it.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to know.”

Sam reached forward and pushed the rest of his junk aside, maybe so she couldn’t see everything, and then he put both arms on the table stretching out, hands clasped. “Clara, I totally get that I look a little crazy.”

“Yeah, not just a little, Sam.”

“You have to trust me that I’m really onto something here. I think I found something huge, and I need to head down to talk to someone real quick.”

“Yeah, you need to talk to someone, alright.”

“Clara, hey.” Sam stared back at her. His whole demeanor had changed. There was this strange, plastic niceness across his face. “Hey, why don’t we go on a vacation? Just us. Just us and Molly.”

“I can’t go on a vacation.”

“Why? You’re off for three weeks. Molly has Christmas break.”

“She also has a parade.”

“That’s tomorrow,” he said.

“We have plans here.”

“I know, but . . . Wouldn’t it be great to just get away? I feel like we really need to just get out of the city for awhile.”

“I don’t get it, Sam. First you do everything you can to stay here, and now you want to run away? I can’t just pick up and leave.”

“For a vacation.”

Was this it? Was this their first argument?

A sad realization came over her. Was last night the apex of their relationship, the peak of their lust? Would everything now that followed be the same decline that matched the trajectory of all of her past relationships, that same familiar Goddamn downward spiral?

“Clara, listen . . .”

She stood up. “I gotta go.”

“Wait.”

“I know, but I have to go.”

“Clara . . .” He finally looked concerned, not about something he’d seen on his monitor, but concerned for her.

“It’s okay,” she said, collecting her things. “I’ve got to pick up Molly.”