Page 75 of His Wall

I took the FDR down to the bridge. I did not take the most direct route. I took the route I had drilled six years ago at Quantico for principal extraction in a city I knew. Two changes of avenue. One unnecessary block north on Sixth before the turn. I checked the rearview every fifteen seconds.

He sat in the passenger seat with his head against the window and his eyes on the river.

I wanted to say something.

Everything I could say sounded like an excuse. "I was doing my job. I was following orders. I believed the evidence." None of it accounted for the fact that I had slept with him knowing I was lying. That I had woken up in his bed this morning and let him smile at me and make me coffee while his name sat in a file on my handler's desk.

I did not say anything.

I drove.

The safehouse was a two-bedroom apartment above a laundromat on Fourth Avenue. I parked across the street. I walked him in through the side door, up two flights, down the hallway. I unlocked it with the key the Bureau had left in the lockbox. I went in first.

I cleared it.

Living room. Two windows on the front, one on the side. The blinds were already down. A two-seat couch, a low table, an old television on a stand. A galley kitchen at the back, stocked — I checked the cabinets, supplies of canned soup and dry pasta and a bag of coffee.

Two bedrooms. One bed in each. The sheets were clean. Closets empty.

Bathroom. Cleared.

Fire escape lock engaged. Back door deadbolt thrown.

I came back into the living room.

He was on the couch.

He had taken his jacket off. He had laid it across the arm of the couch. His elbows were on his knees and his head was down and his hands were laced together between his knees, the cut on the back of his left hand from the wheel well dried to a thin dark line.

I crossed to the kitchen.

I put my keys on the counter. I put my coat over the back of the chair. The phone was still face down.

Twenty feet across the apartment from him.

The woman who had lied to him for five months was his only protection. The man I had been sent to destroy was the man I had to keep alive.

I had never seen him like this.

I had seen him close a deal across a conference table in eight minutes. I had seen him hold me against a railing and kiss me like he had been thinking about it for a week. I had not seen him still and quiet.

I did not say anything.

The radiator in the corner clicked. A truck went past on Fourth Avenue.

He lifted his head.

His hazel eyes were on mine across twenty feet of cheap carpet.

His voice was flat.

"Last night. Was that the assignment too?"

FOURTEEN

JULIAN

I was on the couch with my elbows on my knees and my hands laced between them. She was 20 ft. across the apartment in the kitchen.