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“You’re pushing it, Scott.”

“What are you going to do? Hit a man who walks with a cane?”

“Maybe.”

“You need to put yourself in her shoes for a minute, Mitch. If your wife had lived and you’d had a kid, would you have given everything up? The rush? The satisfaction of doing something you’re good at? Would you have just turned yourself into a stay-at-home father? Because that’s what you’re asking her to do.”

“Good night, Scott.”

Rapp watched him pull through the gate and then started for the front door. The normally spotless entryway was strewn with shoes, tiny backpacks, and a trail of colorful Legos that for some reason led into the powder room.

Much of the house consisted of floor-to-ceiling glass that looked into an elaborately landscaped courtyard. He crossed it and used a sliding door to access the industrial kitchen his architect had convinced him he needed. The dark-haired woman inside wedged one last pan in the dishwasher and spun toward him. Her hair was a bit unkempt and she had a smear of something that might have been mustard on one cheek, but she was still stunning.

Rapp indicated to the dishes stacked everywhere. “I take it the rumors of a sleepover are true.”

“You may want to go back to Iraq where it’s safe,” she said, striding across the stone floor and throwing her arms around him.

He returned the embrace hesitantly. Whenever they touched, he felt the same confusing combination of adrenaline and peace. The fact that he was becoming increasingly dependent on that sensation worried him. Those kinds of addictions never worked out well.

She pulled away and went back to cleaning. “Have you eaten? I’m sorry. I haven’t had a minute to make you anything.”

He took a seat at the large island and searched the dishes piled on it, finally selecting a hot dog with a tiny nibble out of one end. “I’m fine. Looks like you’ve had your hands full.”

“You have no idea,” she said, switching to the French she preferred. “Your operation went well? All of your friends are safe?”

“More improvisation than I would have liked,” he responded, taking a bite of the cold hot dog. “But everyone’s in one piece.”

“And Joe? Things went well with his first command?”

It felt strange talking about these kinds of things with her. He’d done everything possible to keep his work hidden from his wife. But Claudia had been part of a similar world for years. She understood what he was dealing with. What was at stake.

“Could’ve been better.”

She stopped loading dishes into the sink and turned toward him. “Everyone’s okay, though, right?”

He reached for a bag of potato chips. “Yeah, but it was a bust.”

“Really? What happened?”

He examined her as she leaned against the sink. It was an odd question. While they were in the habit of discussing his work in general terms, he never went into specifics and she knew better than to ask. What had changed?

One of the pillars of effective interrogation was knowing more than your opponent thought you did. He had a feeling that he was on the wrong side of that now. Had Coleman given her details about Maslick’s failed operation in the hope that he could recruit her? No way. The former SEAL was famously tight-lipped. And that left only one possibility.

Irene.

“Just some bad luck,” Rapp said.

She fixed her almond-shaped eyes on him in a way that suggested she knew that she’d overplayed her hand. “Nothing could have been done?”

“Act of God,” Rapp said, going out of his way to be as vague as possible. He recognized that the conversation was inevitable, but at least he could make her work for it.

She finally admitted defeat. “Did Scott talk to you about me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a very infuriating man to have a conversation with.”

He finished the hot dog. “Really?”

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