Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
On our way back to the SUV, we pass a section of dock that overlooks the Duwamish Waterway. Josie stops for a moment, hands in her jacket pockets, looking out across the sound.
“Can I tell you something that has nothing to do with cameras or RainVest or any of it?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say.
She’s silent for a second, her expression hard to read. “I chose Seattle because I thought it would be a quieter existence. The NSA was everything to me. Every single day was consequential. Every piece of intelligence you touched had weight to it.” She pauses. “I loved it. But I was thirty-one and I realized I didn’t own a single piece of furniture I’d picked out myself. Everything in my apartment was functional and nothing was chosen.”
I listen without filling the silence.
“I wanted to choose,” she says simply. “Furniture. A neighborhood. Maybe a person eventually.” She exhales a quiet laugh. “I’m aware that’s embarrassing given what I do for a living.”
“It’s not embarrassing,” I say.
“It’s a little embarrassing.” She turns away from the water and starts back toward the SUV. “The point is—those things are important. Maybe more so than what we do for a living and the people we help.” She stares at me pointedly. “Don’t wait until the threat is neutralized to figure out what you want, Cole. Threats don’t end. They just change shape. The mug on the counter every morning should be all the reminder you need for that.”
I pull open the driver’s door and look at her across the roof of the SUV. “When did you get so wise?” I ask.
“I was born wise, baby,” she says without missing a beat and gets in.
CHAPTER 18
Cole
The building is quieter by evening, the daytime chaos of Jameson softened and more domestic as the hours turn. The smell of whatever Anna left in the community kitchen slow cooker drifts through the upper floors. The building breathes differently at night, like it’s allowed to relax, secure behind steel bars and infrared cameras.
I find Tessa at the dining table in my apartment. Not the lobby worktable where she’s been spending most of her days, but here, in my home, which has stopped feeling like a small detail worth noting and started to become a feeling I’d be devastated to lose. Her laptop is open, a nearly empty mug at her elbow, printed pages spread in a loose arc around her with handwritten notes in the margins. Her hair is twisted up with locks that have fallen free, her reading glasses on and a pen tucked behind her ear.
She looks up when I come in, and the expression that crosses her face quickly flashes through relief, warmth, and even a flash of irritable jealousy that I can come and go as I please.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.” I drop my jacket over the entry chair and move into the kitchen, filling a glass of water and leaning back against the counter to look at her properly. “Still at it?”
“Almost done,” she says, which is what she’s been saying for two days. “I’m in final edits. Tightening the narrative arc, closing the loop on the SAPG connection.” She pulls off her glasses and sets them on the table, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Simon’s going to want changes.”
“He always does,” I say, remembering the times she would rant about him, but she knows his work makes hers better.
“But the bones are solid,” she adds on.
“It’s good?” I ask.
She looks at me with the directness she reserves for things she’s certain about. Her confidence is never lacking when it comes to her work. “It’s the best piece I’ve ever written,” she says. “I know that sounds immodest.”
“You’re the humblest person I know, so I know it’s accurate.”
She exhales slowly, sitting back in her chair. The tension in her shoulders is more pronounced tonight. She’s carrying not just the coiled frustration of being trapped but the burden of carrying a heavy load for too long and can almost see the place where she gets to set it down.
Almost.
“How were the docks?” she asks brightly.
A little too brightly.
“Productive,” I say. “Josie found some anomalies worth following up on.”
“Mmm.” She turns her pen over in her fingers. “Must be nice. Getting out.”
She says it lightly, but I hear the envy underneath it and I’m not going to pretend I don’t. “Yeah,” I say simply. “I know.”
She tilts her head, studying me. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Agree with me instead of arguing.” The corner of her mouth curves. “The old Cole would have told me the building was perfectly comfortable and I was being ungrateful.”
“The old Cole was an idiot,” I say.
She laughs, surprised and unguarded, her eyes lighting up for a few precious moments. “And you’re the most self-aware man I know. I appreciate that about you, you know?”