15. Leah
FIFTEEN
LEAH
I woke up with his arm across my waist.
The light through the safehouse curtains was low and gray — early, before the city had really started — and Julian was on his side beside me with his face pressed into the pillow and his breathing slow against my shoulder. His sandy hair was flat on one side. His hand was open on my stomach.
I did not slide out carefully this morning.
I stayed.
I lay there with his weight against me and his breath on my collarbone and let myself have it. The warmth. The fact that he had said Leah last night with his mouth on my skin, and it had not sounded like a case file. It had sounded like my name.
Eventually I got up. His shirt was on the floor by the bed. I pulled it on and went to the kitchen.
I made coffee with the Bureau-stocked supplies on the second shelf above the sink. The bag was a brand I had never seen at a coffee shop. The smell that came up out of the machine was acrid.
He came out in sweatpants. Hair wrecked. The white shirt I was wearing made him grin.
He crossed the small galley kitchen and came up behind me at the counter. His arms wrapped around my waist. His chin came to rest on my shoulder.
"That coffee smells criminal."
"It's all we have."
"I'm calling Declan. He'll send the good stuff."
"You're not calling anyone."
He kissed my neck.
"Tyrant."
I poured two mugs. I handed him one. He drank. He made a face. He drank again.
We stood at the counter with the bad coffee and the safehouse light. His arm stayed around my waist. I let it.
That was the terrifying part.
How fast it had become normal.
He started pacing at 10:00 a.m.
He was not a man who did well in a cage.
I had known it about him when he was my target; I knew it differently now.
He paced from the couch to the front window, looked at the curtain, and paced back.
He picked up the safehouse copy of yesterday's Times, read three columns, and set it down.
He stood in the kitchen doorway with his hands on the frame and looked at me on the couch with my secure laptop open.
He was thinking about the Vanguard. He was thinking about Declan and Nolan, who did not know where he was. He was thinking about the architecture I had photographed and what Conrad was doing with the time he had.
I let him pace.
I went back to the case files.
A sound. Quiet. A phone powering on.
I turned my head.
Julian was on the edge of the bed through the open bedroom door with his phone in his hand. The screen was lit. His thumb was moving toward the contact list.
I crossed the apartment in five steps. I took the phone out of his hand. I pressed the side button. The screen went dark.
I slipped it into the pocket of his shirt I was still wearing.
"What are you doing, Leah?"
"I should ask you that."
"I need to talk to my partners."
"That phone is a beacon. Conrad has been tracking your movements for months. Every signal it sends is an arrow pointing to this apartment."
"Declan and Nolan don't know if I am alive."
"I'll arrange a secure line. You do not turn on an unsecured device again."
"You don't get to make every decision."
"When it comes to keeping you alive, I do."
He stood up.
His hands went to his hips.
"Leah."
"What?"
"I don’t hide."
"I do not care what kind of man you are. I care that you are a breathing one."
He looked at me for a long second.
He sat back down on the edge of the bed.
I went to the couch. I called Harlow. I asked her for a secure line. She called back with a number I could pass to him. I went into the bedroom. I held the safehouse landline out to him.
He took it.
I left him with it. I closed the door, sat on the couch with my laptop open, and did not read a single line on the screen.
He came out having spoken to his best friend, but couldn't say much. He sat down on the couch beside me. He did not say anything.
I did not either.
I called Harlow again. She picked up on the second ring.
"Calder."
"Status."
"The Bureau opened a formal investigation into Conrad's network.
We've got the judge under parallel review — quietly, through the OIG, until we have enough to move publicly.
The forensic team recovered the bullet from the garage.
Professional caliber, unmarked, untraceable so far.
We're running the trace on the unknown number that texted Cross's phone but the burner is dark. "
"Good."
"Calder."
"Yeah."
"We're sending field backup to the safehouse."
"I don't need field backup. I have it covered."
"You have a principal in residence and a confirmed shooter in the wind. You need a second body. Someone experienced. Someone who knows financial crimes and knows how you work. I'm sending you Torres."
I went very still.
"No."
"Calder — "
"Send anyone else."
"He's the best available. Eight years in financial, two with you. He knows your operational style. He knows the case file."
"Send anyone else, Harlow."
"Is there something I need to know, Calder?"
I sat with the phone against my cheek.
Julian was at the kitchen counter with the bad coffee and his back to me, pretending he was not listening.
"Just send someone else."
"Assignment is already filed. Torres will be there tomorrow morning."
"Harlow."
"Calder. Sleep on it. Talk soon."
She hung up.
I sat with the phone in my hand.
I picked up my personal phone from the cushion beside me and walked into the kitchen. Julian moved out of the way. I dialed.
Torres picked up on the first ring.
"Leah."
"Don't come."
"Leah."
"Rafael. I am asking you not to come."
He was quiet for a second.
"I requested this assignment. When I heard what happened — a shooting, your cover blown, you locked in a safehouse with a civilian target — I went to the field office and put my name in."
"You can pull it back."
"No."
"Why."
A breath on his end.
"Because the last time you were in danger, I was in a hospital bed and could not do anything about it. I am not doing that again."
I hung up.
I stood at the kitchen counter with the phone in my hand, and my eyes wet. I was furious about it. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I turned around.
Julian was in the doorway.
He had his sandy hair pushed back from his face, and his hazel eyes were on mine.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing. The Bureau's sending backup tomorrow. Someone from the field office."
He watched my face. "Is that a bad thing?"
I did not answer.
"Is it someone you know?"
I did not answer.
I looked at him. I could deflect. I could claim it was operational, but that wouldn't be accurate.
He had told me about Conrad yesterday, the bar in the Village, and the shame he had been carrying alone. He had opened the vault.
I was still holding mine shut.
I crossed to the couch. I sat. He came over and sat beside me. Close. His knee against mine.
I told him.
"His name is Rafael Torres. He's FBI. Financial crimes. He was my partner six years ago. The first time I worked an undercover financial embed."
He listened. He did not interrupt.
"We were also together. Against Bureau policy. We were together for two years. We were quiet about it, but it was real."
I looked at the laptop on the coffee table.
"I had a witness long ago. A woman who said she had information that would close a case I had been building for nine months.
She was a witness who looked perfect on paper.
Clean record. Family in the area. Reasons to talk.
My handler at the time wanted more verification before we moved on to what she was telling us.
I thought he was being slow. I went around him.
I vouched for her. Torres was sent into the field alone to verify the next piece based on her account. "
A breath.
"She was lying. The whole thing was a setup. Torres walked into an ambush in a parking garage. Two men. They cut him from the shoulder to the hip with a knife and left him on the concrete. He was alone for eleven minutes before backup got there."
I was looking at the laptop. I could not look at his face.
"He survived. The doctor said it was eight minutes between him and bleeding out on that floor. He was in the hospital for two weeks. He came home. He could not lift his left arm above his shoulder for four months. He had to do physical therapy three days a week for a year to get it back."
I swallowed.
"He never blamed me. Not once. He said it was the witness's fault and the people who paid her, and that I had done what I thought was right. He was — " My voice broke a little. "He was kind about it."
I pulled my knees up under me.
"I ended it anyway. Not with a conversation.
I did not have the words. I just stopped.
I stopped answering his calls. I stopped going to the apartment we were building toward.
I asked for a transfer to long-term embeds.
I changed units. I changed apartments. He came home from a follow-up appointment one Tuesday and I was not at the address I had been at the week before.
I never told him I was leaving. I just left. "
I made myself say the next part.
"I have not loved him in a long time, Julian.
I have not loved anyone since. What I feel for Torres is not love.
It is shame. It is the shame of a woman who failed at her job and almost killed the person she was supposed to keep safe and then could not even break up with him to his face.
That is what is on the other end of that phone call.
Shame. And he is coming here tomorrow morning because the last time I was in danger, he was in a hospital bed, and he is not doing that again. "
I did not let myself finish more than that.
He pulled me into him.
His arm came around my back. His other hand was at the side of my face.
He pulled me down against his chest and I let him.
My face was against the warm cotton of his shirt and my hand was a fist on his sternum and his chin was on the top of my head, and he did not say anything.
He did not tell me it was not my fault. He did not tell me I had done my best. He did not tell me I had nothing to be ashamed of.
He just held me.
I let him.
For the first time, I let someone hold the weight instead of carrying it alone.
We stayed on the couch.
My legs were across his lap. His hand was on my ankle. The afternoon light was coming through the curtain I had pulled closed for security, low and warm against the carpet.
My laptop pinged on the coffee table.
I leaned forward. I opened the lid.
Priority alert from Harlow.
I clicked through.
A financial news outlet had published a story. Vanguard Group Targeted in Hostile Bid Citing Founding-Era Capital Concerns. I read the byline. I read the dateline. I read the lede.
An unidentified investor group has launched a hostile acquisition bid for the New York-based investment firm Vanguard Group, citing concerns about the firm's founding-era financial irregularities and unresolved questions regarding the source of its original capital.
According to sources with detailed knowledge of the firm's founding structure, the investor group has assembled documentation suggesting that the firm's regulatory bond was secured under inducement, and that early acquisitions may have served as conduits for unauthorized capital flows.
I read it twice.
I turned the laptop toward Julian.
He read it.
I watched the man on the couch disappear.
His jaw set. His hazel eyes went somewhere I had not seen them go since the conference room two weeks ago when Declan had said Graham. The hand that had been on my ankle gripped the edge of the laptop.
He had built the Vanguard at twenty-six in a studio in Murray Hill when his mother died — a man sitting across from him with open hands and dirty money.
He had built the architecture I had photographed at his desk.
He had spent six months alone in a locked drawer trying to figure out what had happened in his own house.
The takeover was not a threat anymore.
The takeover was live.
He looked up at me.
"I need to talk to my partners."