CHAPTER TWO #2
He thought of Mia then, the way he did a dozen times a day whether he gave himself permission to or not — the fire escape, the ring catching streetlight, the distinctive steadiness in her voice the last night he'd held her, telling him to find his way back to the man in that kitchen no matter what the assignment asked him to become.
He wondered whether she'd gotten Webb's last update.
Wondered whether the silence on his end was landing on her the way silence like that had always landed on him, back when it had been his own father disappearing for weeks into whatever had eventually taken him for good.
He hoped, with an intensity that surprised him, that Webb was doing right by her. That somebody was.
"You've got that face again," Vanessa said.
"What face."
"The one where you're somewhere else entirely, thinking about somebody you'd rather be looking at instead of me.
" She said it without bitterness, almost gently, an old friend's observation rather than anything sharper.
"For what it's worth, I get it. There's somebody I think about like that too, most days.
Different circumstances. Same particular ache, probably. "
Something in Nash filed that away without pursuing it — a boyfriend, maybe, a family, something Vanessa Cole had waiting on the other side of this assignment the same way he did — and made a note to ask, later, when there was room in the day for questions that didn't have direct bearing on staying alive through tonight.
"We should go over tonight one more time," he said instead. "I want to be sure about the Ruiz coincidence, whether we play it as a joke or drop it entirely."
"Drop it," she said, immediate, professional again, whatever softness had crept into the conversation folding itself neatly away.
"Guys like the ones we're meeting tonight don't like coincidence.
Makes them nervous, and nervous men in that line of work tend to solve their nervousness in ways that are bad news for anybody standing too close when it happens. "
"Copy that."
They spent the next hour running the story from every angle Vanessa could think to attack it from — how they'd met, what Trent did on weekends, whether he had family in the area, small details layered on top of small details until the whole fabricated life had enough texture to survive a suspicious question from any direction.
Nash found himself, somewhere in the middle of it, almost enjoying the specific challenge of it, the same particular satisfaction he used to get from a well-run interrogation — building something airtight enough that a person on the other side of the table couldn't find the seam no matter how hard they looked.
It was easier, he noticed, not thinking about what waited at the end of tonight's meeting. Easier not thinking about Mia, about Webb's contact windows, about a shoebox on a closet shelf he hoped, fiercely, she hadn't opened yet.
Easier, and that particular ease unsettled him more than almost anything else about the last eleven days combined.
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They drove to the warehouse district in the last hour of daylight, the city's ordinary evening traffic gradually thinning as they moved further from downtown's familiar glow into the industrial sprawl neither of them had reason to frequent under any other circumstances.
Vanessa checked her makeup in the visor mirror with the exact unhurried care of a woman settling fully into character, and Nash found himself watching the transformation with something like professional admiration — the small shift in her posture, the loosening of her shoulders, Agent Vanessa Cole receding by careful degrees into the easier, warmer presence of Trent Marsh's girlfriend.
"You get quiet before these," she observed, not looking up from the mirror. "More than most people I've worked cover with."
"Old habit. I used to do the same thing before interrogations, back when I still had a badge to hide behind.
Quiet helps me find the version of myself I need to be for the next hour.
" Nash kept his eyes on the road, the warehouse district's outline sharpening ahead of them against the fading light. "Does it bother you? The quiet."
"No. I've worked with partners who fill the silence with nervous energy instead, and it's significantly worse, trust me.
" She snapped the visor closed, fully transformed now into the easy, unbothered presence the evening required.
"I like that you use the quiet instead of running from it.
Makes me trust the rest of what you bring to a room. "
The warehouse district looked exactly like the surveillance photos Fuentes had shown him weeks ago, except larger somehow, in the distinctive way places always were in person — the shipping containers stacked higher than he'd pictured, the smell of diesel and standing water thick enough to catch in the back of his throat, a security light buzzing overhead in a rhythm that reminded him, unwelcome, of the light over the Silver Spur's back lot, of a night that had started everything currently sitting on his shoulders.
Vanessa's hand found his as they walked in, easy and natural, exactly the way a girlfriend's hand should, and Nash made himself settle fully into Trent Marsh's skin — shoulders loose, voice a half register off from his own, a man looking for honest work from people who didn't ask too many questions.
The man waiting for them just inside the second container introduced himself only as Kesler, mid-forties, a windbreaker despite the warm night, eyes that moved over both of them with the exact careful assessment of someone who'd made a long career out of deciding, quickly, who was worth trusting and who wasn't.
"Trent," Kesler said, testing the name like he was tasting it. "Heard you're looking for driving work."
"Heard you might have some," Nash said, and felt Vanessa's hand tighten, just slightly, against his — a small anchor, a reminder, in a room that had started, immediately, to feel like exactly the kind of room where one wrong word could unravel eleven days of careful preparation in under a minute.
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