15th Affair (Women's Murder Club #15)(52)

“I have you on tape. I also have you on tape out at Chan’s house the next day.”

Joe nodded, and sighed deeply. “That surveillance van.”

I searched his face, looking for tells or twitches. But Joe was a trained liar, government grade. Triple threat.

“It was getting very complicated then,” Joe said. “We’d lost track of Muller. Chan and those two tech kids had been gunned down right under our noses. And we were aware that a big operation was in the wings.”

“Like the take-down of a passenger jet?”

“Yes, yes. We were aware of a possible threat. We didn’t know details. We thought Chan might know. That’s why Muller was with him. We didn’t know who his contacts were or if our information was any good at all. We didn’t have dates or times.”

Joe looked—heartbroken. Because the plane had gone down? Because the techies had been killed? Because Muller was missing?

I kept my hands in my lap and said, “What are your plans?”

“I have to locate Muller.”

“Were you planning to come home?”

I didn’t mean to say that. It just jumped out of my mouth and into the room.

Joe looked into my eyes and reached for me again, and this time, I let him wrap his big mitts around my hands. I wanted to believe in him. I wanted life to go back to the way it had been only a couple of weeks ago.

Was that possible?

He said, “I can’t make a plan, Lindsay. Country first. This is what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. I’m sorry.”





CHAPTER 80


I WAS SIMMERING. But I didn’t want to boil over, not here, not now. I said to Joe, “I can find my way out.”

He said, “Let me walk with you.”

We walked silently down the carpeted hallway to the reception room. Joe held the glass door for me and waited with me at the elevator. I didn’t look at him, and when the elevator came, I got in without saying good-bye.

I called Cindy as soon as I got to the street. I told her I had learned absolutely nothing, but—off the record—I had seen Joe.

She shrieked into my earpiece. She wanted to know what Joe had said, where he was now, when she could talk to him.

“Cindy, he’s in an ongoing operation with the CIA. That’s all I can tell you, and don’t blow his cover. Please. But if you want to run Bud and Chrissy’s pictures with their names and a request for information, you should do it.”

She said, “Consider it done. Talk to you later.”

I called a cab, and as my mind churned, I waited on the corner of Bush and Montgomery Streets.

I was thinking I owed it to Conklin to tell him everything I knew. I envisioned a very serious meeting in Jacobi’s office: me and Conklin and Brady and, by special permission, Cindy. I had a duty to report criminal activities. I had professional ethics that required me to get clean with my partners. I also wanted their advice and, with it, relief from the pressure that was like none I’d ever experienced.

But as soon as I imagined that collegial scene, new thoughts powered through. Where did my true loyalties lie?

With my husband, who until ten days ago, I had loved entirely?

Or with my coworkers and friends, who had trusted me with their lives as I had trusted them?

The taxi arrived. I had to give the driver a destination, and I heard myself say, “Take me to Lake and Twelfth.”

The driver got on the phone with his girlfriend, and I put my head back and closed my eyes. I woke up when the driver said, “Lady. Here you are.”

Ten minutes later, I was in my jeans and a T-shirt in Joe’s office, going through his things again. I talked to Julie as she bounced in her jumper seat.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for, Jules,” I cooed. “I don’t know what I could possibly find that would trump what Daddy told me an hour ago. He’s a spy on active duty. Yes. Active duty.”

Julie let loose with a peal of laughter.

I got up from Joe’s desk and went over and kissed her.

I said, “I want to make sure I haven’t missed something, little girl. I just want to know what he was doing all those months when he was here with you playing Mr. Mom.”

There was a box of Joe’s stationery in the top drawer, right-hand side. I’d opened it before, frisked it with my fingertips, but this time, I took out the note cards and envelopes and found a stubby little key Scotch-taped to the bottom.

The key had a number.

It could be to a safe-deposit box.

For all I knew, it could be to a safe-deposit box belonging to us, a fireproof lock box with life insurance policies and the deed to our condo.

Or it could be a secret trove of love letters and boarding passes and locks of Muller’s hair.

I put the key in my pocket and lifted Julie out of her chair. I took her into the bedroom, pulled the curtains closed, and got into bed with my baby. Martha curled up on the rug beside us.

It was completely still. We were alone. Maybe we’d always been alone. I had had to accept the depth of Joe’s deceit. That I’d been betrayed by my husband, my best friend.

“Country first,” he’d told me. “This is what I do.”

That son of a bitch.





CHAPTER 81


I SET UP a conference call with Rich and Cindy, and after some back-and-forth, we reached agreement on my plan.