Chapter 6
The diner was crowded enough to make everyone look like they belonged and noisy enough to swallow a confession.
I chose a booth with a view of both doors. My left leg throbbed under the table, the bandage pulling whenever I shifted. I kept my hands around a mug of coffee I hadn’t tasted.
Nora arrived five minutes late. She was younger than her voice had sounded on the phone, with dark hair tucked behind one ear and a guarded look that made her seem older.
She glanced at the empty seat across from me.
“You came alone?”
“Yes.”
She checked the front window, then sat. “That doesn’t mean nobody followed you.”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
Her eyes settled on my face. “Are you here to tell me my father was a good man?”
“I’m here to tell you what I know.”
“Which is what?”
“That I met him during the operation. That I don’t know everything he did before or after it.”
“Convenient.”
“It isn’t much of an answer.”
“It’s the kind you people use when you want to sound honest without saying anything.”
She took off her coat but kept it in her lap. Her fingers worried one cuff.
“I’m not going to defend an official version,” I said.
“Because you don’t believe it?”
“Because I don’t know enough to defend it.”
That seemed to irritate her more than a denial would have. She looked past me toward the counter, where a waitress poured coffee for a man in a Capitals cap.
“Did he ask about me?” she said.
I considered the question carefully. “Not by your name.”
Her mouth tightened. “So he didn’t.”
“I don’t know if he knew where you were. I won’t pretend I do.”
“Did he talk about his family?”
“He said he wouldn’t leave without the second family.”
Nora’s expression flickered, then closed again.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Jake remembers us going back for a woman and a boy. I don’t know if they were related to your father.”
“And you brought them out?”
“We brought them to the extraction point.”
“Did my father?”
“I remember him being afraid.”
Her gaze snapped back to mine. “Afraid of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were there.”
“I was. That isn’t the same as knowing what he feared.” I put the coffee down. “He kept looking behind us. He flinched when the aircraft came over. He watched every person who approached him. I saw that. I didn’t know why.”
For the first time, Nora stopped worrying the cuff.
“You’re saying he was scared.”
“I’m saying what I saw. I won’t dress it up as an explanation.”
She studied me as if waiting for the familiar pivot—the part where I’d tell her what her father was, what the mission required, why the choices had been unavoidable. I had no such answer to offer.
“My father could make fear look like anger,” she said. “He could make leaving sound like protecting me. Then he’d disappear for months and expect me to understand.”
I didn’t say that his reasons might have been good. I didn’t know that, either.
After a moment, she reached into her coat pocket and brought out a small brass key. Its bow was scratched, and a piece of red thread had been knotted through the hole.
“He sent it years ago,” she said. “No letter. No explanation. Just this in an envelope with my name on it.”
“Did you ask him what it opened?”
“I tried. He didn’t answer.”
She closed her fingers around it.
“Why keep it?”
“Because throwing it away would have felt like answering him.”
The key vanished into her pocket again. I didn’t ask what it opened. Her face told me she had spent years asking the question by herself.
A dark SUV pulled to the curb outside.
I recognized the small silver mark on its rear door: Meridian’s logo. The vehicle idled while rain tapped the diner’s front window.
Nora saw it, too. She went still.
“Do you know them?”
“No.”
“Do you know why they’re here?”
“No.”
The driver’s door opened. A man in a charcoal coat stepped out and looked through the glass. He wasn’t scanning the room. His eyes went directly to Nora.
She slid out of the booth.
“Kitchen,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because he came for you.”
The man entered. A second followed close behind him, one hand beneath his coat. The bell above the door jingled brightly, absurdly cheerful.
The first man spotted Nora and moved toward us.
“Ms. Vale,” he called.
She froze for half a heartbeat.
I got between them. “Keep walking.”
“Sir, we need to speak with her.”
“Then you can speak with her from there.”
He reached for my arm. I knocked his hand away and turned toward the kitchen. Nora was already moving, the key clenched in her fist.
The waitress yelped as we pushed through the swinging door. Heat and the smell of frying onions hit me. A cook shouted at us. I kept my bad leg under me and headed for the rear exit.
Behind us, the kitchen door banged open.
“Stop!”
Nora shoved the exit bar. We spilled into a narrow alley slick with rain. A delivery truck blocked the far end, its engine running. I guided her around it, favoring my left leg, and we emerged onto the next street with the diner’s noise behind us.
We didn’t stop until we reached the shadow of a brick storefront.
Nora turned on me, breathing hard. “They knew my name.”
“I heard.”
“You hadn’t told them who I was.”
“No.”
“Or who my father was.”
“No.”
May you like
Her hand was still closed around the key. She looked back toward the alley, then at me.
“They recognized me before you ever mentioned my father.”
