He let several seconds lapse, then placed his hand flat on the top of her head before drawing it toward his chest to measure her height against his collarbone. “You are small.”

With him looking down on her, and her looking up at him, they smiled at each other. Smiles that didn’t show teeth. Small, olive branch–extending smiles that faded with continuance and, as they aged, assumed a different, uncertain, and unsettling nature, until they didn’t count as smiles at all.

He was the first to speak. Huskily. “What night?”

“What?”

He cleared his throat. “What night would be best for you and Jasper? You say, then I’ll check with Elaine. And, yes, she gave me her number. But, no, I didn’t ask for it.”

Talia figured she deserved that dig. “Thursday?”

“Perfect. What are you in the mood for?”

“Oh!” She thumped her forehead with the heel of her hand. “That’s the reason I came over. Jasper told me that you had requested a list of good restaurants. He asked me to compile one for you.”

She took a sheet of notepaper from the front pocket of her jeans and passed it to him. “These are within a reasonable driving distance. They’re all reliably good. I prefer the Italian.”

Without even glancing at the list, he said, “Italian it is.”

She began backing away from him toward the door. With a flick of her hand toward the table, she said, “Thanks for the beer. I don’t remember when I last drank one.”

“See? You’re already halfway to being corrupted. A cupcake for breakfast. Beer for lunch.”

She laughed and moved toward the door. He got there first and opened it for her. She stepped out onto the landing, where she halted and came back around, standing in the wedge between the threshold and screen door he held open. “How did you know I had a cupcake for breakfast?”

His parted his lips to speak, but nothing came out.

“Drex? How did you know that?”

Again, he hesitated before raising his free hand and whisking the pad of his thumb across her cheek near the corner of her mouth, then holding his thumb up to where she could see. “Chocolate icing.”

Following Talia’s visit, the afternoon dragged on torturously. Drex almost wished she hadn’t come. Almost. Because now he couldn’t escape seeing her in this tacky room. She’d stood there. She’d touched that. Her voice and laughter echoed off the ugly wallpaper. Her scent permeated the stuffy air.

He tried to immerse himself in the case files, but having studied them for years, he knew their contents almost by heart. By reading the first few words of a sentence, he already knew its ending. The material held his attention for only minutes at a time before his mind drifted to something Talia had said or done.

At dusk, he gave up, shut down shop at his computer, and went for a run through the neighborhood. As he was returning, the Fords were backing out of their driveway in Jasper’s car. Both waved to him.

He smiled and waved back, when what he felt like doing was to drive his fist through the windshield. Despite the difference in their ages, he had to admit they made a striking pair.

Before showering, he carted Jasper’s box fan down the staircase and to the door of their screened porch, where he left it outside. He used a corner of it to anchor a note of thanks he’d written on a sheet of typing paper. He added the name of the restaurant where he’d made a reservation. Thursday night. 7:30. Party of four.

Elaine had accepted his invitation. It would worry Talia to know how exuberant her acceptance had been.

He watched a detective show on his laptop while eating his dinner of frozen pizza. The apartment’s antique oven had given it an old grease-smoke taste. He didn’t finish it. He wasn’t hungry anyway.

He didn’t go out, fearing that Talia and Jasper would come home during his absence, and he would miss an informative conversation.

Ten o’clock came, and they still hadn’t returned. Ready to climb the walls, he called Mike and Gif. “They’re still out, but I thought I’d go ahead and report the day’s events.”

He started by relating the breakfast table conversation and concluded by saying, “Jasper’s nursing suspicion of me, but hasn’t come after me with a hatchet.”

“Yet,” Mike said.

Drex asked if there had been anything out of Rudkowski. Not a peep.

“Which is a good thing,” Gif said.

“Or not,” Mike intoned. “If we’d heard rumblings, at least we’d know what he was up to.”

Drex agreed. “It’ll be eating at him that I inquired about Marian Harris, and then left for a two-week vacation to an unknown destination. He’ll be looking for me. I’m on borrowed time here.”

He cited the little he had to show for the time he’d already spent in residence and, pursuant to that, finally worked his way around to telling them about Talia’s visit. “She just appeared, took me completely off-guard.”

He told them about scrambling to close his laptop before she could see what was on the screen, making himself decent, and ensuring that his pistol, ID, and night vision binoculars were out of sight. “Fortunately I’d already put away the surveillance equipment.”

Mike gave a grunt. “She came uninvited?”

“Like I said. She was hand-delivering a list of good local restaurants. I had hoped to get a sampling of Jasper’s handwriting. Instead, Talia brought over a typewritten list she had compiled. At his request.”

“How long did she stay?”

“Hmm, ten, twelve minutes.” At least twice that long.

“What all did you talk about?” Gif asked.

“She asked to read my manuscript. I told her no way in hell. Words to that effect. Then she started in on me, asking about my past. I turned the tables on her and asked why she should care.”

“Why should she care?” Mike asked.

“She’s afraid her friend will develop a crush on me.”

“Her friend Elaine?”

“Yeah. Talia was mother-henning. I set her straight on why I asked Elaine to dinner.” He gave them the basic info, skimmed over the details.

He skimmed over a lot. He didn’t describe to them Talia’s old, holey jeans and how perfectly they fit her well-defined buns. Did they really need to know what her high, round B-cups did for a plain white t-shirt? He didn’t mention the beer. For sure as hell he didn’t tell them about lifting the speck of chocolate off her face with his thumb and wishing he could have licked it off and then stayed to tease the corner of her lips until they parted for him.

Because he didn’t go into any of that, he couldn’t account for the solemn silence that ensued when he finished. “Guys? Have you nodded off?”

Mike asked, “You at your computer?”

“No. In the bedroom.”

“I just sent you an email. Call us back after you’ve looked at it.”

He disconnected before Drex could say anything more.

He rolled up and off the bed, went into the main room, and opened his laptop. The subject line of Mike’s email was empty, nor was there any content in the body of it. It had an attachment.

Drex opened it, and his heart blipped with excitement when the photograph taken aboard Marian Harris’s yacht came up full screen. The boys in Bombay were geniuses and worth every penny they charged. The picture had been clarified and enhanced, and the quality was far better than Drex could have hoped for.