She crossed her arms and blinked several times as she met my eyes again.

“Well, what if I didn’t? Is it such a crime that I missed my son? That I thought he might want to see his mommy and daddy in the same room, just for once? God, Alex, what’s happened to you?”

It seemed as if there were an answer for everything here, except my questions. The only part I really trusted was that she loved and missed Ali. But that wasn’t enough.

“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “We’re going to go get some ice cream. You can say your good-byes after that, and then you’ll see him again in July, like always. Anything else, and we’re going back to mediation. That’s a promise, Christine. Please don’t test me on this.”

To my surprise, she smiled. “Make it dinner. Just the three of us, and then I’ll get on my plane to Seattle like a good little girl. How’s that?”

“I can’t,” I said.

Her mouth tightened into a hard, straight line again. “Can’t? Or won’t?”

The answer was both, but before I could say anything else, the office door opened and there was Ali. He looked so all alone, and scared.

“When can we go?” he wanted to know.

Christine scooped him up just as she had the night before. To her credit, there was none of the thunderstorm in her eyes that I’d seen a second ago.

“Guess what, honey? We’re going to go out for some ice cream. You, me, and Daddy, right now. What do you think of that?”

“Can I get two scoops?” he asked right away.

I couldn’t help laughing — for real. “Always the broker, aren’t you, little man?” I said. “Yeah, two scoops. Why not?”

As we left the school, Ali took each of us by the hand, one on either side, and it was smiles all around. But it still wasn’t lost on me that Christine hadn’t committed to a thing.

Chapter 50

BY THE TIME I finally got to the Hoover Building for my five thirty meeting, it was quarter after six. I signed in and took the elevator.

The Information Sharing and Analysis Center where Agent Patel worked could have been anywhere in corporate America, with its ugly tan-and-mauve cubicle maze, low ceiling tiles, and fluorescent box lights. The only tip-off was the endless computers, at least one internal and two outside machines at every desk. The real sci-fi-looking stuff — the enormous servers and surveillance banks — was elsewhere on the floor, behind closed doors.

Patel jumped when I knocked on the half wall of her work space.

“Alex! Jesus! You scared me.”