But no messages from Tom.

Or Denise.

I check out Archie again. “A gamble. You never know how and where it’s going to pay off.”

Archie doesn’t look away, and I shake my head and say, “Just so you know, I’m one to keep my promises, to keep my oath. No matter the pressure, no matter the temptations. When I was in college, my roommate, Marcia, cheated on her boyfriend. She asked me to keep that secret. Save for you now, I’ve never told anyone, even my husband, even my best friends in the service.”

My throat thickens. “I’m about to violate a promise I made to my husband, a long, long time ago. I’ve been tempted here and there to break that promise, but now…well, it’s an emergency. I have to do it. You understand? I have to do it.”

I turn back to the keyboard, stop wasting time with Archie. I minimize the open screen that has my Gmail account, get back to work. Within a few minutes, I locate Tom’s Cloud account in Google. I feel sick at what I’m doing. For a long time I’ve known his log-in data to get access to his Cloud storage—as an intelligence officer, how could I not?—but I’ve never, ever gone into it. When we were first dating, Tom said to me, “Hon, I know how talented you are…in lots of ways, but especially in the Army. But Amy, please. My work has a lot of sources and confidential information in it. Please don’t ever try to find out what I’m doing, all right?”

And of course I promised to do that, and now, I am breaking that promise. At some point, I hope he will forgive me.

Tom’s office at home is a mess of papers, folders, books, and piles of old newspapers and clippings, but I’m pleased to see he’s not a slob on the Internet. I start going through his files, looking at his notes, and using a function that allows me to see the most recent information. I’m stunned at how quickly I find what I’m looking for, and what it means.

“Oh, Tom,” I whisper. “You damn, damn, damn fool.”

I can’t believe what I’m seeing there, in plain text on a plain screen, but it’s apparent. And thorough. And deadly stupid.

Now I know why he was picked up. And my Denise as well. And although I don’t know the identity of the man behind me, I know his background as well.

Oh, Tom.

I shake my head in disgust and turn around to leave.

Behind me is an empty chair.

Archie is gone.

CHAPTER 70

AT THE George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Warrant Officer Rosaria Vasquez is quickly walking to the service kiosk for Hertz when a familiar man in civilian clothes steps out from a news shop and says, “A minute, Vasquez.”

She halts in her tracks, stunned. Her boss, Senior Warrant Officer Fred McCarthy, who should be back at Quantico in Virginia, is here, deep in the heart of Texas.