“The agency had complete oversight over what happened at Bedford, and you lost four agents there,” said Porter.

Kaveh looked at Nikola, who was still seated calmly, looking ahead at everything and nothing, not seeming to register this as anything noteworthy.

“What do they know?” asked Kaplan.

“Just that you recovered two vehicles but have reported nothing about recovering any personnel,” said Porter.

“Can’t your people read between the lines?”

“Yes, they can,” said Porter. “That’s the problem.”

Kaplan paused for a solid ten seconds. Then, “They’ll have to go to the director about it.”

Kaveh looked up and saw that both men had already exited the room. The conversation had ended.

“DID YOU HEAR WHAT YOU WANTED TO HEAR, DEAR CLEVER CREATURE?”

“Yes,” said Kaveh. “Yes, I think I did.”

* * *

Kaveh looked up from the printouts he was reading with his “date,” who was acting less like a date and more like someone who was doing a final interview for their first job out of college. His modest hope had been that she would complete at least one of the essays, but she delivered him drafts of both. Considering she was not a professional and she’d written two in a day, they were better than he’d hoped. They still had the rigid “beginning, middle, and end” structure that undergrads rarely shake by the time they graduate, and the thesis still needed work, but it was a perfectly workable first draft. She now sat across from him at the Italian bistro he’d chosen (since her restaurant of choice was “really, you decide”), her nervous eyes watching as he read.

“What is it?” he asked.

Her brow furrowed in bewilderment. “You’re a Pulitzer-nominated writer with three international bestsellers, and you’re reading my unedited writing that I cranked out in an afternoon.”

“Two bestsellers,” he corrected. “The first one didn’t make the Times list.”

“Didn’t two and three debut at number one?”

“Those were light sales weeks, anyway.”

He noted a few spots he intended to go back over with a red pen, shuffled the printouts back into his satchel, then took her hand to affirm that this was, in fact, a date that was happening. This was the first time he’d taken her out since their Cheesecake Factory outing a few weeks ago, and the realization made him feel even worse. It didn’t matter that things were so strange and precarious, he should have been doing more for her this whole time.

She seemed worried, though, looking not at him but behind him. “What’s up?” he asked.

“There’s a guy behind you who’s staring at us. I think he recognizes me.”