The doors slide open, letting us out into the late May afternoon. Lorenzo doesn’t let go of me, only holds me tighter, pressing his hip against mine. Someone is probably watching us from the windows five floors up, so I pause and bend over at the waist, hands on my knees, as if I’m catching my breath. It isn’t that difficult an act.

“The projects are all color coded,” I say, keeping my focus on the asphalt. “One red, one gold. The one we’re on is the White team.”

“Morgan told you that?” Lorenzo asks.

“Right,” I say. “All Morgan wanted was to lecture me on how perfect the world was when women stayed home. No. Morgan didn’t tell me anything, but he had a thick binder he tried to hide. Didn’t work, of course. Morgan’s twice as stupid as he looks.”

“Can you ask Patrick about it?” Lin says. She’s crouched beside me in the parking lot, her back to the building. “No, never mind. Can you get back into his study and have another look?”

“Maybe. Patrick’s been drinking more lately, and it’s Friday. I might be able to work something out tonight.” I say this without really knowing where the words are coming from. They can’t be mine, these spy-like thoughts. Jackie, maybe, would think up a scheme to get her husband drunk and pry his desk drawers open, but not Jean. In seventeen years of marriage, I’ve never snooped around Patrick’s papers, either personal or business, never looked for clues of a mistress or a one-night tumble. Once, when I couldn’t find my planner, I thought I might have left it in his car. Even then, as I clicked open the driver’s-side door, I felt like an infiltrator.

“We don’t keep secrets from one another, babe,” Patrick said when I told him about the missing planner. “Never have, never will. I don’t care if you go into my car. Snoop around all you want. You might find a dirty handkerchief in the glove compartment, though, so watch out. Cooties, you know.” He played lightly with his fingers up and down my arms as he said this. “Beware the Irish cooties!”

Of course, I turned out to be the one with the secrets. Or with one six-foot-tall Italian secret.

Correction. Make that two secrets. One of them is about the size of a small orange.

“I’d better get going,” I say. The drive out to Sharon Ray’s farmette will take the better part of an hour in traffic, and I want to stop in to check on Olivia King before dinner, call the hospital where my mother is, and—don’t forget, Jean—get my husband liquored up so I can steal classified government documents from his office. It’s a tall order for a Friday evening.