“So you just figured you’d stake out the Plaza Dorrego until I appeared?”

“I had a few free days before I had to get to training camp, and what the hell else am I going to do with all the miles I’ve racked up on LAN? Besides, it worked, didn’t it? I might have had a backup plan or two. Now, let’s go get some dinner. Bomber, you’ve got some explaining to do.” He throws one of his long arms around my shoulders.

Even though I’ve been hiding from him, I’ve overwhelmed by joy at seeing him. Seeing him here on these streets that we walked together before it all came crashing down, it’s like we’ve managed to fold time in on itself. Is this what I’ve been hoping to do all along? “I know just the place,” I tell him. “You’ll never eat a better steak in your life.”

We get a table at La Brigada and I can’t get over the fact that he’s here. He stares at me, and I wonder what he’s thinking.

“You look great by the way,” he says as we sit down.

I can’t help myself: “I’m so out of shape.”

He laughs. “I see you still haven’t learned to accept a compliment. So,” he says, tearing into the bread and dragging a piece through a dish of olive oil. Blair and Luke eat more or less nonstop, always have. “Do you want to start by explaining why Zorro out there called you Liz?”

I was hoping he’d disregard it. But of course G had done it on purpose, to stake a claim in the face of this stranger.

“I took my middle name and put it with my mom’s maiden name.”

“Clever.” He nods. “Why all the cloak-and-dagger?”

“You know what it’s been like back home. I wasn’t sure how big the story had been here and there are a lot of expats . . .” Unlike Luke, Blair hadn’t looked away when everything got messy. He’d kept calling me, kept coming to see me, put up with me when I was hysterical and when I was taciturn. Didn’t ask me to recount any details when I didn’t want to, and listened to every last gruesome one when I did. Part of the reason, maybe the only reason, I’d wanted to get away from Blair was because I was embarrassed about how much I’d leaned on him. Even seeing him now, I feel the sting of my own vulnerability.

“So you come to a place where no one knows you and you change your name so no one can find you.” He reaches across the table to take my hand. “It’s got flair, Katie.”