Munroe woke to Bradford’s rustling. The texture in the air, the fewer sounds reaching through the windows from the street, told her that he was up earlier than usual. He leaned over to kiss her, as he did every morning, but this time he stayed beside her, propped up on an elbow, tracing a finger around her belly button.
He whispered, “Come to work with me today?”
Munroe opened an eye and looked at him, beautiful in the shadows, muscled and half naked. They’d become like ships passing in the dark as the weeks dragged on and he left earlier, came home later, or sometimes not at all, leaving them to seek stolen moments and the occasional Sunday afternoon to collide in their own isolated ocean.
“I have to stay overnight,” he said. “Take me in and spend the day with me?”
Munroe brought his hand to her lips, and held it there longer than a kiss warranted. She didn’t have to use words to say no because he wouldn’t have asked the way he had if he hadn’t already known her answer. He’d known it from the day he’d invited her into the office and made his very carefully crafted point, deliberately excluding her, fully aware that as the minute hands ticked their slow painful march around the clock, she’d hurt more than if he’d simply said Maybe tomorrow and had left her at home.
He’d gotten what he wanted: she’d never asked to be a part of his assignment again. She couldn’t fault him for what he’d done. Life had a way of screwing things up for them, and work had a way of becoming life. From his point of view, keeping her away from his job was best for them both, might keep them together longer this time around.
Bradford shifted, sat up on the bed beside her. He pulled her hand back with his, putting it to his cheek. “If I said I’m sorry, would it matter?”
She leaned over and bit his thigh. He twitched and said, “Ow,” but it came out more as a question than an exclamation.
She glanced up and smiled and said, “Sorry.”
“Am I missing the analogy?”
“No,” she said, and traced her finger around the indentation, “I just wanted to bite you.” Then she rolled back and put her head on the pillow. “You’ve already apologized and I’ve accepted your apology. I’ve got no grudge.”
“Then you’ll come with me today?”
She sighed and turned toward the window: her version of Maybe tomorrow.
“It’ll be different,” he said. “You’ll be with me all day and I’ll give you something to do. Real work,” he said, “not busywork.” He held his little finger up in front of her face so she couldn’t avoid it. “Pinkie promise.”
She batted him away.
He was such a cheater.
“Okay,” she whispered, and slid around him, off his side of the bed, and reached for the armoire. She pulled the one modest dress off its hanger, the same outfit she’d worn the first time, same outfit she’d have to wear again if Bradford ever offered another invitation. The lack of alternatives had come from the mistaken assumption that she could do as she’d always done in the past: travel light and source what she needed locally. Instead she’d discovered a robust fashion industry that had no concept of women her height and size, which turned online shopping with international shipping into her only option for women’s clothes and shoes.
She hadn’t bothered. Men’s clothing worked fine, anyway.
“Hey,” Bradford said. He tugged her hand and pulled her to him. He wrapped his arms around her thighs and rested his cheek on her stomach. “I know the way things turned out hasn’t been easy for you—hasn’t been easy on us—not what I imagined the workload would be when I signed on and definitely not what I described when I asked you to come.”
She rested a hand on his head and ran her fingers through his hair. “I’m a big girl and I can deal with it,” she said. She leaned down and kissed him, then left him for the ofuro.
Bradford held true to his promise and kept Munroe with him throughout the day. If Tai Okada questioned her involvement, he never let on, and in those first hours, the three of them poring over old documents, Munroe grasped what Bradford’s role within the company had become.
Behind its run-down and dilapidated appearance, behind the show of cameras that didn’t do much more than intimidate, was an invisible state-of-the-art network that monitored phone calls, protected data from cyber attacks, and analyzed employee connections and patterns based on the RFID chips embedded in the badges.
The strongest security features protected the underground labs, where the sensitive research and development took place. In addition to the multiple biometric stations that an employee had to pass through after the single point of entry, reinforced construction turned the lower levels into a bunker, making it impossible for technology to be stolen remotely through keystrokes or for monitor frequencies to be grabbed through the air. Nothing, data included, went in or came out that wasn’t carried—and for that there were additional protocols.
The company’s own personnel was the only route secrets might travel into competitors’ hands, and although each employee had been heavily vetted, reviews were conducted regularly, and no thief or spy had been uncovered, the suspicion of theft persisted.
Bradford had been brought in to use his skills in the low-tech world of blood-and-guts security to seek out gaps that the high-tech guys might be missing. He was there for face-to-face interaction, to spot the combat enemy in peacetime the way he was trained to search out threat in war.
On the way to the break room, where most of the employees took lunch in one form or another, Munroe said, “You could have really used me on this assignment.”
Bradford nodded. “Maybe I should have,” he said, “but you know why I couldn’t—still can’t.”
“Not can’t, Miles, won’t.”
Bradford stopped and faced her, hurt in his eyes, pain in his posture. “It’s the same thing,” he said.
“I get that you’re trying to keep me away from triggers,” she said. “I get that our odds are better this way, but I’ve got nothing here, Miles. I’m going through the motions, trying to find friends, taking up hobbies, but come on, this is me we’re talking about.”
“A month or two and I’ll be out of here,” he said.
“You’re missing the point. Another location isn’t going to change anything, and as much as I love you, neither will spending more time together if I’m not working. Let me help you,” she said. “Utilize my brain. Please?”
He searched her eyes, then took her hand and stared at their fingers, while inner debate marched across his face. Finally he said, “I just can’t, Michael. Not the way things are right now. It’s complicated. Let me finish this out, a few more months, that’s all. Can you last that long—for me? For us?”
Munroe stood silent, arms crossed and motionless.
Bradford released her hand, cupped her chin, and lifted her face toward his. “I won’t blame you if you feel you need to walk away again,” he said, “if that’s what you need to be all right. But I don’t want you to leave, Michael, I really don’t. Please stay until this is over and then we’ll find a middle ground—something that works for both of us, I promise.”
They stood there, face-to-face, at the end of the hall, communicating through the silence. She studied him, searched him, and then sighed, giving in because she knew that Bradford’s reasons were drawn from a well of love and concern, and because, for the first time in her life, leaving was no longer possible.
Bradford stuck out his bottom lip, quivering with puppy-dog adorableness, and that forced her to smile. Then his focus ticked up and passed over her shoulder, and his eyes, like sharks cutting through water, began roaming, as was his way: always aware, always searching the surroundings. He put his arm around her shoulders and said, “Let’s grab food.”
Munroe stole a glimpse toward the hall junction, searching for what had arrested his attention: two women with lunch bags in hand, walking side by side, their expressions contorting with the curves and lines of deep, earnest conversation.