CLAIRE EASED HER grip on the pistol and took long, deep breaths.
“Are you trying to provoke me?”
Gray couldn’t help but laugh. “I know that’s a losing bet. I’m asking you, honestly, did you kill him? Didn’t I warn you back then? About not getting involved with that man?”
“You did.”
He had cautioned her against attachments when he’d first heard about Paul. Relationships with civilians usually ended badly. He encouraged operators to get together with people inside the teams.
For all the silence directed to outsiders, there was openness with those in the brotherhood. Intelligence professionals bonded deeply and quickly. It was like putting your thumb over a hose: All that built-up pressure from not being able to talk to most people made relationships with those you could confide in all the more intense.
But Claire hated the bubble, the same small circle of lies, of fake names in the same bars in the same war-torn towns, the same circuit of contractors and black units in their flannel shirts, beards, and ball caps.
Cold Harvest had brought out the most dangerous parts of her, and living that life both at home and at work was too much. She had met Paul while using her cover in Turkey. That was all he knew of her: Carol, the innocent. He and that fake life were her escape from the killing.
But Gray had warned her: “You can’t tell him who you are. It’s too dangerous. He’s a reporter.”
“He’s a photographer.”
She had understood, even then. His life was about exposing the truth. Hers was about hiding it. “Come on, Claire,” Gray had said.
It didn’t take a genius to see the logic: That getting involved with Paul was a suicidal impulse. That it meant she wanted to expose herself, let the sunlight in. Kill everything that grew in the dark. She had nothing to be afraid of. She would stand up and answer for the death of every terrorist, arms trafficker, and dictator she had put in the ground.
“Does Paul check out?” she had asked him then.
Of course Gray had done the background workup. He ran checks on his pool cleaner.
“Does he?”
“He does. Are you going to get married as Carol? Live as a cover?”
That had been her plan: The lie would become the real life, and the person she had been before would become an odd variation, locked away in her work. It sounded wrong to say yes back then. But the more she thought about it, the more she liked it.
“Who could imagine?” she’d said. “A woman getting married and losing her name.”
“Those bonds are dangerous, Claire. People can exploit them. They give the enemy a way in.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I know. But what about him?”
She hadn’t had an answer for him then. But he had been right. And now her husband was dead.