Express Male

“In a car accident. I have no memory of her, and my father never remarried.”

For a long moment, Agent Tennant said nothing. Then, “May first, nineteen-seventy-two,” he repeated. But softly, this time, and with some distraction, as if he were thinking about something else when he said it.

She couldn’t imagine why he’d find her date of birth so worthy of consideration, but he said nothing more and stayed quiet so long, Marnie began to feel a little uncomfortable.

Then she realized it wasn’t his silence making her uncomfortable—it was the intent way he was studying her face. He seemed to be most interested in her eyes, however, pinning his gaze there for a long time. Long enough to make heat swamp her entire system. Again.

“I need to borrow this for a little while,” he stated—not asked—as he held up her birth certificate. “I’ll get it back to you this afternoon. This evening at the latest.” He looked down at the papers on the table again and plucked her social security card from the assortment. “I’ll need this, too.”

“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly. Not that she got the feeling that she had much choice. “But why do you need them?”

“I can’t say for sure just yet,” he told her. “But I think, Ms. Lundy, that you and I both are going to be surprised by what I learn.”

Oh, Marnie didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I have to work tonight at Lauderdale’s,” she told him. “And I have students to teach this afternoon.”

“Tomorrow then,” he said. “We should talk then. Are you free in the morning?”

She nodded. “But I have to work at the store in the evening.”

He took a step backward, into her living room. But he continued to look at her face, as if he wasn’t able to look at anything else. “I apologize again for the inconvenience of last night.”

“Inconvenience,” she repeated blandly. “It was a lot more than that. You scared the hell out of me.”

He made a face that indicated he was genuinely sorry, and continued to watch her eyes. “I apologize for that, too.”

A shudder of heat wound through her at the relentlessness of his gaze. The way he was looking at her then…Hungry. That was the only way she could think to describe him. Like a man who’d been starved and neglected for years and had just stumbled upon a banquet.

He kept walking until he was at her front door, his attention divided between her birth certificate, her social security card and her. Marnie seemed to finally win out over the paper documents, however—and my, but wasn’t that a huge compliment, being more important than paper?—because he stuffed the former into his inside jacket pocket and studied her face again. Or, rather, she couldn’t help thinking, her eyes. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was seeing something—or someone—else.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” he said. “Around nine okay?”

“Fine.”

“We can talk more then.”

Marnie wanted to ask about what, since he seemed to already know, but decided maybe she wasn’t all that fired up to hear. There was still a chance, however small, that this was nothing but a bad dream. By tomorrow morning, she might wake up to discover Agent Noah Tennant didn’t exist anywhere outside her feverish imagination, so whatever he had to tell her didn’t, either.

And maybe, she thought further, she’d also wake up tomorrow to discover that an asteroid the size of Lithuania had crashed into Ohio, making this whole episode—not to mention Cleveland—moot.

Without a further word, Agent Tennant opened the front door and passed through it, closing it with a soft click behind him. Marnie moved to the big bay window to watch him make his way toward the plain black sedan he’d called to have someone bring to the house earlier. But he didn’t immediately start the car when he slipped behind the wheel, and instead pressed some buttons on his cell phone and put it to his ear. As he spoke to whoever answered at the other end, he studied both her birth certificate and social security card again, clearly reading off the information on each.

At one point, he glanced up to see Marnie looking at him out the window, and he stopped talking, as if he were afraid she might be able to discern what he was saying. Then, obviously realizing that was impossible, he began to speak again to whomever he had called. But he continued to watch Marnie watching him, and for several long moments, neither of them looked away. Finally, though, after ending the connection, he lifted a hand in farewell. Then he started the car and maneuvered it out of the driveway, and made his way down the street.

Not once did he look back.

CHAPTER SIX

ELLIE CHANDLER SAT cross-legged on her living room floor with an oversize mug of coffee in one hand and a sealed OPUS file in the other. She’d shed her suit and heels in favor of baggy brown cargo pants, a waffle-weave Henley the color of red wine and slouchy socks; her dark auburn hair had been shifted from the sophisticated French twist she wore to work to the loose ponytail she favored for home. Like a good agent—even though she wasn’t one yet—she’d followed Noah’s instructions and gotten a few hours of sleep before looking at the file, so now the noonday sun tumbled raucously through the window. Her belly was full of Krispy Kreme jelly-filleds, the coffeepot was full and she was about to embark on her first field assignment for OPUS.

Oh, yeah. Life was so good.

The sleek white envelope, Staples style #4673, if she knew her office paraphernalia—and it went without saying that she did—had nary a smudge nor crease to be seen, a testament to how seriously her boss took the job. Even more seriously than Ellie did, which was pretty hard to believe, since she took the job more seriously than anything. Noah never left the office before she did, and she generally never left her desk before six. She’d stay later, but she was always finished with her work by then, and if she got started on the next day’s too soon, she’d run out of things to do by lunchtime. Maybe someday, if she was very lucky, she’d be as overworked as her boss. Because she had her sights set on going straight to the top.