down in front of Sam without a word. He then pushed aside his rolled-up silverware, grabbed a handful of sugar packets from the container on the tabletop, tore the tops off, and started dumping the contents onto his saucer plate.
Sam blinked once at the saucer, slid the menu aside without looking at it, and said, “Eggs over easy, home fries, and—” He looked at Rufus, and Rufus realized the question was directed at him. “Toast or pancakes?”
Rufus’s index finger was in his mouth. “Whut?”
“You obviously know this place. You picked it for some reason, in spite of the requirements I gave you. So, which is better here: toast or pancakes?”
“I’m on a diet.”
“For me, dumbass.”
Rufus’s ears were burning. He wiped his finger on the leg of his jeans. “Oh. Pancakes.”
Sam waited for what felt to Rufus like a full minute before turning to Maddie and saying, “With pancakes. And get him whatever he normally eats. Not sugar packets. No, I’ll pay for it; you’re giving me cavities just looking at you.”
Maddie tucked the pad into her apron pocket and echoed, “Whatever he eats? I’ll have to make it up.” She patted Rufus’s shoulder and left the booth.
After a moment, Rufus licked his finger and stuck it into the sugar again. “I don’t need you buying me anything.”
Just another of those long pauses before Sam rubbed his face with both hands—that stubble, that goddamn raspy, manly stubble—and snorted.
Rufus shoved the plate to one side, put his elbows on the tabletop, and leaned forward. “I don’t know why Jake liked you.”
“I never said Jake liked me. I said we fucked around.” Sam leaned back, stretching, all broad chest and shoulders, miles and miles of him in the booth. “And you haven’t seen me naked.”
“I wasn’t asking to.”
“You seem pretty keen to show me your imaginary pubes.”
“You’re the one who—fuck you. Jake was a decent guy. And I’d have never thought Jake would have fucked around with anyone if he didn’t at least like them.” Rufus huffed, sat back, then leaned sideways to rest his head against the window. “Guess he wasn’t always on the mark with judging others.”
Sam was doing something with his hands—Rufus couldn’t see what, but one of them knocked up against the underside of the table—and a moment later, Sam crossed his arms, tucking his hands under them. He closed his eyes; when he started speaking, it sounded so much like Jake that a frisson ran down Rufus’s spine. Not like an imitation or a party trick. Not even Jake’s voice, not really. But the cadence. It was the way Jake talked.
“I think we’re on to something big, something really big. Oh my God, I am so drunk. Natalie thinks I’m working late.” For a moment, Sam’s voice again: “Then a string of letters like he mashed the keyboard, maybe his head coming down on it as he was blacking out.” Then, Jake’s cadence: “I met this girl, Juliana, and she said they come in from the north, and the fuckers, we’re going to get the fuckers, nobody should do this to anybody, nobody should—” Sam’s voice: “More mashed keys.” Jake: “I should tell somebody, I know I should tell somebody, but it’s not going to change anything, is it? Tell me. Tell me if it’s going to change something. And tell me they won’t come after me, tell me they won’t come after me no matter what I do—” Then, in his own voice: “He hits the keyboard again, and when he comes back, he wants to talk about—” He smirked, just the faintest hint of the expression. “Us. Whatever he was looking into, he thought it was big, and so I’d say, yes: he misjudged somebody, sat on his fucking thumb trying to decide what to do about it, and it got him killed.”
Something in an e-mail…. That was a hell of a lot of something, Rufus thought.
“How did you…?” Rufus sat up straight, heart slugging hard in his chest. “No way Jake told you those things. Who are you, really?”
A Fed?
The sudden consideration wormed its way through the fog of hunger and ever-present heartbreak, mixing and churning in Rufus’s gut. But no. Undercover agents had that particular aura about them. Auras of half-truths. Auras of misdirection. Auras of something not quite right. Sam wasn’t a Fed. He was a dick, though. But maybe that’s how he handled loss.
Handled Jake.
Rufus’s blood sugar was too low and he was getting irritated.
“Your turn,” Sam said. “You know him from