his lips. “Unless that’s too difficult for you.”
Rufus squared his shoulders, jutted his chin out, and did a very good job at looking well and truly offended. “Natalie carries a purple Michael Kors bag. And I bet—” He paused, patted various pockets, then produced a pack of gum. “I bet this that her phone is in the purse. And if this wasn’t for Jake, I’d knee you in the nuts for suggesting I’m below average. I’m a fucking great snoop.”
“Spearmint.” Sam made a face. “And I didn’t suggest you were below average. I said you were. I guess we’re about to find out if I’m right.”
Without waiting for an answer, he took the steps up to the brownstone’s door and rang the bell. It buzzed deep inside the house, and thirty seconds passed before footsteps moved toward the door. It swung open, and a petite woman with brown hair in a pixie cut and very expensive shoes answered the door.
Natalie Miller made eye contact with Sam’s chest, then tilted her head to look at his face. “Um—yes?”
“Sam Auden, ma’am. United States Army Intelligence.” He produced his military ID, which he’d smuggled out after everything went bad at Benning, the expiration date still six months away. “This is Mr. Hiscock. May we have a few minutes of your time?”
“Army Intelligence?” Natalie repeated, looking toward the ID, but Sam was already tucking it away. She glanced at Rufus next, who stood a step behind Sam, studied his appearance with a skeptical eyebrow raise, then asked, “What’s this in regards to?”
“You were acquainted with Mr. Jacob Brower?”
Her face screwed up into something painful, her eyes bright with wet. “Y-yes,” she managed with breath that sounded as if it’d been knocked from her chest.
“If we could just have a few minutes of your time.”
Natalie cautiously stepped aside and gestured for them each to enter. She led them into a combination kitchen and living space at the back of the brownstone, obviously a gut-and-update job, lots of expensive-looking appliances and furniture, white subway tile mixed with jute floor coverings, and columns of July sunlight pouring in through the windows. After she motioned to a sofa, Sam and Rufus sat, but Natalie remained standing, wringing her hands once and then adjusting a tiny ceramic bluebird on the console table.
Sam nudged Rufus’s knee with his own, waiting for Natalie to make her opening offer, coffee, tea—unless she fell apart first.
“Ms. Miller?” Rufus said, meeting her eyes as she jerked her head up. “May I use your restroom?”
“Oh. Yes, of course. It’s the first door down the hall,” she said, pointing to the right.
Rufus stood and walked out of the room without making a sound.
Natalie glanced at Sam once the bathroom door had shut. “Would you like something to drink? I don’t have coffee. It’s not good for you. But some herbal tea, maybe? Or water?”
“Water would be fine,” Sam said. Some of what was going to happen next was strategy. And some was intuition. And some was totally predictable. But a big part was conditioning: get her saying yes, answering the little questions, so it all seemed natural. When Natalie came back with a water in a cardboard box like that milk they used to sell in the school cafeteria, Sam struggled not to roll his eyes. The damn thing probably cost more than the lunch he’d just bought Rufus.
“What was the nature of your relationship with Mr. Brower?” Sam asked, pulling out his phone and pretending to type, as though taking notes.
“Our relationship?” Natalie took a seat in an overstuffed chair directly across from the couch and crossed her legs at the ankles. “I suppose you’re asking everyone close to him…. Jake and I are—were dating. A little over a year.”
Over her shoulder, Sam spotted Rufus slipping out of the bathroom and heading away from the conversation. Sam focused on giving Natalie a smile, just business, you know how it is. It wasn’t as easy as he’d thought. A little over a year. Images flicked through his head, a carousel of all the precious fucking moments Jake had spent with her: holding hands at the Alice statue in Central Park, gelato in Midtown, kissing at a rooftop bar while the city glowed like flecks of mica on a black beach. Sam could hear himself, hear how casual he’d tried to make it sound to Rufus: We fucked around. Then, vividly, punching the breath from his lungs, Natalie on her back and Jake driving into her.
“That’s right,”