boomed, and her shoulders stiffened when he broke her reverie. “If you can believe it, I’ve been ransacking this place the whole time.” She didn’t turn around, but he kept prattling on. “We’ve got some great choices. A couple of my favorites, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, or we could go full throwback geek and watch War Games. I feel like I can guess your choice. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you watched a 1980’s Matthew Broderick pretend to be a hacker.”
Trey flipped a VHS tape in his right hand, feeling beyond happy and comfortable, until he saw Claudia spin around in her chair, the computer monitor glowing behind her in haunting backlight. Her sweet, young face was burning with a rage he’d never seen before.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” she demanded, standing and immediately planting her hands on her hips. She stepped aside and Trey’s mouth went dry at the sight of himself in grainy black and white, meeting with David the night he died. “Take your time and have a look. I’ve watched it a few times already, but I’m sure you’ll want some time to make up an excuse.” He opened his mouth to speak, but for once, he had nothing to say. “Oh, no quick and witty comeback this time?” she challenged. “You’re seriously going to play dumb right now?”
“How? I mean…”
“That’s the best you can do? Fine. I hacked into the federal prison’s surveillance. I figured I could make a little headway on figuring out who killed David. And what do you know? There you are.”
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“Wow. A blessed savant such as yourself, I thought you would be smart enough not to insult my intelligence.”
“Come on, calm down. You don’t need to worry about that…”
“Oh, I don’t? So you get to run every part of my life, is that it? I’m just supposed to trust you? You get to have all the information and I sit here in the dark, like an idiot? I get to fall in love with you while you control the world and call all the shots?” she demanded, tears welling in her eyes.
“You’re falling in love with me?” he questioned, though his voice was a hoarse whisper.
She tugged at the edge of her sleeves and averted her eyes from his.
“Stop trying to deflect me from what you’ve done. Do you know what a federal agent will think when they see this?”
“A ‘federal agent,’ or you?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“You know what matters to me — that you stop playing with me, because none of this is a game to me. Don’t you get that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Really? Because if you did, you wouldn’t do this…you wouldn’t keep lying to me and hiding things from me…like…like I don’t matter.”
“Fuck! How come you don’t get it? I did all of this because you matter too much to me. I fell in love with you even before I met you. I figured out you were following up on that ridiculous lead. I saw your picture and I was toast. You were so beautiful and brave and brilliant.”
“And you thought that was what? Bad? Loving me? Respecting me?”
“Christ, no! It’s not that I didn’t want to love you. I knew that was a given. I didn’t want you to love me!”
Claudia reached for him, and held his face in her hands. She looked so small, delicate, yet at once strong as steel. The effect was hypnotic. He could tell she felt like him — as though they’d survived a car crash and were blood drunk on residual adrenaline and fear.
Trey took her hands in his and kissed each palm, bringing a smile to her face, before letting her go.
Claudia rubbed her forehead with her thumb and index finger and stared at the lake for a few torturous moments. She shook for a moment, almost like a sob, and rested her forehead on the wall of windows.
Without looking at him, she pleaded, “Why did you sneak away to see him?”
“I met with David all the time. What’s the big deal?”
She spun on him, and he barely recognized the icy face of resolve she brought.
“Damn it, Trey. It’s a very big deal. You have to realize how bad this looks.”
“I’ve got this, Claudia.”
She stalked toward him.
“No…you…don’t. And the best thing you can do for the both of us is to accept that. My boss is an idiot. And he hates you. Do the math. This means I