Chapter 7: Separate Beds, Mr. Rudd

I lay still and listened to him lie to someone I could not hear.

"No," Ethan said into the phone. "Not until the quarter closes."

"Yes. I know what it costs."

He hung up and stood at the glass for a long minute, a dark outline against the city.

I closed my eyes and let him think I was asleep.

When he got back in bed, he kept to his own edge of it, with a hand's width of cold sheet between us.

Morning came gray and quiet.

I sat up with the blanket over my chest.

"Who was on the phone?"

He was already dressed, buttoning his cuff at the dresser.

"A client."

"At three in the morning."

"Some clients keep strange hours."

"What house, Ethan?"

He stopped with his fingers on a button.

"You said Margo still has the house," I said. "I heard you. Say it in the daylight."

"It's a security contract," he said evenly. "Her house is on my client's list. That's all it is."

It was the kind of answer that sounds complete until you look at it.

I looked at it.

I looked at the man who had held me down on this bed hours ago and called me by name against my throat.

He would not meet my eyes.

My chest went tight and cold.

"So that's it," I said. "You got what you wanted, and now we go back to the terms."

"Claire, I never..."

"No. It's fine. It's what we agreed." I pulled the sheet up. "Separate beds, Mr. Rudd."

He flinched.

It was small, and it was real.

"I'm not going to pretend last night was nothing," he said quietly.

"Then what was it?"

"I don't know yet."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only honest one I have."

I looked at him.

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