“Can’t say. I’ve never met him.”
Eamon looked at us.
“I’m sure he’s lovely,” I added.
Wiley capped his pen. The sound was small and hard.”My husband is at the apartment.”
Eamon’s thumb stopped moving across the screen. “Can he be free this afternoon?”
“He teaches until three.”
“Have him pack a bag for both of you. We’ll send someone to bring him to the new location once Michael clears it.”
Wiley folded his hands in his lap. “He’ll have questions.”
“He’s allowed to. Tell him what you can. Tell him the rest when you see him.”
“And if he doesn’t want to come?”
“Then we figure out something else. We don’t separate people from their lives when we protect them. That’s not how we work.”
Wiley wasn’t done. “But you separate them from their homes?”
Eamon didn’t budge. “Your apartment is no longer considered secure.”
“You don’t know that it isn’t.”
“We don’t know that it is.”
Wiley’s jaw tensed. I stepped between them before either man could decide winning the sentence mattered. “We’re not solving your apartment’s status from the eighteenth floor.”
Eamon’s phone buzzed. He glanced down. “Take the service elevator down. Exit on foot and cut west. “
“No car?” Wiley asked.
“No car. I don’t want two protected reporters leaving the same place the same way ten minutes apart.”
I nodded. “Good reasoning.”
Eamon looked at me. “Necessary improvisation only.”
“Sure.”
I opened the suite door and stepped into the hall first.
The corridor was quiet. Its carpet was thick enough to muffle footsteps. Somewhere behind a door, a television murmured through weather coverage. The housekeeping cart still sat at the far end with towels, spray bottles, folded sheets, and one trash bag tied in a neat knot.
Wiley came out behind me and paused with his hand near his coat pocket.
“No phone,” I said.
“I wasn’t—“
“You were.”
The service elevator was already waiting when we reached it; the call light was steady. It was Eamon’s work, or someone Eamon had called.
Wiley faced forward, shoulders slightly hunched under his coat. His unruly hair fell forward.