“No,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to suggest going in.”
“I was considering coffee. It’s public.”
“It’s predictable.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You looked at it like an apology.”
He turned to me. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’ve been here before and have feelings about it.”
His expression shifted slightly.
“Source?” I asked.
“No.”
“Wiley.”
“No,” he said again. Then, after a beat, “Not exactly.”
I waited.
He stared through the steamed-up glass. “A woman who worked records for a contractor connected to one of the shellcompanies met me there twice. She was scared and a little angry. She had a kid at Tufts and a brother with a gambling problem.”
“What happened?”
“She gave me enough to identify a pattern. Not enough to prove it.”
“And then?”
“She stopped coming.”
I looked at the café again, peering through the steamed-up windows. It had one front door and a back hallway that probably led to the bathrooms and a kitchen exit. Inside there were four tables, two of them occupied.
“Is she inside?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
His answer took half a second too long.
“Wiley.”
“I don’t know.”
I should have kept us moving. Dane would have kept us moving. He would have been right.
Wiley wasn’t looking at the café like a man chasing caffeine. He was looking at it like the past had left something on the table.
I stepped closer, enough that my shoulder almost touched his. “We do not enter because of a feeling.”