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That came out of nowhere and I started feeling the same anger that was motivating her manic kitchen cleaning.

She dried her hands with a striped dishcloth and turned. “You should have called me. We should have made this decision together.”

“There wasn’t time.”

“Why not?” Her tone was sharp. “Did he have an arrest warrant?”

I struggled to find a response. She was right, of course.

I said, “I couldn’t let him throw you to the wolves.”

She smiled with cutting false sweetness. “Aren’t you the white knight?”

Everybody has an interior jerk. Mine was about to lash back but I stopped it. For a long time the house enclosed us in a tense quiet.

She made a lithe move across the room and I stepped aside. When I followed, I found her sitting on the wide starting step. The staircase led to a door, then a walkway that spanned the interior courtyard to the garage apartment. She put her head in her hands. I touched her shoulder.

“And you’re a deputy sheriff again. Working for this racist pig.”

“It won’t last,” I said. “I wanted to buy time.”

She turned her shoulder to avoid my hand. I sat in the leather chair and pressed ahead.

“We need to talk to a lawyer. This is serious stuff, Lindsey. I’m worried.”

When she spoke again, the sarcasm was gone. “I was loaned out to an interagency unit, CIA, NSC, DIA, that’s the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

She looked up. “Did you think I was in D.C. dealing with Nigerian email scams? My God, you’re naïve.”

“I guess so. You told me it was a temporary job at Homeland Security.”

“Look, Chinese hackers got a bunch of information on the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35, by penetrating a British contractor. That’s not news. You can find stories about this on the Web, at least the defense press.”

“So you don’t have to kill me if you tell me?”

She didn’t laugh and I regretted interrupting.

After a moment, she continued. “The efforts to steal information didn’t stop there. Our job was to find out who were the bad guys, how big the breach was-what had they learned? Then the task was trying to feed them false information, flawed design elements. I also created a back door into their network and a malware bug that would have rocked their world, but they wouldn’t let me use it. Said it was shot down by the White House.”

I wasn’t surprised her work would attract attention in high places. She was so damned smart and good at what she did.

She sighed. “The damage was much worse than the brass feared. They stole design elements and critical systems information involving not only the F-35 but the F-22.”

“Did you find out who they were?”

“Unit 61398. No surprise, probably.”

When she saw the My-God-you’re-naïve expression on my face, she explained.

“It’s one of the most important hacking groups of The People’s Liberation Army. The Internet is a battlefield.”

I let out a long breath.

“So why would Melton have his story backward? Why did he say I needed to buy you some time because you had given the Chinese information?”

“Because he’s evil. Because he’s using you!” Her shoulders stiffened and she used both hands to whip back her hair. She stood and walked past me to the picture window, staring out on Cypress Street.

She whispered, “My God, you believe him!”

“I do not.” I said it forcefully. And I meant it.

I stood up and embraced her from behind. She pulled away.

“Part of you believed him when he was telling you about…whatever he told you went on with me in Washington. I could see it in your face, Dave. I know you.”

This is where I should have stopped it. Diffuse the situation. Go to bed, safe in our cocoon, you and me against the world, babe. But the alcohol truth serum was still in my bloodstream.

I said quietly, “Maybe he was misinformed. When you came home, you told me that your security clearance had been revoked and they confiscated your laptop. Can’t you understand why I was concerned after what Melton said? Somebody could be out to get you. Blame you for something that went wrong. I’m not so naïve that I don’t know how shit rolls downhill in government agencies.”

“You don’t know anything,” she said, her voice rising uncharacteristically. “Jesus, David…”

It was the first time I could recall her ever using my full given name.

“Lindsey, please sit down. Let’s work this out together. I only mention the security clearance because…”

“Oh, now you want to work it out together. Why didn’t you tell Meltdown to stick it and come home so we could work it out together then? But, no, you believed what he told you about me and you rolled over like a coward. Where else do you think I’m a liar?”

“Hang on.”

“Fuck you, David! You were screwing my sister right in our home.” She shook her head. “You must have felt like quite the stud.”

I slowly shook my head. “It wasn’t like that.”

She dropped to her haunches and stared at me.

“Really? Tell me what it was like? Tell me everything. All the details. What it felt like. Then tell me what it felt like when Robin died.”

I turned away from her glare, felt my cheeks burning.

“It felt like hell.”

There was no avoiding it.

Robin. Lindsey’s half-sister was a curator for the art collection of a rich man in Paradise Valley. The job went away with the real-estate collapse, when his empire proved to be built on nothing but debt and promises, and he used a revolver to blow his brains all over a Frida Kahlo original hanging in his living room.

The collection went to his creditors and Lindsey insisted Robin move into the garage apartment.

Then a family tragedy estranged us and Lindsey fled to D.C. For months, I was sure I had lost her.

Robin. She was a fairly close match for the actress Robin Wright with long hair, when she was younger and not anorexic. But this Robin had no glamour. She was a storm child. She always called her older sister by her first and middle names, Lindsey Faith.

There was no excusing my part in what happened next, not Robin’s aggressiveness, not the fact that Lindsey insisted she stay here, rebuffing my suggestion that Robin move.

Robin and I happened.

Whatever Lindsey did in her personal life during those months, I had no right to whine or pry. I had never judged her.

My offenses became unpardonable the night that Robin and I were in the backyard and she took a bullet intended for me. She died in my arms. The vengeance I took, on that last case as a deputy sheriff, didn’t bring her back. For a time, I wondered if Lindsey would leave me, not for having an affair with Robin but for losing her.

Now I said, “Every day, I wish that bullet had hit me.” My voice was too loud.

She sprang up and turned away. “Oh, please, quit feeling sorry for yourself. You did what you did, feeling like the big stud. Now you have the balls to question my integrity? To believe that badged ego telling you I’m a traitor!”

“I don’t believe it!”

“She loved you.”

“What?”

“Are you a stupid person, David? Did you not hear what I said? Robin fell in love with you. She told me. I thought I’d lost you.”

“You would barely take my phone calls then,” I said. “This is not about Robin. This is about whatever it is that Melton thinks he knows and how it could hurt us.”

“It hurt us that you believed him.”

“I don’t!”

She muttered another profanity and strode across the hardwood floor to the desk, opened a drawer, and produced her blue pack of Gauloises Blondes cigarettes and lighter. Some people smoke after a meal or sex. Lindsey mostly smoked when she was under great stress.

She said, “I don’t have to explain myself…”

“I didn’t ask you to. I’m not the enemy.”

“Then why are you willing to lie down with the devil!”