Early evening, a discreet restaurant on the waterfront, glass windows overlooking the open water, darkness and distant lights. It was six-thirty precisely. Miriam nervously adjusted her bra strap and shivered, then marched up to the front desk.
“Can I help you?” asked the concierge.
“Yes.” She smiled. “I’m Miriam Beckstein. Party of two. I believe the person I’m expecting will already be here. Name of Lofstrom.”
“Ah, just a moment—yes, please go in. He’s at a window table, if you’d just come this way—”
Miriam went inside the half-deserted restaurant, still filling up with an upmarket after-work crowd, and headed for the back. After weeks in New Britain she felt oddly exposed in a black minidress and tux jacket, but nobody here gave her a second glance. “Roland?”
He’d been studying the menu, but now he rocketed to his feet, confusion in his face. “Miriam—” He remembered to put the menu down. “Oh. You’re just—”
“Sit down,” she said, not unkindly. “I don’t want you to offer me a seat or hold doors open when it’s easier for me to do it myself.”
“Uh.” He sat, looking slightly flustered. She felt a sudden surge of desire. He was in evening dress, like the first time. Together they probably looked as if they were heading for a night at the opera. A couple.
“It’s been how long?” she asked.
“Four weeks and three days,” he said promptly. “Want the number of hours, too?”
“That would be—” She stopped and looked at the waiter who’d just materialized at her elbow. “Yes?”
“Would sir et madame care to view the wine list?” he asked stuffily.
“You go ahead,” she told Roland.
“Certainly. We’ll have the Chateau Lafitte ’93, please,” he said without pause. The waiter scurried away.
“Come here often?” she asked, amused despite her better judgment.
“A wise man said, when you’re planning a campaign, preparation is everything.” He grinned wryly.
“Are we safe here?” she asked. “Really?”
“Hmm.” His smile slipped. “Angbard sent a message. Your house appears to be clear, but it might be a bad idea to sleep over there. It’s not doppelgängered, and even if it was, he couldn’t vouch for its security. Apart from that—” He looked at her significantly. “I made sure nobody back at the office knows where I am tonight. And I wasn’t tailed here.”
The wine arrived, as did the waiter. They spent a minute bickering good-naturedly over the relative merits of a warming chowder against the chef’s way with garlic mushrooms. “What has Angbard got you doing?” she asked.
“Well.” He looked ruefully out of the window. “After our last meeting it was like you’d thrown a hornet’s nest through his window. Everybody got to walk around downtown Cambridge in the snow, looking for a missing old lady in a powered wheelchair, you know? I ended up spending a week spying on a private security firm we’d hired. Didn’t find much except a few padded expenses claims. Then Angbard quietly started shuffling people around—again, nothing turned up except a couple of guards on the take. So then he put me back on regular courier duty in the post room, with a guard assignment or two on the side, moved himself to a high-rise in New York—real estate above the thirtieth floor is going cheap these days—left Matthias running Fort Lofstrom and Angus in Karlshaven, and declared that the search for your foster-mother couldn’t go on any longer. Uh, he figured we weren’t going to find anything new after that much time. Well.” He shrugged. “I can’t tell you any specifics about my current assignments, but his lordship told me that if you got in touch, I was to—” He paused.
“I think I can guess,” she said dryly.
“No, I promise! Angbard doesn’t know about us,” he said firmly. “He thinks we’re just friends.”
The appetizers arrived. Miriam took a sip of her chowder. The news about the hunt for Iris depressed her, but came as no real surprise. “Angbard. Does not know. That we, uh, you know.” Somehow the thought made her feel free and sinful, harboring personal secrets—as well as strategic information about the third universe—that the all-powerful intelligence head didn’t. She paused for a moment and studied the top of his head, trying to memorize every hair.
“I never told him,” Roland said, putting down his soup spoon. “Did you think I would?”
“You can keep secrets when it suits you,” Miriam noted.
He looked up. “I am an obedient servant to your best interests,” he said quietly. “If Angbard finds out he’ll kill us. If you want me to apologize for not giving him grounds to kill us, I apologize.”
She met his eyes. “Apology noted.” Then she went back to her soup. It was deliciously fresh and lightly seasoned, and Miriam luxuriated in it. She stretched out her legs, and nearly spilled soup everywhere as she found his ankle rubbing against hers. Or was it the other way around? It didn’t matter. Nearly two months of lonely nights was coming to the boil. “What would you do for me?” she whispered to him over the remains of the appetizer.
“Anything.” He met her eyes. “Almost anything.”
“Well, I’d like that. Tonight. On one condition.” The waiter removed their bowls, discreetly avoiding the line of sight between them—obviously couples behaving this way were a well-understood phenomenon in his line of work.
“What?”
“Don’t, whatever you do, talk about tomorrow,” she said.
“Okay. I promise.” And it was that simple. He surrendered before the main course, a sirloin steak for him and a salmon cutlet for her, and Miriam felt something tight unwind inside her, a subliminal humming tension that had been building up for what felt like forever. She barely tasted the food or noticed as they finished the bottle of wine. He paid, but she paid no attention to that, either. “Where to?” he asked.
“Do you still have an apartment here?” she replied.
“Yes.” She heard the little catch in his throat.
“Is it safe? You’re sure nobody’s, uh—”
“I sleep there. No booby traps. Do you want to—”
“Yes.” She knew it was a bad idea, but she didn’t care about that—at least, not right now. What she cared about, as she pulled her jacket on and allowed him to take her arm, was the warmth at the base of her spine and the sure knowledge that she could count on tonight. All the tomorrows could take their chances.
He drove carefully, back to his apartment in a warehouse redevelopment not far from the restaurant. Miriam leaned back, watching him sidelong from the passenger seat of the Jaguar. “This is it,” he said, pulling into the underground garage. “Are you sure?” he asked, turning off the engine.
She leaned forward and bit his lower lip, gently.
“Ow—” Their mouths met. “Not here,” he panted.
“Okay. Upstairs.”
They worked their way into the elevator without getting too disheveled. It stopped on a neat landing with three doors. Roland freed up a hand to unlock one, and punched a code into a beeping alarm system. Then they were inside. He locked the door, put a chain across it, then bolted it—and she tackled him.
“Not here!”
“Where, then?”
“There!” He pointed through an open door into the living room, dimly lit by an old seventies lava lamp that shed moving patterns of orange and red light across a sofa facing the uncurtained window.
“That’ll do.” She dragged him over, and they collapsed onto the sofa. He was ready for her, and it was all Miriam could do to force herself to unwrap a condom before she launched herself at him. There was no time to pull off his clothes. She straddled him, felt his hands working under her dress, and then she was—