At Any Cost Read Free Page A

bristled at the formality. “Why are you calling me ‘ma’am’?”
    â€œProtocol.”
    Of course. Protocol. The system people relied on when they could not be themselves.
    She sat down to wait. Tom sat across from her. He periodically glanced beyond her forehead to the door, or the large side windows, but otherwise he seemed perfectly content in the silence.
    His calmness had to be a facade. There was no way he wasn’t acutely aware of the shared past that lay between them, the questions that were circling around her head like a cartoon corona.
    Well, she wasn’t going to be the one to mention Paxos. She had moved on. She’d finished law school, found a real job, made a life for herself. She barely recognized the bohemian yoga hippie she’d been, wandering through Europe with no thought to the future. It was embarrassing, really, recalling how utterly stupid she’d been back then.
    She was smarter now. Certainly sharp enough to play this cool.
    Fallon took a sip of the pumpkin spice latte and used the opportunity to study Tom again. He seemed like an abstract concept, a miracle and a curse at the same time, sitting in front of her. Within nose-punching distance.
    That was probably not an idea she wanted to pursue.
    â€œAntoine Campbell sounded really upset. I hope he’s okay,” Fallon said.
    â€œMaybe he’s stuck in traffic,” Tom suggested.
    True, traffic on the Beltway might be heavy; it often was, even in the middle of the afternoon.
    She wanted to ask how he was doing, or what he was doing, but those questions would be ridiculous. They would only emphasize how strange this whole arrangement was—how utterly artificial they were being with each other, as if they’d never met before.
    She realized with dismay that she hoped he might give her some kind of small, private signal that he remembered their shared past in Greece and he respected their time together. But when her gaze once again met his, she saw only cool, vast, imperturbable nothingness. Pristine Siberian wilderness.
    He was blocking her out intentionally. She recognized the blankness as a defense. Once, she’d been able to vault past it, to the impossibly sweet, generous, gentle man inside. There was no sign of that guy today and never would be again.
    The logical lawyer side of her personality insisted she should despise him after the way he left her. But she hadn’t loved him logically. She’d loved him passionately, with searing, aching intuition—all heart, no brains. Gwen Atwell, her best friend, would tell her she was an absolute fool, which was probably true.
    Jangling bells signaled the opening door and Fallon looked up, expecting Antoine Campbell. A curious old man with a sporty felt cap and a red muffler entered the shop with a stack of newspapers, bringing a gust of cold air in with him.
    â€œHow is your family?” Tom asked, surprising her with the personal question. “I hear your brother is keeping his agents pretty busy.”
    Fallon spontaneously smiled, touched that Tom mentioned Evan, her six-year-old autistic brother; he was the one person she could honestly say she loved unconditionally. “He’s amazing,” she said with more passion than she had intended. She was never much good at keeping her feelings a mystery. “Why, what have you heard?”
    â€œNot much. I’ve heard he goes to the Air and Space Museum every day.”
    Evan was fascinated with airplanes and math. The Air and Space Museum was one of the only places he would talk. It was like he could relate to people only through airplanes. Fallon tried to juggle her weekend schedule so she was at the office in the evening through the night so she her days were free to take him to the museum. She knew her parents wouldn’t do it, and it was important for the boy to actually spend some time with family instead of Secret Service agents, babysitters, special needs