Chapter 26

"Do you mind walking?" Thomas asked. "It's not far — ten minutes, maybe. But I'm happy to grab a taxi if you'd rather."

They stood on the sidewalk outside her building, the evening cool enough for a jacket, the city humming around them. McGee looked at him — really looked, the way she hadn't let herself at the door with Hannah watching — and thought about the green dress and the wine and the hour of nerves.

"I don't mind," she said. "I like walking."

"Good." He offered his arm again, and she took it, and they fell into step like they'd done it a hundred times.

The restaurant was the way he'd promised: small, candlelit, the kind of place with no sign out front because it didn't need one. The host knew him by name, which McGee filed away — he's been here before, he comes to places like this — and then forgot, because Thomas pulled out her chair and the menu was in her hands and everything smelled like garlic and butter.

"What do you do," she said, "when you're not rescuing detectives from their own wardrobes?"

"Consulting," he said, which is what he always said, and she let it go the way she always did. "Boring things. Spreadsheets. You'd hate it."

"I like spreadsheets."

"You like solving things. Different animal." He poured her wine from the bottle he'd ordered without asking — red, the right one. "Tell me something I don't know about Marcene Summers."

She thought about it. "When I was nine I was going to be a veterinarian. I had it all planned — the office, the assistant, the little waiting room with the fish tank."

"What happened?"

"Life happened. I got older and realized I wanted to fix bigger animals." She smiled. "My sister still tells people I was going to be a vet. She's very disappointed in how I turned out."

"The sister with the blind dates."

"Leslie. Last month it was a magician. Not a hobbyist — a professional. He did card tricks at the table."

Thomas laughed — real laughter, head back — and McGee felt something warm spread through her chest. "Tell me you stayed."

"I stayed for dessert. The tiramisu was worth the humiliation." She twirled her glass. "Your turn. Something I don't know about Thomas —" She stopped. Realized she didn't know his last name. "I don't actually know your last name."

"Wells," he said easily. "Thomas Wells. Nothing interesting, I'm afraid." He refilled her glass. "Tell me why you became a cop instead. The real reason, not the academy-essay one."

She looked at him for a moment, deciding how honest to be. The candles made his eyes hard to read.

"My father," she said finally, "was the kind of man who thought rules were load-bearing. Take one out and the whole building falls." She paused. "I watched people take them out, one after another, and nothing fell. Not for them. Just for everyone underneath."

"So you became the building inspector."

"Something like that." She drank. "Your turn again. Fair's fair."

He was quiet for a moment, turning his own glass. When he spoke, his voice had lost a little of its lightness.

"My father believed the same thing yours did. Maybe more." A small smile, not quite reaching his eyes. "The law was — it was everything to him. Not a job. A faith."

"What did he do?"

"It doesn't matter." Thomas looked at the candle between them. "What matters is he was right to believe it and it didn't save him. A man with money did something terrible, and the system —" He stopped. Started again. "I lost my father years ago."

McGee reached across the table before she thought about it and put her hand over his. "I'm sorry."

"Thank you." He turned his hand over, laced his fingers through hers. "You asked what shaped me. That's the shape."

They didn't talk about it after that — not directly. But something had shifted, the way it does when two people trade real things. The rest of dinner was lighter and somehow deeper at once: the argument about whether pool was a sport ("It's geometry with refreshments"), his terrible impression of his old boss, her story about the academy instructor who'd made her cry and then apologized with donuts. Dessert — tiramisu, because she'd mentioned it — and coffee, and the candles burning low.

It was, she thought, the best date she'd had in years. Maybe ever.

The walk back was slower. His hand found hers halfway there and neither of them commented on it. At her building he stopped under the awning, and the city went quiet around them the way it does late at night, just traffic and far-off sirens and the two of them.

"Thank you," she said. "For tonight. All of it."

"Thank you," he said, "for the company," and then he kissed her.

It wasn't their first kiss — not even close — but it felt like one anyway, the way it does when something has changed underneath. His hand on her jaw, her fingers in his coat, the taste of coffee and wine. When they broke apart he rested his forehead against hers for a moment, and she could feel his breath, unsteady in a way Thomas never was.

"Goodnight, McGee," he murmured.

"Goodnight."

She went inside on legs that weren't entirely steady, and leaned against the closed door, and smiled at nothing.

Hannah's wine glasses were still in the sink. The green dress would need hanging up. The Fauwks file was still on the counter.

She didn't look at any of it. She just stood there smiling, a woman who'd had a wonderful night, and upstairs the city kept humming, and somewhere out there Thomas was walking away into it — thinking about his father.

Half a block down, out of the reach of her windows, his hand rose to his throat and adjusted a tie that wasn't there. No suit tonight. No tie at all. His fingers found the knot anyway — straightened it, smoothed it, let fall.

A twitch. A tick. The body remembering what the mind had put away.

He didn't notice. He just kept walking, thinking about his father.