Page 107 of Cruel Kiss

I understand she wants to talk to me. I could ignore it. I have every right.

But I've got no fight left in me for Paula. That died at the gala. So when Hayden asks if he can go look at the big tree, and Isabella wanders after him still clutching her drawing, and I know Ronan has his eyes on both of them even from the treeline, I let Paula come to me.

She stops a few feet off. Like she's not sure she's allowed closer. Smart.

"Cali," she says. "I'm so sorry. I know I shouldn't be here. I just… I couldn't not come."

"Okay," I say numbly.

"I know what everyone's saying." Her eyes flick toward the treeline, where Ronan stands. "About him."

"I know what they're saying, too."

"Do you think—?" She stops. "Never mind. It's not my business. None of it was ever my business, and look what I did anyway."

I don't answer that. There's nothing to say to it that I haven't already said.

She wipes her face with the heel of her hand, smearing what's left of her makeup. "Cali, there's something I have to tell you. It's probably nothing. But it's been eating at me and I couldn't just not."

"What?"

"A few weeks ago, right after everything blew up…" She glances around like someone might be listening, and out here in this field full of graves, maybe someone is. "A man came to see me. He said he was a federal agent. He had a badge and everything, he showed it to me right up front. He asked me all about Todd. About how Todd met his lawyer. About you. About your—your company, and the software, whether I knew anything about what it did. He knew things, Cali. Things I never told anybody."

The cold that goes through me has nothing to do with the gloomy weather.

"What did he look like?"

"I don't know. Regular. Older. Gray hair. He had one of those faces you forget." She shakes her head. "I answered everything. I was so scared, I just answered everything. But then last week, when the actual FBI came to talk to me—a woman, Mercer—I mentioned him. I said, 'Your colleague already asked me all this.' And she looked at me like I'd grown a second head. She said nobody from her office had ever interviewed me. She checked. There's no record of it. The man who came to my house doesn't exist."

I stand very still.

Real feds and fake ones.I said that to myself weeks ago and I was righter than I knew.

"Paula," I say, "did he ask you anything about where Todd was? Where he was staying? Where he might go?"

She thinks. Her lip trembles. "He asked if Todd had family outside the city. If there was somewhere he'd go to lie low." She presses her hand over her mouth. "Oh, God. Cali. Did I?—?"

"No," I hurry to say. She doesn't deserve the merciful lie, but I give it to her anyway. "You didn't do anything. You answered a man with a badge. That's what people do."

I don't tell her that the man with the badge is almost certainly the reason Todd is in that coffin. She doesn't need to know that today. Maybe not ever.

She's crying harder now. "It wasn't supposed to be like this!" she wails. "Any of it. I lost everything, and now, Todd's—and it's all just?—"

"Paula." I put a hand on her arm. It surprises us both. "Go home. Take care of yourself. There's nothing here for you."

She nods. She looks like she wants to say more and can't find any of it. Then she turns and walks back the way she came, that coat swallowing her up, getting smaller and smaller across the field until the cars hide her.

Speaking of Mercer, I see her, too.

She's a long way off, near a mausoleum two rows over, swallowed up in a dark coat against the summer rain. She's not hiding, exactly. She's just keeping her distance, taking notes on the crowd.

The Bureau shows up to its cooperators' funerals, I guess. Todd was talking to them when he died, and that makes him theirs in some cold administrative way. In a strange way, it's almostkind of nice that they don't let their people go into the ground unwatched.

She catches me looking. She doesn't wave. She just tips her chin down, once, a small acknowledgment across all that green, and then goes back to watching the crowd.

I'll call her tomorrow.

Today, I've got a grave.