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Wes had his phone pulled out of his pocket before he’d shut the truck door behind him, and it took everything in him not to

dial as he jumped over icy patches on the sidewalk. By the time he reached the porch, he was calling Phil’s number, even as

he turned back and waved goodbye to Addie with a smile on his face as if he had all the time in the world and nothing was

more important in that moment than her.

Well, that much was true, at least.

He crossed the threshold into the inn and lifted his phone to his ear as the ringing began.

“How was homecoming?” It was Jo’s voice that he heard first, causing him to end the call on his phone just as Phil said, “Hello.”

“Were you crowned king?”

Of course she knew the four of them had had dinner together. He hadn’t known it was going to happen, but of course Jo knew.

“Nah. Cole got it again.” He clicked the side of his phone to silence the buzz of Phil calling back. “Well, good night, Jo.”

He took three large, quick steps toward the staircase and couldn’t help but roll his eyes when she stopped him.

“Hang on, now. Just a minute. What’s your hurry? Aren’t you going to tell me how it went?”

“It was good, I think. It was good to see them. Good night.”

“Wesley Hobbes, you stop right there.” It would have been funny if it hadn’t been, at that particular moment, so frustrating

that he wanted to scream.

“I’m sorry, Jo. I’m not trying to be rude, and I’m happy to tell you all about it, but I have a really important phone call

to make. Can we talk in the morning?”

“Of course.” She stood from the couch and looked up at him from the base of the stairs. “I just thought you might like to

know that Fenton Norris spotted you and Addie outside of Cole’s restaurant and mentioned it to Doc when he saw him at Cassidy’s.”

She yawned then—the most forced yawn he’d ever seen in his life, and he’d sat through more than his fair share of State of

the Union addresses. “Well, sleep tight.” Then she headed toward the kitchen, no doubt expecting him to follow her.

That was definitely a situation that was going to need to be dealt with, but at the moment it was far from the most pressing.

“You, too, Jo. Good night!”

Then he took the steps two at a time, dialed Phil back, and hoped he could at least get through the call before Doc Atwater

showed up at his door to finally chew him out for breaking his little girl’s heart.

***

“Whose voice was that a minute ago? Was that Secretary Hubbard? You’re not still at the State House, are you?”

“Phil, listen. I need you to do something for me.” Wes stepped inside his room and shut the door behind him. “I need you to

call Heather—”

“Heather?”

“Yeah. Heather McCord. Deputy staff director for Intelligence.”

“As in the agency or—”

Wes groaned and kicked off his shoes. “No. Senate Intelligence Committee. I need her to send me the archives on Operation

VE Ladder so I can check on something involving an old friend.”

Phil was calm. Too calm for Wes’s liking, considering he wanted results in his inbox immediately. “And what exactly is Operation

VE Ladder?”

“It’s classified is what it is. Just call Heather.”

Wes knew how much Phil hated being kept out of the loop on anything. And since the general belief was that they were only

one more election away from both having top-secret clearance, Phil’s desire for insider knowledge continued to grow. As the

chief of staff, Phil would never be told that anything was off-limits ever again. But they weren’t there yet. They were never going to be there. And even if he could have talked with Phil about this one, he wouldn’t have.

But he was hoping against hope that he was allowed to talk about Operation VE Ladder with Addie. She almost certainly hadn’t

had the security clearance necessary for him to unpack the operation dossier with her like they were both members of the Intelligence

Community Book Club, but she’d been briefed. To some extent, as Joel Elwyn’s widow, she must have been briefed. He needed

to find out what she knew so that he knew what he could say.

“Addie... I know.”

He’d been trying to figure out how he knew the name since she’d first corrected him that morning—“ It’s Elwyn now, actually ”—when she rescued him from the ditch on Banyon.

Was that only this morning? Was it possible that the reintroduction of Addie Atwater into his life had actually slowed down the speed of Earth’s daily

rotation? He’d certainly always assumed that if he ever showed his face in Adelaide Springs again, it would result in a cataclysmic,

apocalyptic event. So, maybe. Then again, no matter how long the day had seemed, the moments he’d spent in her presence had

passed far too quickly, so he wasn’t going to alert the authorities that the end of the world was in sight just yet.

By the time she’d revealed Joel’s first name that afternoon, there in his room at the inn, it had been driving him nuts.

The low-key sort of nuts where it doesn’t completely consume you.

There’s just a slow and steady mental audit of every person you’ve ever met happening way off in the background of your mind.

When she’d said they had lived in Bethesda, the mental Rolodex was put back in storage for the time being.

For one thing, that satisfied his general knowledge, if not his specific knowledge.

They were in DC. He could have stood behind him at the dry cleaner, or “Elwyn, party of two,” might have been said just before “Hobbes” at a restaurant.

And that, of course, was where he got distracted and stopped caring so much about where he’d heard the name. She’d been right

there, in the same metro area, and he’d never known it. Had he ever stood behind her at the dry cleaner?

Although, come to think of it, when was the last time he took his own clothes to the dry cleaner?

But it had all clicked into place so quickly right there at the end. Not when she told him Joel was CIA too—though he really

should have known then—but in that last moment of beautiful vulnerability, when she’d said his entire name. A name he had

heard countless times and seen in print even more throughout weeks of closed hearings of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He took his responsibility seriously, and he’d mourned the loss of American life, of course. But the disaster that was Operation

VE Ladder had added countless nonnegotiable appointments to his calendar at a time when he wanted to be devoting his time

and attention to Wray’s recovery. He’d resented the hearings at the time. There was no doubt about it.

But in the amount of time it took Addie to utter the three syllables of Joel Elwyn’s name, he understood. Wes understood that

while he was no doubt responsible for far too many of Addie’s scars, he might actually be able to bring just a little bit

of healing to the gaping wound he hadn’t caused but that was on display right in front of him.

“It’s twelve thirty in the morning on a Sunday. Obviously no one will be in the office until—”

“Call her at home, Phil.”

“I don’t have this woman’s home number—”

“So find it.” Wes was Phil’s boss, of course, but their dynamic wasn’t as simple as that either. How could it be, considering

Phil had been a high-ranking member of the power-playing DC politico network while Wes’s acne was still clearing up? He squeezed

the bridge of his nose and sat on the edge of the bed with a soft sigh. “Find it, and I’ll call in to Press the Nation in the morning.”

“See? That’s how this works. Something for you, something for me, everyone’s happy. I’ll make sure she has it to you within

the hour.”

Wes sighed and lay back on the bed. “I have to talk to Herbie Eccleston at 6:00 a.m., Phil. Not everyone is happy. But thanks.”

“Five.”

“Sorry?”

“ Press the Nation is on at eight, so that will be five for you in California.”

You’re getting sloppy, Wes. You have to do better than that.

Wes felt as if he could audibly hear the angel on his shoulder whispering, “ Or you could stop lying about being in Pacific time instead of mountain time, confess what you’re doing and why you’re doing

it, and let Phil and everyone else on your staff—not to mention 98 percent of the voters, or whatever ridiculous number the

polls currently have you at—find another candidate to back before you wind up starting your inauguration speech with the words,

‘My fellow Americans, I’ve been meaning to tell you...’”

“Right. Five.”

“You’ll make old Herbie’s week, that’s for sure.” Phil was quiet for a moment before asking, “An actual old friend or a political

asset?”

“I wouldn’t consider Herbie much of either.”

“No, I mean whoever’s mixed up in the operation.”

“Oh. An actual old friend. An ex.” He punched the mattress as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

He’d given just a little too much there, and he knew it.

“So anyway, have her send it as encrypted as it needs to be, of course. The sooner the better. Thanks, Phil. And send me the details for Press the Nation —”

“An ex? Since when do you have exes?”

“You’re such an idiot ,” the devil and angel on his shoulders seethed in unison.

“I have exes.”

“You have an ex , I’m pretty sure. Singular.”

“That’s not true.” It sort of was. “I mean, serious exes, sure, but I dated other women.” Two first dates at Yale before Wray

showed up, thank you very much. “Plenty of women.” He was almost positive he’d gone to dinner with some third woman in grad

school, though he couldn’t remember her name. And there may have been a group of them at dinner, actually. “Anyway, enough.

I’m done talking about this.”

Oh yeah. It was a study group. And the third woman was a sixty-year-old doctoral candidate named Mrs. Stanley Livengood.

The truth was, he had “dated” more women during the early years of his marriage than he had in all the years prior. Wray always

told him he had a free pass for life, as long as he never got caught, and he took advantage of that pass for the first few

years, when he was still young and stupid enough to enjoy the danger that accompanied his end of that bargain. He never did

get caught, but he tired of the risk.

He also, somewhere along the way, realized it just wasn’t how he was wired. He knew there were probably a lot of people out

there who enjoyed dating (or whatever the kids were calling it these days) for the sake of dating (or whatever the kids were

calling it). But that wasn’t him. What was the point if it could never lead anywhere? Worse, what if he did accidentally fall

in love with some woman along the way? Someone who was never meant to do anything more than fill the void that existed between

the love of his life and his wife. And then, at some point, he just completely lost interest. In all of it. He cared about

Wray. He cared about the White House. He cared about making the governor proud of him.

Good enough.

“Let me ask you something.” Phil adopted what Wes had long ago come to understand was his “fatherly” tone of voice. “You’d

tell me if there was anything I needed to worry about, right?”

Clearly not.

“Of course. Thanks, Phil. We’ll talk in the morning.”