Page 195 of Whisper

Did David even want to be found?

What did it mean that he was a widower but his husband was alive? And not with him?

He turned the key in his lock, shouldering open the door. He wanted to crawl into bed and wake up yesterday, before all this happened. He’d go to any other bar, any other place. Not see David. He’d go straight to Dan’s.

No, he wouldn’t.

He didn’t know what he’d do.

Eyes closed, he slipped into his unit and shut the door, leaned back against it.

“Hi.”

His eyes flew open. His heart stopped, his lungs. His fingers scrabbled at the door behind him.

David sat on his couch.

Blinking, Kris looked from him to the door and back. He’d locked it. Of course he had. He always locked his door. He’d just unlocked it, for fuck’s sake. He lived in a secured building. No one was supposed to break in, ever. Certainly not his not-dead husband who didn’t know where the fuck he lived.

“I looked you up. When I got here. I thought I would go visit your grave.” David looked away, to the empty white wall opposite Kris’s couch. “When I found out you were alive, I drove out to the house. But… You sold it.”

“Do you think I’d really live there? Without you?”

David swallowed. Kris watched the rise and fall of his throat, the movement of his Adam’s apple. “I tracked you down. Property records. Found out you bought this place. There are two parking spots per unit. I found my truck in one.”

This wasn’t happening. Kris’s fingernails scraped over the door, the only sound in the studio between David’s soft words.

“I waited until you showed up. And then…”

“You’ve beenfollowingme?” Had he watched his unit, watched when Kris had come home the day before? And then followed him to Langley, then out to the bar? “You followed me to the bar last night?”

“I just wanted to see your face,” David whispered. “Even in all my memories, every dream I had of you, nothing compares to the reality of you. I couldn’t ever remember you perfectly. Not the way you actually are. All your perfections, all your subtleties. The exact curve of your smile. The angle of your jaw. I just wanted to see you again.”

“What the fuck did you think was going to happen?”

“I didn’t think.” Finally, David looked at Kris. His eyes were fireballs, stars blazing in the dim light of his unit, the setting sun over the Capitol casting shadows over everything, excepthim. “I thought you were dead. You, alive… I never thought it was possible you could have lived.”

“Inever thought it was possibleyoulived.” Kris ripped David’s autopsy from his laptop bag and flung it across the apartment. Papers fluttered, landing upside down on the carpet in front of David. “This is how youdied.”

“It wasn’t me they burned,” David whispered. “The son of the internet café owner. They took him, as collateral. He—”

Silence. Kris heard David breathe, heard the squeak of his leather couch as David shifted.

“How did you get here? You’re dead. You couldn’t have made it through customs.”

“You know as well as I do there are a hundred different ways to enter the US under the radar.”

“Smugglers? Through Mexico? Canada?”

“By boat.”

Kris nodded slowly. Licked his lips. “Which means you’ve been in contact with civilization. Phones. Emails. US Embassies. You didn’t think atanytime to try and reach out? To the CIA? Tome?”

“I thought you were dead.”

“You keepsayingthat—”

“Without you, there was no point in coming back! To the world, to the CIA, to anything.”