“We’re going to a wedding.”
I stared at him.
“Emma’s wedding is at four o’clock,” he said.
“The diner in Pittsburgh is forty minutes from the venue.
We attend the wedding.
We see Emma get married.
Then I go meet Victor.” He held my gaze.
“I promised my granddaughter I would be there.
I’m going to be there.”
Director Marsh looked like she wanted to argue.
She looked at my father’s face and didn’t.
“I’ll need two agents at the venue,” she said.
“Plainclothes,” Dad said.
“Emma doesn’t need federal agents at her wedding.”
“Agreed.”
“And nobody tells Emma any of this.”
“Agreed.”
He looked at me.
I hadn’t said anything.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m trying to decide,” I said, “whether I’m furious with you or proud of you.”
“You can be both,” he said.
“I’ve had forty years of practice being both things at once.”
The wedding was everything Emma had wanted.
The venue was a restored barn outside the city, strung with warm lights, smelling of cedar and early summer.
She walked down the aisle in a dress she’d bought with her own money and cried through her vows in the best possible way.
Dad sat in the front row and held my hand and didn’t cry, but his jaw was tight the whole time, and when Emma kissed her husband and turned to find him in the crowd, the look on his face was the most unguarded thing I had ever seen from him.
Afterward, at the reception, he danced one slow song with her.
She had to lean down slightly because of the height difference, and she rested her cheek against his temple, and he closed his eyes.
I watched from across the room.
At five-fifteen, he found me near the bar.
“It’s time,” he said.
We slipped out through a side door.
A dark sedan was waiting in the gravel lot.
Captain Reeves was behind the wheel.
Director Marsh was in the passenger seat.
I got in the back beside my father.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
The diner was called Patsy’s.
It sat on a corner in a part of Pittsburgh that hadn’t been renovated yet — a laundromat on one side, a shuttered hardware store on the other.
The neon P in the sign had burned out.
The parking lot had three cars in it.
Captain Reeves stayed with the car.
Director Marsh went in first, alone, to check the room.
She came back out two minutes later.
“He’s here,” she said.
“Back booth.
Ray is with him.”
Dad nodded.
He looked at me.
“You don’t have to come in,” he said.
“I know.”
I got out of the car.
The diner smelled like coffee and fried onions.
A woman behind the counter didn’t look up.
There were two other customers, both alone, both facing away from the back.
Director Marsh had chosen her entry point well.
Victor Hale was older than his photograph.
He was heavyset, as the image had shown, but what the security camera still hadn’t captured was how tired he looked.
Not sleepy.
Tired in the way of someone who has been carrying something for a very long time.
The man beside him — Ray Kowalski, I assumed — was wiry and white-haired, with the watchful eyes of someone who had spent decades noticing exits.
Victor looked up when Dad approached.
He didn’t speak for a moment.
Then: “You got old.”
“You got heavy,” Dad said.
Victor laughed.
It was a short, rough sound, like a door that hadn’t been opened in years.
He slid over in the booth.
Dad sat across from him.
I sat beside Dad.
Director Marsh took the end, nearest the aisle.
Ray said nothing.
He watched Director Marsh the way a cat watches a dog it hasn’t decided about yet.
“You have the documents,” Dad said.
It wasn’t a question.
Victor reached under the table and produced a manila envelope.
Thick.
Sealed with two strips of tape.
He set it on the table but kept his hand on it.
“Before I give this to anyone,” he said, “I want to know who’s been running searches on our names.”
“We’re trying to identify that,” Director Marsh said.
“That’s not good enough.”
“Victor—” she started.
“I went underground because someone pulled my full operational file six months ago.
Not my cover file.
My real file.
