Page 5 of A Walking Shadow

“No, Connelly, I’m not sick. I’m tired.”

“Tired,” he repeated.

“Yes, tired.”

What he thought, but didn’t say, was she was always tired. As far as he knew, tired was her natural state; she pushed through her exhaustion. But the woman looking back at him was not a woman who was pushing through.

“You’re sure it’s not more than that?”

“I’m sure,” she said, lifting herself from the bed to kiss him lightly. “I worked late last night, remember?”

Of course he did. But she hadn’t workedthatlate, not for her anyway. He searched her face carefully. “Work’s going well?”

She hesitated before answering, and he felt that she had been about to say something else.

What she said was, “Honestly? I could use a break, but there’s no room in the schedule for a getaway any time soon.”

“Not even a short trip to the lake house?”

She contemplated it for a fraction of a second, then sighed and slumped back against the padded headboard. “Not even.”

“Maybe we could have a staycation—a long weekend. You could take a day off, a Monday or a Friday.”

“Maybe,” she allowed. “I’ll look at the calendar.”

“I thought hiring an associate was supposed to lessen your workload.”

She blew out a long breath and ran her fingers through her messy hair. “Ellie’s great, but she’s a very junior associate. I need to mentor her to make sure we’re building on a solid foundation.”

“One workday—or even two—without your guidance isn’t going to ruin her forever.”

She shrugged, then cocked her head. “What’s with the suit? Wait, let me guess, you could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me.”

“Something like that. Are you mad?”

“I’m not mad.”

To his surprise and her credit, she appeared to be telling the truth. They’d promised one another to stop keeping secrets, but in this case, Leo was nearly as in the dark as she was.

More than a year ago, his boss had been approached to start up a new shadow agency—one so secretive that Leo and Hankstilldidn’t know what their actual mission was. It wasn’t a surprise that the wheels of the U.S. government’s bureaucratic machine turned slowly, but this wheel didn’t seem to be turning at all. They’d finally complained loudly enough or to the right set of ears and had been called in for a meeting.

“Hank and I have a meeting with some higher-ups. They didn’t see fit to share an agenda.”

“Oh, you’re about to get promoted again,” she guessed.

“Or fired.”

“Bite your tongue. If you get fired, I’llneverbe able to take a day off.” She flopped her arm back over her face.

He laughed. “Should we wait for you for breakfast, or should the kids and I do our own thing?”

She groaned. “Okay, okay, I’m getting up. Start breakfast, and I’ll be down after I shower.”

“No workout today?”

“I’ll do it during lunch. If I can squeeze in a lunch.”

“Busy day?”

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