Page 7 of The Hideaway

Banks ignores this. "I fully believe that Dexter North would reveal to you anything he'd uncovered, and, ma'am, I'd be inclined to believe that this situation here in France is an anomaly."

"An anomaly?"

"Yes. I don't think President Hudson...carried on this way with any other women." Banks clears his throat uncomfortably. Talking about the late president's dalliances isn't something that puts him at ease, nor does he think it's any of his business. The fact that he'd been fully aware of Etienne Boucher's existence and of her child with Jack Hudson isn't something that he and Ruby have ever discussed, nor do they need to. Ruby knows as well as anyone that the information held by the Secret Service is highly classified and that under no circumstances would Banks have broken ranks and informed her about Jack's extramarital activities. To do so would have undermined the whole point of having a Secret Service.

Ruby nods and stares at the floor, clearly gathering herself. When Banks opened the door just moments before she'd looked completely perturbed, but now she looks as if she's gathered herself and is resigned to what Banks is saying.

"You're right, Banks." Ruby glances up from the vacuumed carpet beneath their feet and stares right into his eyes. She looks tired. "Dexter wouldn't do that, and most likely Jack wasn't visiting multiple secret families. I think flying just upsets me--it rattles my cage, you know?"

"Certainly."

"We should sleep," she says definitively. "I set my alarm for six, and I'll get ready so we can have breakfast before we meet Dexter. The train leaves the station at nine."

"Have a good night, ma'am. I'm right here if you need me for anything--just knock."

Ruby smiles at him tiredly and closes the door, locking it from her side. Banks does the same.

* * *

Breakfast is in a private dining suite on the top floor of the hotel. They are served croissants and jam with thick, creamy butter. The coffee comes with rich cream in a ceramic pot, and there are platters of fresh fruit and cheeses, and dishes of Greek yogurt and granola. Banks notices that Ruby picks at everything but pours a third cup of coffee and downs it before they head down to the lobby to meet up with Dexter North.

"Good morning," Dexter says, lifting a hand to wave from where he's sitting on a cushioned chair by a window. He's got an iPad open on his lap and a cup of coffee on a saucer resting on the table next to him. He looks like he hasn't slept, but he stands as Ruby approaches and gives her a loose hug like an old friend. Banks takes it all in, watching Mr. North for any fresh clues that he might have something up his sleeve, but as usual, all Banks can see is a straightforward guy with the kind of ease about him that indicates a man who has nothing to hide.

"How was your flight?" Ruby asks him. She looks up at Dexter expectantly, and there is no trace of the uncertainty that Banks had seen there the night before.

"Red eye," Dexter sighs. "I slept a couple of hours, but I might catch a couple on the train. I wanted to be awake here and ready to go when you were." He glances at his watch and nods at the leather duffel bag next to his chair. "Shall we?"

After a quick taxi ride to the Montparnasse station, they're ensconced in a private car with yet another pot of coffee on the table between them. It takes only ten minutes of smooth gliding out of the city before Dexter rests his head against the seat and starts to doze, his face turned toward the window, a forgotten book open in his lap.

Ruby looks at him with a half-smile and then turns to look out at the window to watch the countryside as it blurs past them.

The gentle rocking of the train jolts Banks back to Iraq during his last tour of duty, and he's suddenly transported to the back of a tarp-covered Jeep, bouncing around as the driver seemed to intentionally hit every pothole in the road. He recalls the heat and the sand and the way the men hunched next to him had zoned out, lost in their own thoughts as they moved across the inhospitable land, unsure of what would greet them when they stopped.

While Banks has grown used to spending flights as Ruby's therapeutic companion slash jukebox, he far prefers to use his travel time for introspection, and with the quiet of their train cabin, he allows himself to turn inward now and to get lost in memory.

Base camp in the desert with his fellow Marines had been a place of bottled emotions. The entirely male platoon had certainly encountered some situations that would have warranted tears, frustration, and loneliness, but for the most part, the only manifestation of those emotions had been bouts of silence or anger. Occasionally a skirmish broke out between men who were generally on friendly terms, and after the initial burst of adrenaline and the release of emotion through a generally approved method (fighting, yelling, shoving), things went back to normal.

But there had been times when Banks had longed for a peaceful place to cry on his own. For a companion with a gentle enough nature that he could turn and just unload his feelings to that person and receive comfort in return. But a platoon in the middle of a war-torn country isn't the place to find that sort of support, and so Banks had held it in as tightly as he could, breathing through the knots that would form in his chest and trying to push out any bad feelings by picturing his mother laughing or remembering his college football teammates playing pranks on one another. And he imagined that the other men must have done the same, though they all could have certainly benefited from having a woman on hand who would soften the hard edges with her particular brand of feminine humor and maybe offer them all something as simple as a sisterly hug every now and again.

Of course some of the guys joked boldly and often about the things they'd like to have a soft, warm, welcoming woman around for, but for Banks it wasn't like that; he truly missed hearing the sweet lilt of women's conversation and laughter.

At some point, the men had developed a habit of meeting in the tent with a television at the same time each evening and sitting around together as they watched the least likely show imaginable for a bunch of sweaty, tired, dirty men in fatigues. He smiles to himself now as he remembers the first time he'd stumbled into this group of guys, some sitting on the floor with their arms hooked around their knees so that they could get a better view of the television screen as they tuned in to watchGilmore Girlstogether on DVD.

At first glance, Banks had nearly turned around and left the tent, embarrassed to walk in on his comrades watching a fast-talking mother and daughter living in a small, fictional Connecticut town called Stars Hollow. He'd felt as embarrassed as if he'd stumbled in on one of his bunkmates spending a little alone time with a magazine full of naked women. But after about ten minutes of hanging around the fringes of the group and hearing the waves of laughter as the men chuckled appreciatively at the on-screen quips of the town's grumpy diner owner, as they whistled at the main character (the mom, Lorelai) in her tight jeans and sweaters, and as they watched raptly while family drama unfolded before their eyes, Banks had taken a seat. And then he'd gone back every day to see what kind of things the Stars Hollow townspeople were getting up to, just like the rest of the guys in the platoon.

Soon it became a running joke between the men: who had missed the previous day's episode; where the dress Lorelai wore to Friday night dinner with her parents ranked on their scale of Lorelai's Hottest Looks; and whether they liked the guys who Lorelai and her daughter Rory were currently dating or preferred someone else for them. Banks had quickly identified himself as Team Dean, though the younger guys in the platoon generally went Team Jess, a character who seemed to lack self-discipline and was all around a punk in Banks's eyes.

But hey—to each his own, was how Banks viewed it. The qualities he admires in a man have remained unchanged in all these years, and if pressed, he’d still proudly announce himself Team Dean without a moment’s hesitation.

His reverie ends as they pull into the station at Bordeaux, and Ruby stands up nervously, gathering her things. She tries to wake Dexter with a gentle shake of his shoulder, but he doesn't budge. She shakes him a little more firmly, and once he’s roused, he stands and stretches, slinging the long strap of his beat-up duffel bag across his body like a travel-worn adventurer.

The lines around Dexter's eyes are deeper with lack of sleep, and his hair is rumpled but somehow makes him look disarmingly disheveled. Banks can’t relate to this appealing messiness; he’s kept his hair short and clean his entire adult life, and while he can doze with his eyes open on a long journey, he never lets himself fall completely asleep or to contort his body into a position that leaves his clothes wrinkled or askew.

A car takes them away from the station and delivers them to a farmhouse made of stone in just over an hour. Etienne Boucher has invited them to her family’s rustic estate in Castelmoron d’Albret, which is not only a charming medieval village, but also the smallest village in France. It appears to be made of nothing but houses, narrow lanes, and a few small businesses. There are no sidewalks or cars to be seen, and their driver drops them off quietly and vanishes, leaving them in the middle of Castelmoron d’Albretwhere the only sounds are birds, the far off shouts of children playing, and in the distance, church bells chiming two o’clock.

“Hello!” Etienne calls as she steps from the front door of the farmhouse and walks toward them wearing a guarded smile and a red dress that wraps around her body and ends at the knee. Her flat sandals crunch against the pebbles and shells that make up her unpaved drive.

Banks watches her from behind his sunglasses, taking in her every move and mannerism. She is lithe and elegant, and as she waves a hand, a gold chain bracelet snakes from her wrist and slides down her arm.

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