Page 5 of Play the Game
As the only child of my own single mom, I’d learned a different lesson from my childhood. I’d been accountable to and for only myself, a loner who didn’t need authoritative approval but did crave friends. By breaking the rules and surviving the consequences, I’d found them. By the time I was in my late teens and deep in the hacking world, I’d believed the regulations that dictated the lives of normies didn’t apply to me. I’d probably still be in that world, living above the law and getting away with it, if I hadn’t been obsessed with impressing a virtually unimpressible young woman. Hacking into the FBI’s database and brazenly leaving my digital tag there had finally cracked her cold façade, but the aftermath of that decision was the beginning of my life as a “felon” and—unbeknownst to us at the time—the beginning of the end of our relationship. It would just take another three and a half years to fully crumble.
Was I making the same mistake all over again? I didn’t think so. This was different. I didn’t need to impress Tam to get her attention. I already had it. But I wanted her to be my partner in crime, literally and figuratively. I wanted to share the rush with her. And yes, in my most selfish moments, I wanted that rush to translate into something primal between us. But I also wanted Tam to break her own barriers because I knew her career was stagnating under the weight of all those rules she held so dear.
Ten minutes later, we stepped into the crowded, upscale wine bar. I placed my hand on the small of her back the way I had earlier, back at HEAT. Pushing yet another boundary, one I knew I shouldn’t cross, but the heat of her skin through the thin, silky fabric was too much to resist. As we weaved through the crowd, I noticed men sliding their gaze toward her, taking in her beautiful face and body. Each time, I angled myself into their eyesight and gave them the back-the-hell-off look that men used only on each other. I wasn’t as big and buff as some of the agents I worked with, but I worked out with my team, and I could hold my own. And I’d perfected the touch-her-and-I’ll-kill-you stare, which had never failed to deflect unwanted attention away from Tam. I guided her to the back of the room, and we sat across from each other at the small table I’d reserved.
“Are you interested in a bottle?” I asked.
“Not if this is only our first stop. Why don’t we each get a glass of something different and share them?”
“Perfect.” It was exactly what I wanted to do. If we’d had a whole bottle, Tam might have noticed that I only took one glass while I poured her the rest. I needed a clear head for bar number three.
A server took our order, then brought our wine along with cheese, crackers, and bread. We settled into a comfortable conversation. I asked about her younger sisters and her mom. All were doing well. Good jobs. Happy home lives. Her mother had remarried just before I’d met Tam, and her stepfather was a kind man who reminded her of her father, at least what she remembered of him before he fell ill. She asked about my mom, perennially the happy divorcée, currently dating three men that I knew of, and probably more that I didn’t.
By our second stop, a hipster dance club, we were deep into our standing arguments over music, the upcoming football season, and vacation spots.
“Be honest with me.” She nearly had to yell over the driving beat as we hung near the edges of the dance floor, half dancing but mostly shout-talking. “Were you sitting on that information about that building, waiting for the perfect time to ruin my vacation?”
“I did tell you I’d miss you!” I leaned closer to her ear. “But even I’m not that cruel.”
The music changed then to something quiet and slow. We were trapped in one of those awkward moments that sometimes happened between us. We were saved by my phone dinging in the breast pocket of my jacket, announcing it was time to hit our third destination.
We were full-on relaxed and back to being “us” as we loosely held hands and walked into the dive bar. It wasn’t as bad as I’d led her to believe, although the décor had gone out of date a decade earlier. It was one of those smoky places, even though indoor smoking had been banned for years. There was lots of dark wood furniture and burgundy fabric. Carpeting. Tablecloths. The upholstery on the barstools. It wasn’t as crowded as the wine bar had been, but we still had to settle for a booth with dirty glasses still on the table. A cocktail server came by a few minutes later to collect the glasses, wipe down the table, and take our order.
“You up for a fancy drink?” I asked Tam.
She shook her head. “No. Just the usual.”
“Tanqueray and tonic, no lime, for the lady. Dark beer, whatever you have on tap, for me.”
Tam arched an eyebrow at me, which made me want to kiss it, so I turned away to observe the crowd. Shit, they looked like a bunch of gangsters and bikers, men and women alike, straight out of central casting. I turned back to Tam and stared into her eyes, hoping to hold her attention and keep her from observing the bar’s clientele too closely, at least for a bit longer.
“Tell me the truth, Jensen,” she said.
My heart sank to my toes. I wasn’t ready to do that just yet.
“Why are you drinking so cautiously tonight? It’s like you have some other agenda, like... Oh. Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“Forgot?”
She nodded. “Six months, right? You signed the divorce papers six months ago, to the day.”
“Did I?” I knew roughly how long I’d been divorced but not precisely. I was touched that Tam remembered. Although I should have had the date engraved across my heart along with the memory that accompanied it.
Tam and Alder had stayed up with me all night while I’d had a little pity party. I wasn’t grieving my busted marriage per se. That had ended a year earlier, when Melissa had tired of being married to a felon who only saw her every few months when I earned a furlough by helping the government with a hacking job. Of course, that was all a cover story because when the FBI had identified my digital signature in one of their classified databases, they hadn’t arrested me. They’d hired me. More precisely, the federal government had. I’d been given my choice of agencies, and the FBI and CIA were lobbying for me hard. Having spent a lot of time in multiple databases of each of them, I’d chosen HEAT, a secretive organization with the decency to keep its damn mouth shut and servers damn near inaccessible.
In the wee hours of the morning after signing my divorce papers, I sat in the lounge in the HEAT building near DC with a row of empty shot glasses in front of me. Alder was curled up on the carpeted floor, and Tam was leaning against my arm. Half-asleep, Tam had nestled against me and breathed out a sigh against my neck. In that moment, something in my heart shifted, and it had never shifted back.
“You know it was just that one night,” I now said to Tam, desperate to make her understand I wasn’t missing my ex-wife. “I was just dealing with the finality of it.”
“Of course. I know that. But it’s important to recognize milestones, even if you don’t think you’re grieving.”
She continued speaking, no doubt reciting some sort of post-divorce rules she’d learned from somewhere, but my eyes were trained on the gangster who’d just walked through the door.
“Jensen,” Tam suddenly hissed, reverting to my last name the way she did when she was either teasing or furious with me. Right now, she was not teasing. “What the fuck?”
“Don’t worry. I have a plan.”
“That’s exactly why I’m worried.” She slid to the edge of the booth, ready to storm off. But the gangster had spotted us, too.
