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Park and the White House. He’d walked from his office where he worked as a political scientist for a respected think tank. Alex Bruni had called late yesterday afternoon to ask Thomas to breakfast. Of course, Alex was late. It was an annoyance, but not a surprise.
    Thomas thought about Jo again. He suspected she was finished in the Secret Service, if only because it prized anonymity and discretion and both had gotten away from her after Charlie Neal’s prank.
    Unfair, perhaps, but he was secretly glad. She was capable of doing more with her life than working for the Secret Service. An elitist position on his part, he supposed, but an honest one. He’d met Jo in February on a long weekend in Vermont with his daughter. The trip was against his better judgment, but Nora, then a high-school senior, had pleaded with him to go. He was still licking his wounds after his wife—his ex -wife—had married Alex, one of Thomas’s closest friends, and Nora was desperate to find a way for them to make peace with each other. She’d wanted beautiful Black Falls, Vermont, to be their common ground. It wasn’t that simple, of course, but Thomas would do anything for his daughter. They’d gone snowshoeing in an apple orchard one morning, and he’d spotted an attractive woman battling her way up an icy, treacherous incline—Jo Harper, as it turned out. He remembered his surprise at discovering she was not only a Black Falls native but a federal agent with an impeccable reputation.
    When he returned to Washington, he’d debated asking Jo out, but she hadn’t shown an interest in a romantic relationship. In the end, he hadn’t risked more rejection.
    Now he realized his hesitation had worked in his favor. In April, when he’d gone back to Black Falls with his daughter, a lovely woman had asked to share his table at a bustling, popular village café. She’d introduced herself as Melanie Kendall and said she was taking a few days to get away from New York and her work as a self-employed interior decorator.
    Thomas’s life hadn’t been the same since. With Melanie, he finally understood how dull and routine his first marriage had become. He wouldn’t have ended it if Carolyn hadn’t made the first move, but now, in retrospect, he could see how tedious their relationship must have become for her, too.
    His waiter had left him a heavy silver pot of strong coffee and a small, chilled silver pitcher of cream—Thomas knew he should request low-fat milk, but he didn’t. Go with the real stuff. He was, after all, meeting the man who’d stolen Carolyn from him, and passing on cream in his coffee struck him as something that Alex would seize upon as a sign of weakness.
    When he’d called yesterday Alex claimed he wanted to discuss Nora, but Thomas couldn’t imagine that Alex really cared that she’d dropped out of Dartmouth and moved to Black Falls to work in a café. The same café, in fact, where Thomas had met Melanie seven months ago.
    He suspected Alex’s motives for inviting him to breakfast weren’t that simple—nothing with Alex ever was.
    And everything, Thomas thought with a fresh surge of annoyance, was always on Alex’s terms. When to meet. Where. What they’d discuss. But not only would Thomas do anything for his daughter, he also had to admit he was curious about what else was on Alex’s mind—something, certainly. He had called instead of e-mailed and insisted on speaking directly to Thomas, refusing to leave a message with his secretary.
    â€œWe need to talk about Nora and Vermont,” Alex had said. “It’s complicated. I’ll explain when I see you.”
    Alex had obviously assumed Thomas would drop everything and show up, which was exactly what he’d done. He’d also kept their meeting to himself, not out of paranoia, he told himself, but habit and discretion.
    And because it was