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they had together rehashing what had proven to be a fruitless discussion.
    She said, “Okay.”
    “Good.” He looked down at their hands again. Sara followed his gaze. His wrists were tan, but only to the cuffs of his shirt. His hair was streaked with blond highlights. Whatever Will was doing, it required him to spend time in the sun.
    “What I wanted to say,” he continued, “was that I didn’t want you to think I was disappearing on you. Or that I …” His voice trailed off. “I mean, what we’re doing.” Will stopped. “What we’ve been doing …”
    Sara waited.
    “I didn’t want you to take my not being here for—” He seemed to be looking for the right words. “Lack of interest?” He kept staring down at their hands. “Because I am. Interested, I mean.”
    Sara studied the top of his head, the way his hair grew in a spiral from the crown. There was going to come a point in the near future when she would no longer be able to accept his evasions. He would either have to open up to her or she would haveto consider her options. The more Sara thought about it, the closer she felt to the looming crossroads.
    She stopped thinking about it.
    Instead, she said, “Just promise me that whatever you’re doing, you’re being careful.”
    He nodded, but she would’ve felt better if he’d actually said the words. Will wasn’t the only detective in the relationship. The GBI was to the state of Georgia what the FBI was to the United States. Except in cases of drug trafficking or child abduction, the agency had to be specifically asked to work a case, and the local police departments didn’t tend to ask unless they were desperate.
    Any way Sara looked at it, whatever crime had caused Will to go undercover was too dicey for the locals to handle. Worse, being undercover meant that Will’s partner wasn’t there to back him up. He was completely alone, probably surrounded by men with violent histories and addictions.
    Will asked, “So, we’re all right?”
    Sara pressed her lips together, forcing back the words she really wanted to say. “Of course we’re all right.”
    “Good.” Will slumped back in his chair, his relief almost palpable. Not for the first time, Sara wondered how a man who’d spent his entire adult life solving puzzles could be so willfully obtuse in his private life.
    She asked, “How long will this take?”
    “Two, maybe three weeks.”
    She waited for more, but in the end, Will simply looked away. The gesture was artlessly executed, as if he was going through a checklist of casual movements. Blink. Scratch jaw. Feign interest in the notices on the wall.
    Sara turned to look at the posters that suddenly held his rapt attention. They were typical to a hospital: warnings about HIV and hepatitis C alongside a rudely defaced hygiene series featuring SpongeBob SquarePants.
    Sara turned back around. She’d never been good at passive-aggressive game play. “Can we at least acknowledge that there’s something else going on? Because I can feel it, Will. There’s something else to this and I think you’re keeping it from me because you don’t want me to worry.”
    To his credit, he didn’t offer false protests. “Would it make you feel better?”
    She nodded.
    “All right.”
    Sara chewed her bottom lip. She waited for more, then remembered she wanted to leave the hospital before she was old enough to retire. “That’s it?”
    He shrugged.
    She was too tired to keep pushing the boulder up the hill. “You are driving me absolutely crazy.”
    “In a good way?”
    She squeezed his hand. “Not exactly.”
    He laughed, though they both knew she wasn’t kidding. He asked, “Did you hear Homeland Security arrested SpongeBob at the airport?”
    “Will.”
    “I’m serious. They showed it on the news this morning.”
    Sara groaned. “Public indecency?”
    “That goes without saying, but the big charge was they caught him trying to take too many fluids onto the plane.”
    She shook