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Internally, she was shutting down.
    He produced a bottle of wine and poured a glass. “Are you still going to Houston tomorrow?”
    She took the glass, kissed him again, and set it aside. “I’ll leave at six or seven,” she said. She shrugged out of her jeans. “Let me shower, and then we can go.”
    He stroked her cheek and ran his fingers through her hair, then sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her, half naked, to his lap. His hands slid around her waist. “Come with me to Morocco.”
    The invitation should have signaled triumph, official notice that the challenge was over, that it was time to go. She slipped off his lap and stood by the window, staring at the city lights in the distance and hating most that she wanted what he offered.
    It wasn’t the first time a conquest had made such a request or similar words had been spoken, but it was the first that she’d felt a twinge of longing—that desire to fly off into the proverbial sunset for however long it might last.
    “I’m not saying that I don’t want it,” she said. “I just can’t do it.” Silent for a moment, she returned from the window, climbed onto the bed, and placed a knee on either side of his legs. She held his face to her chest and kissed the top of his head.
    He held her tight and then with a deep breath stood, pulling her up with him. “I need to go,” he said.
    From his wallet he extracted a business card. “So that you can find me—in case you change your mind.” He placed it on the desk and, without looking back, left the room.
    The door closed, a resounding thud in the silence. Munroe picked up the wineglass, swished the liquid in a gentle circle, ran her thumb against the stem. It was so delicate, would be so easy to snap, and she waited for the urge to do so. No reaction. Numb. The internal shutdown was complete. She placed the glass back on the desk, lay on the bed with her hands behind her head, and, as she knew they would, waited for the demons to rise.

chapter 3
    Walker County, Texas
    T he sky was dark, tinged by the murky haze of city lights, of civilization and pollution. The weather had warmed; even in the predawn, Munroe could feel it, and if the temperature was rising, she would welcome it. The roads were empty, and at 150 miles an hour the wind had a way of rushing through a person.
    At three in the morning, she’d tossed the documents from the Burbank case into a backpack and left the hotel. Her head was filled with a cacophony of ancient words and the accompanying attacks of anxiety that prevented sleep. She would ride through the night, and in the dark and the silence her head would clear.
    She traveled the winding Texas backcountry, endless lane dividers blending into a solid line, time calculated by the changing colors of the sky and a tugging ache that lurked at the periphery of her consciousness, the result of hours spent on a machine built for speed rather than comfort.
    The meeting was set for ten, and now at nine-thirty she moved with the flow of traffic through the tail end of the morning rush hour into the matrix of Houston’s downtown. She found parking and then, gazing up at the building, ruffled her short hair free of the shape of the helmet.
    She stretched and pulled the kinks out of her shoulders, locked the helmet onto the bike, and unzipped the riding jacket. Underneath shewore a tight T-shirt, and the combination of the shirt, blue jeans, and thick-soled boots gave her the appearance of having recently stepped out of the cab of an eighteen-wheeler. Like every decision she made, the choice in clothing was calculated, a statement to the client, a silent “fuck you” to a succession of men in suits who aggressively jockeyed to have their assignments accepted.
    To them she provided no decorum, abided by no protocol, and each in turn would accept this because they all wanted the information she would procure that had the potential to turn meager profits into gold.
    It hadn’t started out that