She smiled, wiping the tears away as she said, “It’s silly, I know, but I’m so glad we came here. They’re such a beautiful family.”
“I suppose they are.” He glanced behind, but of course they’d already driven too far and Mathieu had probably taken the boys back inside by now. “We forgot to call your parents.”
“No, I called them last night. I called from the kitchen.”
“Oh.” He wasn’t sure why he should feel put out by that—it wasn’t as if he had some sort of ownership over her return—but he did feel put out, and couldn’t remember her being missing and on her own at any point in the evening. The thought that Adrienne might have been there as she’d made the call left him feeling more dislocated. “Who did you speak to?”
“Dad.”
“Was he okay? I mean, how did it go?”
“Okay, I guess. Mom was more hysterical the other day. Dad was kind of teasing about it, joking about how he hoped I’d got it out of my system. That was almost worse in a way, because it sounded like he was hurt but he didn’t want me to know it.”
Finn didn’t bother to tell her that when she talked about “the other day,” that had also been yesterday—the day had no doubt been so momentous to her that it felt like a week.
He said, “I think they’re both hurt. It’s hard for them not to see some kind of rejection in this.”
“But that’s not what it was about at all. They know how much I love them. They’re great parents.” He grimaced slightly, saying no more, and she relented. “I know. I know what I did was pretty crappy.”
The taxi driver blasted his horn at someone on a bike who cut in front of them. The cyclist gave a couple of hand gestures in response and hurled a few specialized words in French that Finn didn’t understand but that made Hailey laugh.
The two of them looked out at the streets and the traffic then, and when they got to Gare de Lyon they talked only of platforms and trains and other necessities. On the train, Hailey looked out of the window, her head resting against the side of the seat, and he thought she might fall asleep again.
But half an hour into the journey, she looked across at him as if only just remembering he was there, and said, “Do you mind if I say something to you—something personal?”
He did, alarms immediately sounding, but he could hardly admit to being intimidated by a fifteen-year-old girl.
“Go ahead.”
“Okay. I think you’d be really dumb to let Adrienne go.”
He smiled, almost laughed.
“I don’t intend to let her go. We spoke last night. We have a few things we need to sort out, that’s all.”
“I just thought . . .” She stopped, uncertain, but he looked expectantly and she said, “I just thought things didn’t seem great between you this morning.”
“Yeah, well, if I’m completely frank, it probably didn’t help that you told her about my past in intelligence and about the USB stick before I’d had the chance to tell her myself.”
Hailey came back at him, surprisingly combative, as she said, “When would you have told her?”
“I don’t know. When would you have told Anders that you’re fifteen?”
“That’s so unfair.”
“Is it? I’ve lied for all these years about my past because that’s the nature of clandestine work—you keep it secret.” Even as he spoke, he was editing himself, a reminder that his real reason for keeping the secret from Adrienne was not the clandestine nature of his work but the darker truths that lay within his past, truths he didn’t even want to revisit himself. “Maybe I should have been open, particularly with her, but it’s a balancing act, one that’s hard to get right.”
“What was on the USB stick?”
“No, Hailey, we’re not doing this. I appreciate you giving me the stick, and you and Jonas probably helped me out by hacking that network in the first place, but you’re not involved in this, not anymore.”
“Could it be dangerous?”
“Not dangerous enough to run away.” She was ready to respond angrily, but realized he was teasing and smiled halfheartedly, as if at some corny joke from an uncle. “I don’t know, probably not. But it deals with sensitive material and serious people, so the safest way to proceed is without getting anyone else involved.”
“But Gibson definitely left, right?”
“He definitely left. The apartment’s empty. And your part in this is over.”
She looked offended by his final comment and said, “Okay, I only asked a question. He knew we hacked his network so I think I have every right to ask if we might actually be in danger.”