Force of Nature by Suzanne Brockmann Page B

with Em while Gina went to a lecture over at the Smithsonian. Some author she likes. It was over early, so…” Max came all the way into the room, and Jules saw that he was dressed down in jeans and a T-shirt, his dark hair casually messed. “When she got home, I told her about Peggy and…She thought I should see if you wanted to go get a beer. Actually, what she said was
go get drunk
, but…”
    Jules laughed. God, he loved Max’s wife. “Yeah, that’ll help.” He shook his head. “Tell her thanks, but no. I’ve still got a lot to do and…”
    Max sighed and closed Jules’s office door, leaning on it so that it latched with a click. He sat down on the sofa beneath the window and sighed again.
    Jules found himself sighing, too. “You know, you really don’t have to—” he said just as Max said, “I used to think…” But Max repeated himself, loudly enough to be heard over Jules, which kind of forced Jules to stop talking.
    “I used to think I had to stay in the office, too,” Max said, “when an agent went missing. Or was killed. It’s likely that Peggy’s dead.”
    “I know,” Jules said.
    “It’s…hard not to feel responsible,” Max continued, “if not for the loss, then for…I guess I always want it to have some real meaning—when someone like Peggy gives her life—there should be something we get in return. Someone dangerous gets caught, a sleeper cell is eliminated, a bomb doesn’t go off and thousands of lives are saved…There should be some measurable reward for the sacrifice. It’s bad enough when you lose someone toward the end of an investigation, but we’re still at the beginning of this one, so…Right now her death doesn’t seem to have much meaning.”
    “We’ve gained nothing.” Jules told him what they both already damn well knew. Peggy had been undercover for months, and they’d gained no new information. Except for the fact that she’d gotten close to something or someone and, because of that, had disappeared. Unless she’d left a message—somehow, somewhere…“I’ve got to figure out a way to get inside Burns’s compound. I’ve been going through Peggy’s reports—”
    “Reports that will still be here tomorrow,” Max interrupted. “You can sleep here.” He patted the cushions of the sofa on either side of himself. “You can give this case 24/7 attention, but there’s going to come a point when you’re going to
have
to do that, and if you’re already burned out—”
    “Oh, this is nice,” Jules said. “These words coming out of
your
mouth?”
    “I get twice as much done these days,” Max told him. “Because I’m actually getting some rest at night, instead of pacing the halls.”
    “
How
many times did you go home between 9/11 and the summer of 2005?” Jules asked. “Was it five times or six?”
    “Back then…I didn’t have anyone to go home to,” Max said.
    “Well, ditto,” Jules said. “Ben’s in Iraq, and even if he weren’t…” He exhaled hard. Even though his boss had met Ben a time or two, talking about Jules’s love life—or lack thereof—was surely not something Max had signed on for when his wife had urged him to come check up on Jules. “Just…thank you for the advice. I appreciate your concern, but—”
    “Sam Starrett called me just a few days ago—before he and Alyssa went overseas,” Max said. “He, uh, told me about the e-mail you got from Ben. He just…thought I should know about it.”
    Jules couldn’t believe this. He could understand Alyssa telling Sam, but…“As my boss or—”
    “As your friend,” Max corrected him. “I just wanted to make sure that you understood, despite what the President said in our meeting—”
    “Grooming me as your replacement,” Jules remembered. With everything going on in the search for Peggy Ryan, he’d actually forgotten
that
giant anvil that had dropped on his head from out of the blue. Max actually thought that when he moved onward and