The phone rang bright and early that Saturday morning. Layla rolled over to Hayden's side of the bed to answer it, finding the queen-sized bed empty. Had he even come home that night? She couldn't remember.

"Tatiana, you're where?" Layla groaned, throwing a hand over her eyes as the sunlight peeped through the white curtains. Hayden hadn't fully closed them last night, since he hadn't been there, and it was typically his job. She would let him break as many promises as he wanted. So now, with the addition of her best friend's too-many-decibels loud voice in her ear, she would never get back to sleep.

"I said, I'm right outside your house." Tatiana's voice was far too chipper for Layla's tastes. "So come outside, because I brought beignets. And those cheese blintzes that you love. Hurry. Up."

She checked the clock on the wall,. It was ten o'clock. She'd slept for twelve hours? "I'm coming, I'm coming."

Moments later, wearing her robe, slippers, and bedhead, she opened the door. Tatiana Russell wore an unseasonable outfit of a fur shawl--in July--over a tight black dress, with bright red pumps, and carried a white cardboard box labelled Patisserie. She flung her arms around Layla, the bakery box hitting her back. When her best friend released her, Layla took a step back, brushing hair out of her eyes, and tried to summon the appropriate amount of cheer for the occasion. "You're here!"

Tatiana pushed past her and stepped into the house, kicking off her Jimmy Choos, as if she owned the place. "And you have horrible morning breath."

"Yes, well, I overslept." To punctuate her statement, she gave a jaw-unhinging yawn. "Give me five minutes and I'll be somewhat presentable."

"No more than five," Tatiana said. "When we were roommates, I know you could get ready in a minute and a half."

"I'm old and pregnant now," she shot back, stomping up the stairs. Layla threw on sweatpants and one of Hayden's old t-shirts with FBI emblazoned across the chest, brushed her hair, and swished some mouthwash around her mouth. She returned downstairs in a somewhat more presentable state, just as Loretta was hanging up Tatiana's fur shawl.

"Good morning, Auntie Loretta," Tatiana was saying. From what Layla could remember of her wedding--which had been a day fueled mostly by alcohol, bad decisions, and her friends' urgings--Tatiana and Loretta had gotten along like nobody's business. Possibly due in part to the fact that Tatiana could probably sell ice in the Arctic. "Did you sleep well? I'm so sorry for dropping by uninvited, but, you know, I just happened to be in town with my husband, so I thought I would come visit."

"You just happened to be in the D.C. area?" Layla said with a frown. She'd thought Tatiana might have come for some networking opportunity, ilke a derby or golfing or some society lunch.

"Yes, like I said, I just happened to be in town, so I thought I would stop by," Tatiana repeated in the most unconvincing tone Layla had ever heard. "Anyways, I brought pastries. I hope you haven't eaten yet, because there's a lot in here, The bakery owner knows my mom so she always gives me more than I ask for."

"How does she know your mom? You're from Cleveland," said Layla with a frown,

"We have some... connections." Tatiana gave an artful shrug. "Anyways, there's beignets, croissants, blintzes, kolaches..."

Loretta, who Layla had heretofore pegged as an anti-sugar health nut, actually took a pain au chocolat from the box. "Thank you, Tati. That was very thoughtful of you."

"You let her call you Tati?" Layla hissed.

"Your MIL isn't that bad," Tatiana said.

Layla gaped at her. "I assure you, she is."

"How so?" Tatiana ate a beignet, powdered sugar dusting her upper lip.

"Two words: solitary confinement."

"Is that where she's been, or where she's trying to put you?"

"That's what she thinks every pregnant woman should be in, for fear they slip walking out of their house. And where I'll end up if she keeps fussing over me every five seconds like I'm carrying the last heir to the Romanov dynasty."

"She's just protective." Tatiana took another bite.

"You don't have to live with her." She ate a cheese blintz, savouring the creamy filling. "Did you really come her because you're just 'in town'?"

"No, I came here to escape from the hordes of journalists--or cockroaches, I think they're the same thing, no offense to you--that have been swarming my husband every time he leaves the house."

"I know people say lawyers are ambulance-chasers, but the title probably does apply to journalists, too. They're like sharks. They smell blood and pounce." Layla dusted powdered sugar off of her fingers.

"Are you speaking from experience?" Tatiana cast a side-eye at Layla.

"Viihaan," she said suddenly, remembering his television appearance. "He knew about Cytex before almost anyone did."

"Who?" her friend said,

"He's a--a coworker of mine. Very well-connected. He gave a report on CNN talking about the Cytex lawsuit before your husband had even gone public with it."

"What's his last name?" Tatiana whipped out her phone.

Layla hesitated, wondering if she should let her best friend have free rein over this ambivalent character in her life. Then again, it was Tatiana. She'd known her since it was the early two thousands and they'd worn low-rise jeans and blue eyeshadow to class. "Vihaan Bakshi."

Tatiana typed furiously for a moment, her French-manicured thumbs flying over the keyboard. "He's Facebook friends with Lionel."

That made Layla sit up. Hayden had mentioned that, hadn't he? He'd stated that Vihaan was friends with Lionel, but she'd dismissed the comment as... as what? As false, simply because it came from her husband?

"Really?"

"They went to Harvard together." Tatiana scrolled further. "They both graduated in '09. Vihaan with a Communications degree and Lionel with an MBA."

"And you've never met him?" Layla said.

Tatiana shook her head. "He wasn't at the wedding, so I assume they're not close. But if they could be close enough for Lionel to tell him about the lawsuit..."

"Then someone's been listening." She tensed, thinking of the cameras. What if one of them had picked up... her conversation with Tatiana?

"What are you talking about?"

"If I tell you this, you can't tell anyone."

"Well, no duh."

Layla quirked a smile at her friend's response. Sometimes, it was like Tatiana had never quite left her high school days behind. "We're being serious."

"I'm always serious."

"It's about your husband."

"We've been talking about Lionel already."

She turned on the garbage disposal to drown out her words and leaned toward Tatiana as she spoke. "I think someone's bugged our house. Not think--know. And it might be my sister. But if it was her--I don't know how Vihaan learned about Cytex before anyone else, except that you and I were talking about it, and then almost overnight he knew and he broadcast it on national news."

Layla let the gurgle of the waste disposal run roughshod over their conversation for a few moments more as she waited for Tatiana to respond.

"Have you considered that maybe this has nothing to do with me or you? Maybe it's just about Lionel. Maybe he and Vihaan really are friends, and.. And he told him."

"Why would he tell his friend about--" Layla swallowed, realizing that sometimes in life, people had friends whom they trusted, whom they confided in, friends who they thought wouldn't drive a blade between their shoulder blades. Hard to believe, when she had no such convictions about her husband. "Of course he could have told Vihaan. But if you don't even trust a man enough to invite him to your wedding, how could you trust him enough to tell him your darkest secrets, which he then spills on TV?"

"Maybe he doesn't trust him at all." Tatiana finished her pastry and dusted off her hands. "Maybe it was blackmail. Extortion."

"Maybe they're not friends, after all." But she didn't know who she was talking about. Vihaan and Lionel, or someone else...

Maybe she couldn't trust anyone, after all.

#

Hayden stared at the cases of guns behind the counter, locked into glass boxes. He'd purchased a firearm before, of course, and in his line of work--well, his previous line of work--had been perfectly fine handling them, but something about this time felt different.

More impulsive. One might almost call it desperate. Not some measured decision that was carefully deliberated over, or some standard-issue firearm he was selecting from Quantico.

No, this was a decision made out of need. The primal, atavistic pit in the bottom of his stomach that shouted at him to protect himself. Self-preservation wrapped around him like a vice; shook his shoulders and shouted at him to save his own skin.

If only he could identify the proper threat, it would be far easier.

There shouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary about this. Hayden was well within his rights in the state of Maryland to buy a gun. He had a permit to purchase, and he was hardly soliciting some shady illegal arms dealer selling firearms with the serial numbers sanded off. So why did something about this make his hands shake, his palms itch?

A bead of sweat shouldn't have dripped down his forehead and slid off his nose as he waited for the guy behind the counter to run a background check on him. Maybe he'd committed a thousand crimes, but all of them had been in his mind. A dozen febrile delusions of blood and terror and sprays of bullets dashed through his brain, staining his thoughts. He wondered if the employee would refuse to sell to him just based on his demeanour.

"You're good," said the guy behind the counter. He looked to be in his early twenties at the oldest, barely out of his teens. How did they let this pimply-faced teenager work here all by himself, at a gun store of all places? He looked like he could barely handle a day as a social media intern at Teen Vogue.

"What?"

"Your background check and the questionnaire you filled out," said the employee, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat as he scanned the computer screen. "It came back fine. No criminal record, history of mental problems..."

"Great." He scanned the cases. The black shapes blurred in front of his eyes for a moment, and he blinked. "Glad to hear it."

"Do you know what you want?" the employee seemed unsure of himself, a ring of keys jangling on his skinny wrist. He fiddled with the cash register.

He named the model he'd always used, a Glock 26 Gen4. It was best to stick with what he knew, and that was the gun he was the most comfortable with, having used it back in his FBI days. Why did he talk about them like they were a lifetime ago when they seemed to be resurfacing now? Haunting him, persistent as any phantom?

"That's for law enforcement only," said the employee, his voice wavering. "Do you have a badge?"

He sighed. This was proving more difficult than he'd thought. "Never mind then. Old habits die hard."

"You were in the police force?" The employee's voice was muffled, his back to Hayden as he looked at the gun cases.

"FBI," he said. "I left a few months ago."

"Wow." The employee unlocked a different case. "How about this one? It's similar to the model of Glock that you wanted, but it's not just for law enforcement."

Hayden cast an eye over it: barrel, grip, magazine. It was just a gun. He'd seen plenty before, had fired plenty, held too many to count. He remembered his father cleaning his shotgun and showing him how to properly care for his firearm; he could recall the smell of gunpowder from the old hunting rifles that Richard Song had grown up with, living on a ranch before he'd moved away for college and met Hayden's mother.

It was just a gun. But it felt like everything and nothing all at once. "I'll take it."

#

"You bought a what?" Layla said when he walked into the house.

"A gun. If you'd like me to be more specific, then, a Glock." Hayden was calm as he unlocked their gun safe, punching in the code that he'd used far more than she did. Perhaps he shouldn't have felt better with a weapon in his hands, but he did. "You've seen one before, surely? You know what they are?"

"Don't be pedantic," she snapped. "Why? We already have a gun. You already have a gun."

She was talking more than she usually did, he noted. She wrung her hands in front of her, a tic that didn't usually appear when they talked. Usually, she was still, flat, as barren of emotion as a snow-covered field. Now he was thinking she was less of a snowbank and more of an iced-over lake, fissures spreading everywhere he touched until it cracked beneath his weight.

"I've been feeling a little... unsafe, in my own house, these days." He kept his eyes fixed on hers as he spoke. "Haven't you?"

She folded her arms across her chest. "If you're referring to Amara's persistent intrusion into our lives--"

"I am referring to far more than that, but yes, I'd call the neighbour who won't go away a factor."

"She's a woman of below-average height who seems lonely."

"First of all, you're the one who was suspicious of her. Second of all, those characteristics have nothing to do with whether or not she's dangerous. Now that I have bought a firearm--which I know you are far from afraid of--you're hesitant about my suspicions?"

"Your mother likes her."

"My mother likes anyone who flatters her a little bit."

"Don't let her hear you say that, Hayden."

He closed the safe, locking it. "You're scared, aren't you?"

"What?" Layla took a drink of water, not saying another word until the glass was empty.

"You're scared. You don't want to admit it, because the idea of a threat is even more terrifying to you than a threat itself. Because the idea is unknown, isn't it? It could come from anywhere, anyone... And you don't want me to buy a gun, because you don't want to admit that there's any real danger."

"I wasn't aware you were in the business of psychobabble and mindreading."

"That's my former job. I'm sure you're aware of it."

"Ah yes, FBI profiling. Why did you leave, again?"

"What are you saying?" he said, raking a hand through his hair.

"You've never told me why you left." She leaned against the counter, folding her arms across her chest.

"It's classified."

"You've told me a lot of things that were classified."

"That was a mistake."

"Maybe this was, too." She sighed, resting a hand on her abdomen, her gaze so far out of the window that he didn't think she was there at all, not really. Not in the ways that it counted. Layla looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here.

And maybe he should've cared. But he couldn't bring himself to, or to think about what she meant by this was a mistake. Because he thought he might already know.

Layla was referring to their marriage.