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exhausted every avenue available to us. He is under a strict gag order. That’s the long and short of it.”
    “I’m so confused,” I said, appealing to Tom. “You know you can trust me. Why can’t you tell me these things you think I have a right to know? Why, in the privacy between the two of us, can’t you say what’s going on?”
    “Because I signed a contract,” he said simply. “Because I gave my word.”
    I shook my head, closing my eyes.
    “No one would ever know,” I said, shame coursing through my veins even as I uttered the words. “I wouldn’t tell.”
    “You can’t know that,” he replied simply. “You can’t know what you might do with this particular knowledge.”
    My heart pounded in anger, frustration—and fear. Just what sort of information did he have?
    “I’m so sorry, Callie.”
    I looked down at my hands in my lap. His apology was not sufficient. “So who’s been following me for the last ten days?” I demanded. “Am I under some sort of round-the-clock NSA surveillance?”
    “Actually, that’s the FBI,” Tom said. “The NSA isn’t allowed to do domestic surveillance. The FBI sometimes works on their behalf.”
    “But why?”
    “Just to keep tabs on you. Just to make sure you stayed local until some decisions were made about how much, if anything, I would be allowed to tell you. You can’t know how sorry I am that this is the final, official word on things.”
    The final word? Not very likely.
    I thought of Pastor George and what he might tell me to do at this moment, and then I remembered my list of questions.
    “Hold on,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “I’m going to ask you some questions. You’re going to answer the ones that you can.”
    Neither man responded as I pulled out the list of questions I had scribbled in the prayer garden. Hands shaking, I read the first one.
    “Tom, did you know Bryan?”
    Tom looked surprised by my question.
    “No. Gosh, Callie. No.”
    I swallowed hard.
    “Was my husband’s death an accident?”
    “As far as I know, yes,” he said earnestly.
    “Was Bryan…” I felt myself faltering. “Was Bryan involved with the NSA in some way?”
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    “Prior to his death, was Bryan involved with James Sparks in some way?”
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    “Is there anything I didn’t know about my husband?” I asked, hating the words even as I said them. “I mean—you know what I mean.”
    Tom clasped his hands together on the table.
    “Callie, let me say something. Bryan was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was an innocent victim of a terrible accident. He had no ties with the agency and his death was not intentional.”
    “And there’s nothing else that connected him to you?”
    Tom hesitated, looking at the lawyer and then back at me.
    “Not prior to his death, no,” he said.
    Not prior to his death. I thought about that, about all of the unspoken implications. If Tom and Bryan were not connected prior to Bryan’s death, then they must have been connected after his death. For the life of me, I couldn’t guess what that meant.
    I tried a different approach.
    “Tom, do you know James Sparks, the man who killed my husband?”
    Tom didn’t reply, so I looked up at him. Clearly, there was anguish on his face.
    “Yes,” he whispered.
    Our eyes held. My instincts had been right. James Sparks was the man Tom had spoken of in the hospital, when he said James may be the one behind bars, but all of our lives irrevocably were changed that day.
    “How did you meet him?”
    “Um…we were introduced.”
    “How long have you known him?”
    “About ten years.”
    “What was your connection with James Sparks at the time of Bryan’s death?”
    “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question.”
    “Do you still keep in contact with him?”
    “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question.”
    I let out a frustrated breath.
    “What about me?” I asked. “How is it that you came to offer