[MAX]

 Harper's sunny disposition tended to be contagious. Between that and her gift of reading and responding to people on the fly, she could talk to pretty much anyone at any given moment.

Which was how she ended up engaged in a chipper conversation with the waiter at the Marina Ventura. It was also how we'd gotten the seat that I had been after — Harper could woo just about anybody, including the stickler of a hostess who chose where we would be seated.

I was still not entirely convinced that Harper wasn't some sort of snake charmer — one of the very few traits she and Phoenix had in common — but that wasn't a conversation I was willing to get into at the moment. I also wasn't willing to get wrapped up in whatever the waiter had said which had caused her to do her light-hearted, aren't-you-cute giggle, and I knew my expression probably said as much.

So I kept my eyes on my phone and inattentively scrolled through my messages, and waited for him to leave of his own volition.

That took about sixty seconds longer than I would've liked, but soon enough he was gone, with both of our orders scribbled onto his notepad.

Harper turned toward me with a toned down version of her enthused smile. "He was nice," she said cheerfully. She ignored the annoyed look on my face. "He said my Spanish was impeccable."

"Charming," I said dryly. I slid both of my hands into my jacket pockets, phone in one hand, and leaned back in my chair.

"Speaking of," Harper said, "I don't understand why you're so selective about when you will and will not be charming. I know you can be. I've watched it happen, maybe more than you realize. But then you turn around and have no social interest whatsoever." Her green eyes were piercing as she stared at me. I'd seen that look before, many times. Usually it was tainted by frustration.

Because I was a puzzle she couldn't put together.

"You're bordering on evaluating me, Harp," I returned calmly. "And we both know how well that works out." That being not at all. In the past she had flat out asked me if she could evaluate me intensively. I turned her down, and so she shifted gears toward trying to do so subtly.

Just not subtly enough that I didn't know what was going on.

It was one of the few downsides to her accompanying me.

We'd had one too many arguments that circled around the topic since then, and though I was not usually one to turn down a good debate, this was a conversation I was adamant about avoiding. Harper was almost as adamant about having it, but most recently she seemed to realize that any efforts put her on thin ice. If there was one thing she had learned across the years, it was that I was not patient.

So when I fixed her with a hardened look that clashed with the casual way I had spoken, she knew. Knew that I extended her a courtesy that no one else would've gotten. Knew that one more step in the wrong direction would not go favorably.

She exhaled in a silent sigh, and her brilliant eyes shifted across the dining area to where Tinsley was seated. Breaker was across the table from her, his hulking form enough to keep unwanted guests away. The two of them were more secluded, surrounded by empty tables and seated away from the windows. They had what was likely as much privacy as the restaurant could offer without kicking all of the other customers out.

That seclusion changed when the doors to the restaurant opened and allowed a single new guest in.

He was a young and handsome man. He was of average height with an athletic build that was alluded to beneath the expensive, streamlined suit he wore. His face was above average so far as appearances went, with full lips, a slim nose, and a strong jawline. His hair was dark blond and wavy, thickest on the top of his head, and parted to one side. He granted the hostess a smile that combined charm and ego in a devastating way — it was a smile that women around the world drooled over, and even from as far away as I was, the look in his eyes said he knew as much.

Everything about him was purposeful, intended to emphasize some feature or trait. The ultimate affect was the impression of perfection.

But nobody's perfect.

His stance was one which radiated prestige and commanded respect. His suit was light gray and fitted, and its quality further enunciated that he was one of the rich and powerful. Every move he made was self-assured and precise, from the nod toward Tinsley de Loughrey's table, to the wider smile he extended when Breaker approached him.

The two men shook hands before they headed back to where Tinsley was seated. The smile he offered Tinsley before he turned his back on Harper and I was different from the those which he had extended to the hostess and Breaker. It wasn't just that it was more suave — it was coy.

Tinsley's face lit up like a kid at Christmas, and the smile she extended was both flirtatious and eager.

"Who's that?" Harper asked. Her brows arched and her eyes were wide.

My shrug was dismissive, and my face was the picture of nonchalance.

Her eyes darted to me and searched my face. "Is that an 'I don't know' shrug, or an 'I refuse to taint your opinion for the sake of the analysis' shrug?"

"The latter," I answered. I maintained a passive expression. My phone vibrated in my pocket and went ignored. I turned my focus back to Tinsley's table. Her date — as every media outlet in existence was bound to call it — was now seated where Breaker had been.

Breaker stood off to the side, between them and the restaurant's entrance.

I averted my gaze just before Breaker looked my way, and shifted my focus to Harper. The smile that twisted my lips was brusque. "Thoughts?"

Harper's eyes darted between myself and the other table before she ultimately settled on the duo. "I think ... that this is the most attention I've seen Tinsley give anyone. She's definitely more interested in him than the painting she just bought." She absentmindedly picked up her glass of water, and managed to successfully take a sip without looking at said glass, or spilling it on herself.

I have more faith in her than it sounds like I do, just not so much when it comes to physical activity. Her mind may be one of the sharpest the FBI's ever had the pleasure of employing, but her body was more prone toward clumsiness than precision. It was one of the reasons she didn't have a gun.

"I'd say—" Harper started before she set her water down with a too loud thud that startled her into looking at what she was doing. "I'd say that ... whatever they're talking about is why she's here. In Madrid. And in this restaurant, obviously, but—"

"I got it," I interrupted. "You don't think he is the reason she's here?"

She frowned and looked back at Tinsley. "I couldn't say for sure," she admitted. "She didn't completely ignore her phone when he sat down, but she also isn't using it as obsessively as she has when she interacts with others."

She stopped there because our waiter had returned with both of our plates in hand. I managed to offer the man both a "Thank you," and a polite smile before Harper began to gush over how delicious the food looked and smelled.

Her overly-enthusiastic-and-sugary-sweet-tourist persona was killing me slowly.

By the time the waiter left, I had already begun to eat. Harper and I exchanged silent looks as she followed my lead, my face reading must you torture me like this, while her answering expression was a plain be grateful I'm here and you don't have to talk to him.

It's the sort of expressive communication that could only be achieved after too much time spent together in close quarters and dangerous situations.

We ate in relative silence, and her eyes were trained on Tinsley the entire time. She still managed to be considerably subtle in doing as much, but I knew something about the situation had changed when her brow furrowed.

I followed her line of sight in time to witness the young man leaving. I caught sight of his back for just a few seconds before he'd disappeared out of the restaurant entirely. When I glanced back at where he had been seated, Breaker had already reclaimed the chair. Tinsley didn't seem bothered by the change in the slightest, and had once more immersed herself into the digital world offered by her phone.

Harper, on the other hand, was confused. "He just— he left." She frowned, her brow still furrowed. Her attention shifted back to me. "He didn't even eat."

I shrugged; his lack of eating wasn't going to stop me from doing so, as I proved when I put another piece of sea bass into my mouth.

Her sigh was melodramatic. "You're impossible."

"I'm eating," I corrected between bites. "And you're supposed to be profiling."

She managed an equally over-exaggerated huff, coupled with an eye roll. But she didn't argue. Instead she went about multi-tasking and ate her cod at a leisurely pace while she watched as Tinsley began to pick at her own plate.

REZNOR: I HAVE CONFIRMATION ABOUT WHO SHE'S MEETING. YOU WERE RIGHT.