Excerpt from Trinity by Louisa Hall, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

After that, I had trouble sleeping. At work, I tried to stay focused. I remembered the major directives. Be overaware of the details, Pash said to us during training. Heed atmospherics. Your gut feeling is usually right. But after Warren shipped out, I was in a strange state. Not unhappy, exactly, just wakeful. Alert to the task of finding evidence.

Because, of course, at that point I had a good life. Even though it was wartime, I was happier than I'd ever been. I was lucky to be in the counterintelligence game, stationed stateside, living in a new house with my new wife. I liked our life together. May was so funny. So good at cards. After dinner, we sat together, and while she was racking up wins, she'd make clever jokes. And sitting there across from her, I was so happy, so I had to find whatever evidence I could find that Warren was wrong about what he'd suggested.

Then, after May and I went to bed, I often lay awake. That's when I realized how often she got up in the night.

More nights than not, she woke at some point and threw off the covers.

Silently, she'd rise from the bed. Then, gently, she'd pull the sheet back over her absence. Then she'd cross the floor and move out of the bedroom.

Once she'd closed the door, I sometimes heard water running in the hall bathroom. Other times I realized she must have gone somewhere else.

Sometimes she stayed out a long time. I lay there in bed, wondering where she'd gone off to. Did she sit at that kitchen table? Did she read a magazine in the armchair? Maybe she ventured farther. Maybe she was on the back stoop. Or maybe she was walking down the back alley, past the fences covered with jasmine, past the Millers' dog in its doghouse.

Later, when she came back into the bedroom, she was always so quiet. And where, I wondered, had she learned to slip so silently into a room? When had she practiced those noiseless footsteps?

At her touch, the latch of the door was a cat's tongue. I had to wait for an angle of moonlight from the hall window to open over the floorboards to let me know that she hadn't left me.

What a relief it was, that pale fan of light spreading over the floor. Then closing again. And May's shadow, returning to join me.


WHICH IS ALL ONLY TO SAY THAT MY HEAD WASN'T ENTIRELY STRAIGHT when I followed Opp into the city. I tried to note what I could. When the train pulled into the station, for instance, he was the first person out. I tried to follow, but I got stuck behind an old woman, and for a moment, out on the platform, I was almost worried I'd lost him.

But then there was that porkpie hat, sailing ahead. And then I'd maneuvered myself to see his whole body. He was leaning forward, walking with one hand stuffed in his pocket. Even now, I can see it so clearly. The way he walked with that jerky stride, like a big marionette. He moved in a way that was slightly unnatural, as if someone else had the strings and was awkwardly controlling the movements.

Even so, he moved pretty quick. I had to pick up my pace not to lose him.


"THE FUCK'S HE WAITING FOR?" FRANK SAID WHEN I'D CLIMBED INTO the De Soto. His crossword was folded up on the armrest.

Opp had come to a stop in front of the station. He was standing beside a fat man who kept mopping his face with a handkerchief. I took another photograph. I focused on the space between the big man and Opp. I was looking to see if they touched each other, even just slightly. A brushed sleeve, some kind of contact. Some kind of sign revealing that the fat man was Opp's contact.

But then a few minutes later, without so much as exchanging a glance, the fat man picked up his suitcase and exited the frame. When I put the camera down, I watched him maneuver himself into the low passenger seat of a black sedan that had pulled up in front of the station.

Excerpted from Trinity by Louisa Hall. Copyright © 2018 by Louisa Hall. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.