“Good morning. I made coffee.”
“I smelled it in my sleep. You don’t snore.”
“I told you I—” She broke off when his lips met hers.
“Just verifying,” he said, as he picked up one of the mugs she’d set out. “I borrowed a squirt of toothpaste.” He poured his coffee, and hers, watched her gaze lift to his. “Do you want to tell me why you have a Sig in your toothpaste drawer?”
“No. I have a license.”
“I know, I checked. You have several licenses. Got sugar? Oh, yeah, right here.” He dipped the spoon she’d put beside the mug in the sugar bowl, added two generous servings. “I could keep checking, this and that and the other. I’m good at digging. But I won’t. I won’t do any more checking unless I tell you so first.”
“You won’t check as long as I have sex with you.”
His eyes burned green with hints of molten gold as he lowered the mug. “Don’t insult both of us. I won’t check because I won’t go behind your back, because we’re—whatever we are at this point. I’d like to sleep with you again, but that’s not a condition. I want to keep seeing you because we enjoy each other, in and out of bed. Is that accurate?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like to lie. Not that I haven’t and won’t in the line. But outside the job, I don’t lie. I won’t lie to you, Abigail, and checking on you without you knowing seems like kin to a lie.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“That’s up to you. All I can do is tell you. This is damn good coffee, and not just because I didn’t have to make it myself. Pancakes?”
“Yes.”
“Now you look even prettier than you did ten seconds ago. Am I going to find another gun when I get out dishes and such to set the table?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the most interesting woman of my acquaintance.” He opened the cupboard where he’d seen her take out plates for pizza.
“I thought you’d just stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Once we had sex, I thought you’d stop wanting to be here, stop wondering.”
He opened the drawer for flatware, noted the Glock. “You might have forgotten, but the earth stopped moving.” He set out the flatware as she ladled batter onto her griddle. “It’s not just sex, Abigail. It’d be easier if it were. But there’s … something. I don’t know what the hell it is yet, but there’s something. So, we ride it out, see what happens.”
“I don’t know how to do that. I told you.”
He picked up his coffee again, stepped over to kiss her on the cheek. “It looks to me like you’re doing it just fine. Where’s the syrup?”
Abigail
What is character but the determination of incident?
What is incident but the illustration of character?
14
Waking up with Brooks, making breakfast, simply dealing with the jolt in her routine, threw Abigail off schedule. He’d taken his time with breakfast. He always seemed to have something to talk about, and keeping up jumbled her thoughts out of order. By the time he’d left, she was more than an hour behind on her plans for the day, not to mention the time she’d lost the night before.
Now instead of arriving at the market as soon as it opened, she needed to complete her research and documentation of the Volkovs’ Chicago–to–Atlantic City money-laundering operation. If she didn’t get the data to her FBI connection within the next two days, they’d miss the month’s major delivery.
These things took time, she thought, as she settled down to work. Time to gather, to decrypt, to correlate, to send. Her information had to be pure and absolutely accurate.
And maybe this time something would stick to Ilya. Maybe this time he’d pay. Or at least, as before, she’d have caused him trouble, frustration, money and men.
In her fantasies her work brought the Volkovs to ruin, exposed them, stripped them clean. Korotkii, Ilya—all of them—spent the rest of their lives in prison. Keegan and Cosgrove were discovered, disgraced and convicted.
And when she let those fantasies spin out, somehow they all knew she was responsible for making them pay.
Still, it wasn’t enough. Julie would always be dead at eighteen. John and Terry would always be murdered trying to keep her safe.
It was better to be realistic, and to do what she could whenever she could to chip away at their profits, their routines, their equilibrium.
She worked until afternoon before she was satisfied. Better to step away for an hour or two, she decided, and come back fresh for a last check of the data before she sent it in.
She’d do the marketing now, even though it was the wrong time of day. Just the wrong time. Then she’d come home, take Bert out for some exercise and training.
Then she’d recheck the data, program her series of bounces to her contact’s e-mail. After that, she’d do some hard-and-sweaty training of her own, as she’d want that physical outlet after completing her task.
With the evening free, she’d put a few hours into work on the virus she’d begun developing over the last eighteen months.
She changed her weapon, strapping on her more compact Glock, covered it with a hoodie. Soon the temperatures would rise too high for a jacket, and she’d have to use an ankle holster.
As she checked and reset her alarm, let Bert out to put him on guard, she considered acquiring a new gun. She could treat herself to some weapon research that evening.
The idea relaxed her, and she admitted she found it pleasant to drive into town in the afternoon sunlight, to watch the way that light played through the tender, unfurling leaves.
She caught glimpses of the delicate drape of toothwort, the bold yellow of trout lily catching the dappled sun along the stream bank just before the water took a quick, tumbling fall over rocks. Among those tender green leaves, wild plum added color and drama.
Everything seemed so fresh and new and hopeful. Spring revived, she thought, offered that new beginning of the cycle. It was her first full spring in this new place, this place she so much wanted to be her home.
Twelve years. Couldn’t it be enough? Couldn’t this be her place to stay? To plant her garden and tend it, watch it grow and harvest. To do her work, pay her debt—and just live.
Why should they find her here, in these hills, in this quiet? How could they ever connect Abigail Lowery with that young girl who’d been so foolish, so careless—and such an easy target?
As long as she stayed prepared, stayed vigilant, remained unexceptional—invisible—she could make a home and a life.
Stay safe. As long as she stayed safe, she could continue to chip away at the Volkovs and pay that debt.
She liked the town so much, she thought, as she turned onto Shop Street. She loved the pretty streets and busy shops, the color sliding into it all with pots and barrels of sunstruck daffodils and candy-colored tulips. Tourists added more movement, strangers passing through. Some very likely returned, another holiday or short visit. But they came for the quiet, the landscape, the hiking, the local lore and crafts. Not for nightclubs and urban action, the sort of entertainment that lured men like Ilya.
Her confidence remained high that she’d never see him or anyone connected to him strolling along the streets here, fishing in the rivers, hiking in the hills.
And surely if anyone from the U.S. Marshals, the FBI, even the Chicago police, visited here, she wouldn’t be recognized. She was out of place, and a dozen years older, her hair a different color and style.
If they looked, they might see. But there was no reason to look for Elizabeth Fitch here in the pretty tourist town in the Ozarks.
If the day came, she knew how to run, how to change, how to bury herself in another place.