The Witness (21 page)

Authors: Nora Roberts

Sunny and Loren worked on one of the front beds, plugging in young, colorful annuals.

Both of them wore hats, his father’s a battered ball cap that went back to Brooks’s third-base days, his mother’s a wide-brimmed straw with a clutch of red flowers tucked in its ribbon.

He loved the way they worked together, hip to hip, with music spilling out of the screened windows and doors—all wide open, though there was still a chill to the air.

When Brooks pulled in, Loren pushed to his feet, rising up on his
long legs. Healthy color in his face, Brooks thought, easy smile, hair curling out from under the cap showing plenty of gray but still thick.

One day, maybe, he’d stop seeing his father as he’d been in the hospital before the bypass. Stop seeing him pale and gray and old and a little afraid.

His mother got to her feet as well, planted her hands on her hips. Brooks remembered the fear in her eyes, too. She’d talked a good game as they’d waited and paced and prayed. But the fear had lived in her eyes.

Now they looked like they were supposed to, he thought. Grubby from gardening, happy to see him, and still hip to hip.

He got out, hoped to hell he hadn’t made a big mistake, and retrieved the travel crate from the back of the car.

“Hey, there,” his father began.

“Hey, back. Hi, Ma.”

“What have you got there?”

“I brought you a present.” As he spoke, the contents of the crate woke with a yip that trembled with nerves and joy.

“Oh.” Sunny actually put her hands behind her back. “Brooks, I told you, I’m not ready for—”

“He comes with a return policy. You know Petie out at the county pound? He’s bending the rules just a little so you can have a look at the pup here, and he at you, before all the papers I filled out get finalized.”

“Brooks, I just can’t … Oh, God, look at that face.”

“Petie says it looks like he’s got some shepherd and some retriever in him, and God knows what else. But he’s got a sweet nature, and some balls. The literal ones have to go, that’s the rules, but he’s a brave little bastard.”

“Oh, Brooks. Loren, do something.”

“We ought to let him out, don’t you think?” Loren put an arm around Sunny’s shoulders. “At least take a real look at him.”

“Some help you are. All right, let him out of there. It’s not right he has to be in a cage like a criminal.”

“That’s the thing.” Brooks set the crate down, opened the door and scooped out the bundle of wiggling, licking, yipping delight. “He’s about ten weeks old. If he doesn’t find a home in another month, say, it’s curtains. The green mile. Riding the lightning.”

Deliberately, Sunny folded her arms. “Stop.”

“Dead dog walking,” Brooks added as his mother sighed and his father struggled not to laugh. “What?” Brooks held the dog’s nose up to his ear. “You sure? Okay. He says he wants me to tell you … ‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,’” Brooks sang in somber tones.

“Oh, give me that pup.” Sunny stepped forward, gathered up the dog, who trembled with the force of love at first sight as he lapped at her face. “Oh, damn it. Damn it. Damn it,” she said a third time, with the words soft and muffled against the pup’s fur.

Beside her, Loren gave his son a thumbs-up before he ruffled the dog’s ears. “Has he had his supper?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got everything you need in the car. That is, if Ma’s willing to save his life.”

“I should’ve at least tried out spanking with you.” She held the pup up so his paws ran in the air and his tail wagged. “Loren, he’s going to dig in the flower beds and poop on the floor. He’ll chew everything he can get those milk teeth on.”

“Oh, yeah.” Loren reached over, tickled the pup’s belly. “He’s going to be a whole world of trouble.”

She brought the pup down, hugged him to her. “Come here, you brat.”

“You talking to me?” Brooks asked her.

“You’re the only brat I see in my front yard.” When he was close enough, she grabbed his ear, pulled him in. “Thank you.” Then she laid her head on Brooks’s shoulder and cried a little. “Love finds a way. I didn’t think I had it in me to do this again, feel this again. But love finds a way.”

She sniffled, straightened. “I’m going to take him around back, show him where he’s supposed to do his business. Y’all can get his stuff out of the car.”

“What made you bring her a puppy?” Loren asked.

“Actually, somebody put the idea in my head, and I ran with it.”

“It’s a good run. Let’s get his gear.”

“I thought he should have his own, so it wouldn’t seem like a replacement. So I got it all,” Brooks said as they started unloading. “Toys, bed, chew bones, leash, collar, bowls, puppy chow. Got these papers. He has to see the vet for the rest of his shots and the—” He made snipping motions with his fingers. “I’ll take the copy back to Petie tomorrow.”

“We’ll take care of it. This means the world to her, and to me. I’ve missed having a dog. I bet he perks up old Chuck, too.”

“Might at least get that cat off the couch a couple times a day.”

“Might. Your mama’s going to be busy with that pup for a while. How about I toss some burgers on the grill?”

“I say—hell,” he said when his radio squawked. “Chief Gleason.”

“Hey, Brooks, are you down at your folks’ yet?”

“Yeah, right in the yard,” he told Alma.

“Mrs. Willowby’s reporting an intruder again.”

“Okay, I’m two minutes away. I’ll take it.”

When he clicked off, he shrugged. “Old Mrs. Willowby reports an intruder about once a week. The house settles, the faucet drips, the sun shines the wrong way on the window, they’re coming for her. I’ll have to stay for weak tea and stale cookies after I go through the house.”

“Then we’ll wait to throw the burgers on.”

“That’d be great. Shouldn’t take but about thirty minutes.”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

O
NCE OR TWICE A WEEK
, when her workload allowed for the time, Abigail gave a few hours an evening to personal business. In the normal
course of things, she paid any bills that weren’t on auto-payments as they came in, did her online shopping as the need—or sometimes just the whim—demanded. She followed the news, a handful of blogs on a weekly or daily basis, and even allowed a certain amount of time each day for games.

Since she’d designed and programmed one and hoped to do more one day, she felt she needed to keep abreast with current trends and technology.

But once or twice a week, she went hacking.

She checked on her mother by hacking into bank accounts, brokerage accounts, the hospital work schedule.

She knew Dr. Susan L. Fitch planned to take a three-week vacation in May to tour Provence. She knew which hotels Susan had booked, which private charter service she and her companion of the last several months—one Walter P. Fennington III—would use.

She knew quite a bit about her mother’s life, activities, finances.

They had neither seen each other nor spoken since the night Susan had left her with Terry and John at the first safe house in Chicago.

But she checked, off and on, out of curiosity, and to reassure herself the Volkovs had taken no reprisals in that area.

Why would they? Abigail wondered. They had moles in law enforcement. And those moles knew Susan Fitch knew nothing, cared to know nothing about the daughter she’d so meticulously conceived, then walked away from.

She checked on John’s family. She hoped he’d be happy his wife had remarried eight years after his death. He’d be happy his children were well and apparently happy. She knew where they lived, worked, attended school. Just as she knew Terry’s parents had moved to Sarasota.

She’d programmed an auto-search so any mention in any media outlet of the Volkovs popped on her computer. She followed them carefully. Ilya was engaged; a fall wedding was planned. His fiancée was from a
wealthy family with ties to another
bratva.
She considered it as a kind of merger, though she imagined Ilya was pleased enough, as the woman was very beautiful.

Hacking into Ilya’s computers regularly took more effort, more time and a great deal of research. But she didn’t mind. On every visit, she copied and downloaded all of his files, e-mails, stored them, reviewed all the sites he visited.

People like him thought they were careful, but they weren’t. She knew his business nearly as well, she imagined, as he did. She knew his life, his fiancée’s, his girlfriends’, how he spent his money, where he bought his clothes, his shoes.

Everything.

And she knew the Volkovs still looked for her.

She wasn’t a priority, but from what she could extrapolate, she was more than a loose end. Elizabeth Fitch was a principle.

She was to be found and eliminated. As long as Sergei Volkov served as head of the
bratva,
she would remain a target. And she believed, absolutely, she would remain one when Ilya officially took his place.

She knew Yakov Korotkii continued as enforcer. She’d compiled a list, one she added to on these visits, of people she believed he’d terminated. She knew—as she’d hacked those agencies as well—that the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and Interpol, among others, had similar lists.

But nothing stuck to Korotkii. He was, perhaps because of her, a highly favored and well-protected tool.

She also knew the FBI and the marshals continued to look for her. Or for Elizabeth Fitch.

She remained a witness in the murders of Julie Masters and Alexi Gurevich, and also a person of interest in the deaths of John Barrow and Theresa Norton.

John had spoken the truth, protected her to the end. She could trust no one. To the Volkovs she was a target to be terminated out of pride
and principle as much as any potential testimony she might give. To the authorities she was witness to the murder of two federal marshals, or, depending on the analysis, a fugitive who may have, out of desperation, boredom, madness, incapacitated one federal marshal, killed another, wounded one more, as Cosgrove had been shot in the hip during the melée.

Some theorized she’d initiated the gas explosion to cover up her crimes while she fled.

The plan to eliminate her had been in place, she imagined, for days, even weeks, before her seventeenth birthday. Keegan and Cosgrove had initiated it.

She had been meant to die along with John and Terry in the explosion.

She rarely thought of those first few months on the run, that first year in hiding, all the terror and grief. But she’d found her way.

She had a life now, and she meant to keep it.

With the dog at her feet, she tiptoed into Ilya’s accounts. He changed his passwords routinely, updated his security, his firewalls.

But she’d spent a decade studying, developing, programming systems—their ins, their outs. Whatever he built, she could break. It gave her a great deal of satisfaction to invade him, to peer into his private world, shatter his privacy.

Her only regret was he’d never know.

He’d never fear as she had feared.

But she cost him.

Every now and again, when she had enough, when she was sure of the data and her own safety, she found a way to leak bits of information to an agent with the FBI—one she’d thoroughly researched, one she felt she knew as well as she knew herself.

Whoever she happened to be at the moment.

She signed the brief, data-heavy memos
tvoi drug.
Russian for “your
friend.” There were files, profiles, searches, queries, on
tvoi drug.
Most believed the informant male, and connected within the Volkov
bratva.

Tvoi drug
had cost lives. Abigail hoped she’d saved some. Her greatest achievement, on her gauge, had been compiling enough information to generate a raid on a warehouse in South Chicago, and dismantle and destroy the forced prostitution ring operating out of it.

Now she studied recent activity. Codes, cryptic phrases, false names. She passed over information on basic computer scams. If the federals couldn’t handle those on their own, they didn’t deserve any help.

But the money laundering, she considered.

Scraping away at the Volkovs’ bottom line offered satisfaction. Maybe not the deep and visceral satisfaction of knowing she’d played some small part in freeing more than twenty girls from sexual slavery, but diminished funds made their business more difficult to operate.

Yes, the money laundering would be her new personal project. She’d consider it a kind of wedding gift to Ilya.

She set about compiling snatches of information from e-mails—Ilya’s, the accountant’s, a handful of other contacts. It amazed her, always, what people revealed with keystrokes, how careless they were. While she worked, she thought in Russian, entrenched herself in it. So much so that when her phone rang, she muttered a mild Russian oath.

She expected no calls, but a few clients seemed to prefer phone conversations or texts over e-mails. She glanced at the display. Frowned.

Brooks had managed to dig up her cell phone number. Not really that hard, but it would’ve taken some time and effort.

Why?

Cautious, she answered.

“Hello.”

“Hey. It’s Brooks.”

“Yes, I know.”

“What do you like on your pizza?”

“I … It doesn’t matter.”

“Pizza toppings matter, Abigail. They’re vital to the pie.”

She supposed he had a point. And she wished everything about him didn’t appeal and confuse. “I like black olives and hot peppers, particularly.”

“That’s a go. Any objection to pepperoni?”