Authors: Nora Roberts
In the sunstruck afternoon in the Gleasons’ backyard, that avalanche roared over her.
“So, are you thinking next spring?” Mya asked her.
“Spring? I …”
“No.” Under the picnic table, Brooks patted Abigail’s thigh. “I’m not waiting that long.”
“Spoken like a man who doesn’t have the first clue what goes into doing a wedding. We had ten months for Sybill and Jake’s—and worked like dogs to get it all done in time.”
“But it was beautiful,” Sybill reminded her.
“I assumed we’d just go to the courthouse,” Abigail began, and was rewarded with stereo gasps from the women.
“Bite your tongue.” Mya pointed at her.
Sybill gave her sister an elbow in the ribs. “You want something simple.”
“Yes. Very simple.” She looked at Brooks.
“Simple, sure. I’m betting there’s a lot of simple between a run to the courthouse and the diamond jubilee forming in Mya’s mind. I’m thinking in the fall—time enough for a little fuss, not enough time to rent a circus tent.”
“That’s less than six months! Less than six months to find the perfect dress, book the right venue, interview caterers, photographers—”
“Photographers?” Abigail interrupted.
“Of course. You can’t have your uncle Andy taking your wedding photos.”
“I don’t have an uncle Andy.” And she’d always avoided photographs. Ilya had recognized her in New York, in a matter of seconds, on the street. If a photo of her somehow got online or in a newspaper it could—likely would—lead to discovery and disaster.
“Which leads back to the guest list. I can help with our side. I have the list from mine, and from Syb’s. How many do you estimate from your side?”
“There’s no one.”
“Oh, but—” Mya didn’t need an elbow jab or the warning look from Brooks to cut herself off. She rolled on as if “no one” was perfectly normal. “That sure keeps it simple. What we need is a planning session, a ladies’ lunch—because you don’t have anything to do about it,” she told Brooks with a wide grin. “Weddings flow from the bride.”
“Fine with me.”
“I know this wonderful bridal boutique down in Little Rock,” Mya continued.
“White Wedding,” Seline put it. “It
is
wonderful. I found my dress there.”
“What we need to do is take a day, all us girls, go down there, check it out, have lunch, brainstorm. I’ll have to check my calendar.” Mya
dug out her phone, began to swipe screens. “Maybe we can set it up for next week.”
“Next week,” Abigail managed.
“You always were a bossypants.” Sunny sat back, sipping a margarita. “That’s one of the things we love about her, Abigail, but it takes some getting used to. Why don’t you give her a few days, Mya, to get settled in to being engaged?”
“I am bossy.” Mya laughed and tossed back her hair when her husband snorted into his beer. “And when we’re sisters? I’ll be even worse.”
“She means it,” Sybill said.
Abigail heard the quiet hum of the vibrating phone in Brooks’s pocket. When she looked down, he eased it out, checked the display. “Sorry, need to take this.” His eyes met hers briefly as he stood up, walked some distance off.
It seemed surreal. Mya continued to talk about wedding boutiques, flowers, and plated meals or buffets, and all the while Brooks talked to Anson about decisions that would put her life on the line.
Like the snowball again, she thought, rolling, rolling, growing, picking up weight and mass until it took the mountain with it.
No stopping it now, she reminded herself. She was committed to pushing through.
“Are you all right?” Sybill asked her.
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. It’s just a little overwhelming.”
“And it’s just getting started.”
“It is.” Abigail glanced over at Brooks. “It’s started.”
Brooks walked back, laid a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, I have to take care of this.”
“Go be a cop, then,” Mya advised. “We can drop Abigail home on our way.”
“Oh.” For an instant, Abigail’s mind went blank. “Thank you, but I really need to get home to some work I left pending.”
“Then I’ll call you tomorrow, or e-mail you. E-mail might be better, I can send you some links. Just give me your—”
“Mya.” Sunny arched her eyebrows. “What happened to those few days to settle?”
“All right, all right. I can’t help it if I was born to plan and organize parties. You e-mail me when you’re settled.” Grabbing a paper napkin, Mya wrote down her e-mail address.
Abigail had a feeling it would take more than a few days. “I will. Thank you so much for the afternoon.”
“Abigail.” Sunny crossed to her, hugged her hard, and whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll run interference with Mya for a week or two.”
It took some time. Apparently, people didn’t just say good-bye at a barbecue. They hugged, or stretched out a conversation, made future plans, played with the dog. Even called out and waved once you got as far as the car.
“Before you tell me what Captain Anson said, I want to say your family is …”
“Loud, pushy?”
“No. Well, yes, but that’s not what I want to say. Affectionate. Naturally so. I understand you better now, for having spent the afternoon with them. Your mother … Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t like it.”
“Okay.”
“Your mother put her arm around my shoulders. It was just a careless gesture. I doubt she gave it a thought, and has done the same, countless times, to others. But when she did that, to me, I felt—I thought—So this is what a mother does. She touches you, or holds you, just because. For no important reason. And then I thought, If there are children, I want to learn to be the kind of mother who can touch or hold without thinking, and for no important reason. I hope I have the chance to do that.”
“You will.”
“Anson talked with the FBI.”
“For most of the day. His take is, initially, at least, they’d hoped to do an end run around him, get to you. But he stuck with the out-of-left-field contact. They were careful what they passed on to him, but he’s dead sure they’ll be doing some surveillance on Cosgrove and Keegan.”
“Does he think they believed my story?”
“You’d laid it out, step-by-step, right down to what John said to you. And now you’ve been this very valuable source over the last couple years. Why would you lie about Cosgrove and Keegan?”
“It wouldn’t be logical.”
“No, it wouldn’t. They want to talk to you in person. They want you to come in. They promise you protection.”
“They want to question me, to make certain I wasn’t complicit in John’s and Terry’s deaths. If and when they’re sure of that, they’ll want me to agree to testify against Korotkii.”
“Yeah, and they’re going to want more. You’ve got an inside track on the Volkovs, access to data that can, likely would, put a lot of the organization in prison, fracture the rest.”
“As long as the data comes from an anonymous source, the authorities can use it. Once it’s known the data’s been obtained by illegal means, they won’t be able to.”
“No, they wouldn’t. They may be able to find a little wiggle room.”
She’d considered this, all of this. “I won’t give them the process, even if they grant me immunity for the hacking. I need the process to take down the network. They can’t do what I hope to do, not technically nor legally. I’ll be exposed again unless I can break their network and siphon off their funds.”
“Siphon off … You have that kind of access to their money?”
“I can have, to a great deal of it. I’ve been considering where to funnel it once I’m ready to transfer funds from various accounts. I thought substantial anonymous donations to charities that feel most appropriate.”
He glanced away from the road, gave her a long look. “You’re going to clean them out.”
“Yes. I thought you understood. If they have what’s approximately one hundred and fifty million in accounts to draw from, they can easily rebuild. And then there’s the real estate, but I have some ideas on how to dispose of that.”
“Dispose.”
“Tax difficulties, a transfer of deeds—some property the authorities can and will simply confiscate, as they’ve been used for illegal purposes. But others are rather cleverly masked. They won’t be when I’m finished. It’s not enough to testify, Brooks,” she said, when he pulled up at her cabin. “Not enough to put Korotkii, potentially Ilya, even Sergei, in prison. With their resources, their money, they’ll regroup, rebuild—and they’ll know I caused the trouble. I don’t intend for them to know how their network was compromised. And I don’t intend to tell the authorities. They couldn’t sanction what I plan to do.”
She stepped out of the car, looked at him over the roof. “I won’t go into a safe house again. I won’t let them know where I am, even if and when I agree to testify. I don’t trust their protection. I trust myself, and you.”
“Okay.” He opened the door for the dog, then held out a hand for hers. “We find a location in Chicago when that time comes. You and me? We’re the only ones who know where it is. We’ll stay there. For the meet, you pick a place. A hotel, I’d think, maybe in Virginia or Maryland, and you don’t tell them the location until you’re in.”
“That’s very good. You can’t be with me.”
“Yes, I can. As long as they don’t see me.”
It stopped now, every bit of it stopped, unless he was with her through it.
“I figure you can get eyes and ears in the hotel room so I can follow—and so we have a record, if we ever need one.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I should have, as that would be best.”
“You think, I think—that’s how it’s done.”
She turned to him, let herself move into him. “It has to happen fast, when it starts. Everything will have to happen quickly, and in proper order.”
She wouldn’t take him from his family if things went wrong. She’d learned that, too, at a backyard barbecue.
“I need to finish the program. This is only partially done without it.”
“You work on that, and I’ll start some research myself. I’ll find us a location for the meet.”
“Virginia,” she said. “Fairfax County. It’s far enough from D.C., and less than an hour from a small regional airport in Maryland. I’ll charter a plane.”
“Charter? No shit.”
“Perhaps you forgot you have a rich girlfriend.”
He laughed. “I don’t know how that slipped my mind.”
“If they want to back up the meeting, have me followed, we’d be able to lose them on those roads, and they’d most likely look at Dulles Airport, or Reagan National.”
“That’s a plan.” He kissed her. “Go play with worms.”
H
E STAYED OUT OF HER WAY,
for the most part. But, Jesus, after a couple hours on the computer, a man wanted a beer on a Sunday evening. And some chips, which he’d had to sneak in, as she didn’t have a single item of junk food in the place.
When he walked into the kitchen, she sat, hands in her lap, staring at her screen. He eased open the fridge, took out a beer, glanced her way, eased open the cabinet where he’d stashed the chips. Sour-cream-and-onion.
And she turned.
“I’ll be out of your way in a second.”
“I did it.”
He studied her face, set the beer aside. “You finished the program.”
“Yes. It works. Theoretically. I’ve tested it several times. I can’t actually run it into the network until it’s time, so I can’t be absolutely certain. But I am. Certain it will work.”
He grinned, came over, boosted her up by the elbows for a kiss. “You’re a genius.”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you look happy?”
“I am. I’m … numb, I think. I believed I could do it, but when I did, I realized I hadn’t really believed I could do it.” Because it ached a little, she pressed her fingers to her left temple. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Brooks. I can take down their network, corrupt every file, every program. I can shut them down, no matter what operating system or computer any individual uses. I can do it, and, doing it immediately after I siphon the funds, they’ll be ruined. Broken.”
Now she pressed her hand to her heart. “And before I do that, I can give the authorities enough to shut down a string of operations, use that to prosecute other lieutenants and soldiers, until the Volkov
bratva
is in pieces they can never put back together.”
“Humpty Dumpty them.”
She let out a breathless laugh. “Yes. Yes. I didn’t really believe I could do it,” she murmured. “If I had, I’d have done it before I agreed to testify.”
He kept his face blank. “Do you want to step away from that?”
“You’d let me.” As he often did with her, she framed his face in her hands. “I love you so much. You’d let me step away, even though it’s against your code. But no, I won’t. I can’t. It’s part of the whole, part of who I want to be. Part of who you expect me to be.”
“I only expect you to be who you are.”
“I expect more now. I expect more of Elizabeth. I expect more of Abigail. And I want you to expect more of me now. My testimony, my data, the hacking, the supervirus. It’s all one. When it’s finished, Elizabeth can go with a clear conscience.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them, smiled into his. “And Abigail can marry you with one. I want to marry you so much. I might even want to go to a wedding boutique.”
“Uh-oh.”
“I’m a little afraid of it, but I might.”
“
Now
you look happy.”
“I am. I’m very happy. As soon as we find a hotel, I could arrange for transportation. We could have your captain set up the meeting. We could start the next stage.”
“I’ve got the hotel. In Tysons Corner, Virginia. Middle-range, right off the highway.”
“I’d like to see the hotel’s website, and a map of the area.”
“Figured you would. I’ve got them bookmarked on my laptop.”
“We could book the rooms, arrange the meeting for tomorrow or the day after. It’s less time for the authorities to try to find me.”
“Day after. I need to rework the schedule so I’m covered.”
“That’s better. I have to make arrangements for Bert.”
“My mother will take him.”
“Oh. But …” She hesitated, looked down at the dog. “I thought a licensed kennel, with professionals.”
“You’re going to put him in jail?”