you.”
“Thank you.” She held out a hand to Garrison. “For everything. I’m ready to go.”
Garrison nodded, turned away to signal the go. She put the flash drive Abigail had palmed to her in her pocket, wondered what she’d find on it.
They surrounded her, hustling her through the building, toward a rear entrance where a car waited. They’d taken every precaution. Only a select team of agents knew her route, the timing of her exit.
Her knees trembled a little, and a hand took her arm when she stumbled.
“Easy now, miss. We’ve got you.”
She turned her head. “Thank you. Agent Pickto, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.” He gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll keep you safe.”
She stepped outside, flanked, moving quickly toward the waiting car.
Brooks, she thought.
The shot sounded like hammer on stone. Her body jerked, and blood bloomed on her white shirt. For an instant she watched the spread of it. Red over white, red over white.
She went down under Garrison’s shielding body, heard the shouts, the chaos, felt herself being lifted, pressure on her chest.
She thought again, Brooks, then let it all go.
Garrison sprawled over Abigail’s body in the backseat. “Go! Go! Go!” she shouted at the driver. “Get her out of here. I can’t get a pulse, can’t get a pulse. Come on, Liz. Jesus Christ!”
Brooks, she thought again. Brooks. Bert. Her pretty butterfly garden, her spot where the world opened to the hills.
Her life.
She closed her eyes and let it go.
Elizabeth Fitch was pronounced dead on arrival at three-sixteen p.m.
At five p.m. sharp, Abigail Lowery boarded a private jet bound for Little Rock.
“God. God.” Brooks framed her face, kissed her. “There you are.”
“You keep saying that.”
Dropping his brow to hers, he held her so tightly that she couldn’t get her breath. “There you are,” he repeated. “I may say it for the rest of my life.”
“It was a good plan. I told you it was a good plan.”
“You weren’t the one pulling the trigger.”
“Who else would I trust to kill me—to kill Elizabeth?”
“Shooting a blank, and still my hand shook.”
“I barely felt the impact through the vest.”
And still the moment had shocked her. Red over white, she thought again. Even knowing the blood capsules had released on her command, that spreading stain had shocked.
“Garrison was very good, and the assistant director. He drove like a crazy person.” She laughed, a little giddily. “Having Pickto right there, on the scene, knowing he’ll report to the Volkovs Elizabeth is dead, there’s no reason to doubt it.”
“And since you picked up the chatter about the bounty on your head, someone will probably take credit for it. And even if no one does, it’s official. Elizabeth Fitch was shot and killed this afternoon after testifying in federal court.”
“The federal prosecutor was very kind to Elizabeth.” Now Elizabeth was gone, she thought. She’d let Elizabeth go. “I’m sorry he doesn’t know about me.”
“He’ll work harder for the convictions not knowing.”
“Besides you, only Captain Anson, Garrison and the assistant director, and the FBI doctor who pronounced Elizabeth dead know how it was done. It’s enough to trust. It’s more than I’ve trusted most of my life.”
Because he needed to touch her, keep touching her, he brought her hand to his lips. “Are you sorry she’s gone?”
“No. She did what she needed to do, and could leave content with that. Now I have one last thing to do for her.”
Abigail opened her laptop. “I passed Garrison a flash drive with copies of everything on the Volkovs. Their financials, their communications, addresses, names, operations. Now, for Elizabeth, for Julie, for Terry, for John, I’m going to take it all away from them.”
She sent the e-mail to Ilya, using his current mistress’s address, with a sexy little text mirroring those Abigail had accessed from the past.
The attachment wouldn’t register. That, she thought with considerable pride, was only part of its beauty.
“How long will it take to work?”
“It’ll start the minute he opens the e-mail. I estimate about seventy-two hours before everything’s corrupted, but that corruption will begin immediately.”
She sighed. “Do you know what I’d like? I’d like to open a bottle of champagne when we get home. I have one, and this feels like exactly the right occasion.”
“We’ll do that, and I’ve got something to add to it.”
“What?”
“A surprise.”
“What sort of surprise?”
“The kind that’s a surprise.”
“I don’t know if I like surprises. I’d rather … Oh, look. He’s opened the e-mail already.” Satisfied, she closed the laptop. “A surprise, then.”
He
“Like a picnic? Should I pack some food?”
“Champagne’s enough. Come on, Bert.”
“He listens to you, follows you. I think he likes to because you sneak him food from the table when you think I’m not looking.”
“Busted.”
She laughed and took his hand. “I like holding your hand when we walk. I like so many things. I like being free. I’m free because of you.”
“No, not because of me.”
“You’re right, that’s not accurate. I’m free because of us. That’s better.”
“You’re still wearing a gun.”
“It may take a little time for that.”
“It may take me a while to aim one again.”
“Brooks.”
“It’s done. It worked, so I can tell you, putting you in those crosshairs was the hardest thing I ever did. Even knowing the why, the how, it was like dying.”
“You did the hardest thing because you love me.”
“I do.” He brought her hand to his lips again. “You need to know I would’ve loved Elizabeth or Liz or whoever you were.”
“I do know. It’s the best thing I know, and I know a great deal.”
“Smartypants.”
