Within an hour she’d recalculated, rewritten codes, restructured the algorithm. She ran preliminary tests, noted the areas she’d need to adjust or enhance.
When she pulled her mind out of the work, she had no idea where Brooks and Bert were, but saw Brooks had left the oven on warm.
She found them both on the back porch, Brooks with a book, Bert with a rawhide.
“I’ve made you wait for dinner.”
“Just gotta throw the steaks on. How’d it go?”
“It needs work, and it’s far from perfect. Even when I complete it, I’ll need to Romulanize it.”
“Do what to it?”
“Oh, it’s a term I use in my programming language. The Romulans are a fictional alien race. From
“Every nerd does.”
The way he used the word “nerd” struck like an endearment, and never failed to make her smile. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I do. The Romulans had a cloaking device, one that made their starship invisible.”
“So you need to make your virus thing invisible. Romulanize it.”
“Yes. Disguising it as benign—like a Trojan horse, for instance—is an option, but cloaked is better. And it’s the right way. It’s
“Then we have a lot to celebrate.”
They had sunset, and what Abigail thought of as their engagement dinner.
At moonrise, the phone in Brooks’s pocket rang. “That’s the captain.”
Abigail put her hands in her lap, linked her fingers, squeezed them. She made herself breathe slowly as she listened to Brooks’s end of the conversation and interpreted what Anson told him.
“He made contact,” she said, when Brooks ended the call.
“He did. She was skeptical, suspicious. I’d think less of her if she hadn’t been. She checked his credentials, asked a lot of questions. Grilled him, basically. She knows your case. I expect every agent and marshal in Chicago does. He can’t swear she believed he didn’t know where you are, but there’s not a lot she can do about that, as there’s no connection or communication between you.”
“But they’ll need me to come in. They’ll want to interview me, interview Elizabeth Fitch, in person.”
“You’re in control of that.” His eyes on hers, he laid a hand over her tensed ones. “You go when you’re ready. They talked over two hours, and agreed to meet tomorrow. We’ll know more then.”
“She’s contacted her superior by now.”
“Ten minutes after Anson left, she came out, got in her car. Again, he can’t swear she didn’t make the tail, but he followed her to the assistant director’s house. Anson called to let us know right after she went inside. He’s on the move. Didn’t figure it’d be smart to sit on the house.”
“They know I’m still alive now. They know I’m
“Both of those things are in your favor from their point of view.”
“Logically.” She breathed deep. “There’s no turning back now.”
“For either of us.”
“I want to work, at least another hour or two.”
“Okay, but don’t push it too hard. We’ve got a barbecue tomorrow.”
“Oh, but—”
“It’s easy, and it’s normal, and it’s a break I figure both of us can use. A couple hours away from all this.” He stroked a hand down her hair. “It’ll be fine, Abigail. Trust me. And we’ve got news. We’re engaged.”
“Oh, God.”
On a laugh, he gave a tug on the hair he’d just stroked. “My family’s going to do handsprings, I expect. I’ve got to take care of getting you a ring,” he added.
“Shouldn’t you wait to tell them? If something goes wrong …”
“We’re going to make sure nothing does.” He kissed her lightly. “Don’t work too late.”
Work, she thought, when he left her alone. At least there she knew what she was doing, what she was up against. No turning back, she reminded herself, as she sat at her station. For either of them, from any of it.
And still she felt more confident at the prospect of taking on the Russian Mafia than she did attending a backyard barbecue.
27
She jolted out of the dream and into the dark.
Not gunfire, she realized, but thunder. Not an explosion but bursts of lightning.
Just a storm, she thought. Just wind and rain.
“Bad dream?” Brooks murmured, and reached through the dark for her hand.
“The storm woke me.” But she slid out of bed, restless with it, to walk to the window. Wanting the rush of cool air, she opened it wide, let the wind sweep over her skin, through her hair.
“I did dream.” Through another sizzle of lightning, she watched the whip and sway of trees. “You asked before if I had nightmares or flashbacks. I didn’t really answer. I don’t often, as much as I did, and the dreams are more a replaying than a nightmare.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“I suppose it is, basically.”
She stood where she was, the wind a gush of cool, the sky a black egg cracked by jagged snaps of lightning.
He waited for her to tell him, she knew. He owned such patience, but unlike her mother’s, his offered kindness.
“I’m in my bedroom at the safe house. It’s my birthday. I’m happy. I’ve just put on the earrings and the sweater John and Terry gave me as gifts. And in the dream I think, as I did then, how pretty they are. I think I’ll wear them, for the good, strong feelings they give me, when I testify. Then I hear the gunshots.”
She left the window wide as she turned around to see him sitting up in bed, watching her.
Kindness, she thought again. She hoped she never took his innate kindness for granted.
“It happens very slowly in the dream, though it didn’t happen slowly. I remember everything, every detail, every sound, every movement. If I had the skill, I could draw it, scene by scene, and replay it like an animated film.”
“It’s hard on you to remember that clearly.”
“I …” She hadn’t thought of that. “I suppose it is. It was storming, like tonight. Thunder, lightning, wind, rain. The first shot startled me. Made my pulse skip, but I didn’t fully believe it was a gunshot. Then the others, and there could be no mistake. I’m very frightened, very unsure, but I rush out to find John. But in this dream tonight, it wasn’t John who pushed me back into the bedroom, who stumbled in behind me, already dying, blood running out of him, soaking the shirt I pressed to the wound. It wasn’t John. It was you.”
“It’s not hard to figure out.” She could see him in a snap of lightning, too, his eyes clear and calm on hers. “Not hard to put in its place.”
“No, it’s not. Stress, emotions, my going over and over all those events. What I felt for John and Terry, but particularly John, was a kind of love. I think, now that I understand such things better, I had a crush on him. Innocent, nonsexual, but powerful in its way. He swore to protect me, and I trusted him to do so. He had a badge, a weapon, a duty, as you do.”
She walked toward the bed but didn’t sit. “People say, to someone they love: I’d die for you. They don’t expect to, of course, have no plans to. They may believe it, or mean it, or it may simply be an expression of devotion. But I know what it means now, I understand that impossible depth of emotion now. And I know you would die for me. You’d put my life before yours to protect me. And that terrifies me.”
He took her hands in his, and his were as steady as his eyes. “He had no warning. He didn’t know the enemy. We do. We’re not walking into an ambush, Abigail. We’re setting one.”
“Yes.” Enough, she told herself. Enough. “I want you to know, if you’re hurt during the ambush, I’ll be very
