“I also know your name,” he says.
EPILOGUE
I drive to a country house in rural Virginia, about twenty miles outside of Charlottesville. Mitchells gave me an address where Risina would be safe, and if he’s lying, I’m hard pressed to figure out his play. They could’ve killed me in the aftermath of the Spilatro climax instead of freeing a bullet from my chest and sewing me up, instead of making me whole. They don’t want me angry; there’s no benefit to it. Right?
Farms with red barns, with tin silos, with white-post fences, with black cattle, with green grass in wide pastures pass outside my windshield like Ansel Adams photographs of a forgotten America. The sun hangs on the horizon and burns the clouds above it a malevolent red. The contrast between the farms and the sky is disquieting, as though doom hangs over placidity like a guillotine waiting to drop.
She is a tiger. She said it and she did the job and when the time came to pull the trigger, she fired the gun into a woman’s face at point-blank range. She didn’t shy away from the mess when it interfered with our life and everything she’s done since Smoke showed up has been smart and efficient.
This could work. This could be better than how I imagined it. She’ll have Archie to guide her and the intel of the Agency to supplement her, and I can’t discount her innate passion and quick mind. She could be a great fence, the best I’ve had since Pooley. She’ll surpass Archie in short order, I’m sure of it. I won’t just be a horse in a stable to her, I’ll be her only horse, and she’ll do whatever it takes to ensure my success, the way Pooley used to perform the job when I first started. It can work. It will work.
Did the bloodshed change her? Did the battle sour her stomach? Will she want to disappear again, now that she’s seen up close what a pistol can do to a human face? Will she want to run? Will she want to flee alone?
The road turns to gravel as the GPS tells me I have less than a mile to go. I’m nervous in a way I haven’t been for a long time. We’ve been driving forward since this started, no time to catch our breath, no time to reflect, and now that she’s had some moments apart, will she pull out of the spiral? Will she emerge like a repatriated prisoner, free from Stockholm Syndrome, with a fresh realization that this life was an illusion, a fantasy, and the reality is so much worse?
No. It can’t be that way. I know her. Everything we’ve shared since I walked into that bookstore in Rome has been real, permanent, fervid. We were already solid, but now that we’ve been through the trenches together, we’re unbreakable.
She can be a great fence. She proposed it and she meant it. She said I have to be all the way in with her and I am. I swear I am. We can do this together.
I reach a red mailbox with the address number stenciled in black on its side and turn the car through a gate, bump over a cattle guard, and head down a bumpy road through a forest. She proposed it. She knows my fearful symmetry. She always knew it.
The road clears and on a hill sits a simple white house.
She must hear me coming because she’s through the front door, blinking away tears as soon as I’m out of the driver’s side. We meet halfway up the sidewalk and are in each other’s arms and it’s as it was, as it will be. This can work. We can make it work. She can be my fence, and I’ll be her assassin and we’ll make it work.
She pulls back, her face wet, her eyes shiny.
“I’m pregnant,” she says.
