Tamsin merely looked at her blankly, eyes wide and blue and curious.
Chace thought her heart would break then, that her daughter couldn’t remember her. But Val saw it, too, and understood.
“It’s your face, love,” Val told her softly. “She doesn’t recognize you.”
Chace propped her crutches against the side table, nodding, still drinking in the sight of her daughter. Ten days had passed since she’d seen her last, and Chace was stunned by how much Tamsin had grown.
“Hello, Tam,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”
Tamsin dropped the ball she was holding, struggling to her feet, her face lighting with an openmouthed smile. She wobbled like a drunk, then lurched forward, arms out, a miniature Frankenstein’s Monster, babbling happily.
Chace knelt and caught her in her arms, and held her until she was certain her heart wouldn’t break.
She stayed in Barnoldswick for the week, and one night, after putting Tamsin to bed, sat with Val at the kitchen table, and explained her intentions. She was going to return to work, and that required her moving back to London, and she wanted Tamsin with her. She would hire a nanny, someone to live in and take care of her daughter during the day and sometimes the night, if need be.
Valerie nodded, failing to hide her disappointment or her hurt. “If you think it’s best, then.”
“It’s what’s best for me, and in the long run, I think that makes it best for Tam as well,” Chace said. “I’ll be traveling again, though. I don’t know how much, and I’ll never know when. But if you’re around, I’d like it so that Tamsin stayed with you while I’m away.”
“Here? Or in London?”
“Whichever you’d rather, Val.”
“Don’t much care for London.”
“Then here, by all means.”
Val considered, then nodded. “She’s my granddaughter, and far as I’m concerned, Tara, you’re my daughter- in-law. You’ll always have me, the both of you.”
“You’ve been generous beyond reason, Val, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
Val reached for her hand on the table, resting beside her mug of tea. Her touch was warm and soft and dry, and the look she gave Chace was grave.
“And this is what you want? What you truly want?”
“It is.”
“And it’s the same work, the same work you and my Tom were doing before?”
“Yes.”
“Either you’re good at it, or you’re a glutton for punishment, Tara. For Tamsin’s sake, and for yours, I hope you’re good at it.”
“I’m very good at it,” Chace told her.
And so she returned to London.
Her feet had recovered enough that she could walk on them without the crutches for short stints. It made it easier to go about the shopping, the acquisition of those things that would be required to turn her bachelorette’s house into a home for a single mother. She contacted a service, set about interviewing nannies, and before the end of the second week had spoken with three she liked the looks of, forwarding their names to the Firm’s Security Division for the appropriate checks. Two of them came back clean, and Chace hired them both, a young woman from Salisbury named Missi, twenty-one years old and studying art history, and an older girl who’d grown up in Bristol, named Catherine, who was planning on a career in early childhood education.
Then she called Val and asked her to bring Tamsin down to London, to be with her mother.
By the time she reported for work on the thirteenth of March, the shakeout had already occurred, and she entered the Pit to find Lankford and Poole already there, greeting her with applause. The Minder One Desk had been cleared of the previous occupant’s personal belongings, and a bouquet of flowers sat at its center, waiting for her. Chace had brought her go-bag, and as she felt her cheeks redden with the applause, turned and put it up on the shelf, beside Poole’s and Lankford’s.
“Like your bouquet?” Lankford asked.
“His idea,” Poole said. “He’s a romantic.”
Chace moved to the desk, took a closer look, then burst out laughing. They weren’t flowers at all, but rather an artfully arranged display of condoms in red, purple, yellow, green, and blue, most of them out of their wrappers, folded and tied to appear as blossoms. A card was taped to the vase, reading, “For God’s sake, be careful!”
“We got you the extra-big bouquet, boss,” Lankford told her. “Forty-eight, jumbo-size.”
“She’ll go through them in a week,” Poole said.
“I’m not like that anymore,” Chace said, mildly. “I’m a mother, I have to set an example.”
“Half a week, then,” Poole said.
The internal circuit on her desk rang, the same infinitely annoying bleat she remembered, and all of them, Chace, Lankford, Poole, stared at the phone.
“Minder One,” Chace said when she answered, and she felt herself smiling, and saw Lankford and Poole quietly laughing at her as a result.
“Come and see me,” Crocker said, and hung up.
So she’d gone to Crocker’s office, and he’d given her a seat, and had redrawn the map of the Firm for her. There was no Frances Barclay, there was Alison Gordon-Palmer. Simon Rayburn was no longer D- Int, but instead was awaiting confirmation of promotion to Deputy Chief. Paul Crocker was D-Ops, Tara Chace was Minder One, and Kate Cooke still believed she ran SIS.
“I’m sorry,” Chace told him when he was finished.
“For? You did your job, you did it damn well, and you didn’t even know what the bloody job really was.”
“About Rayburn. I know you wanted the promotion.”
Crocker took out a cigarette, then offered her the pack. Chace hesitated, then accepted.
“I can live with it,” he told her. “Besides, you’re not ready to take over for me yet, and if I move on, I want you to fill this desk.”
“I’m flattered,” Chace said. “I think.”
“It’s not because I like you,” Crocker said. “It’s because you can’t be any worse at it than Fincher would have been.”
“And where is Mr. Fincher now?”
“Out at the School, taking a refresher before his reassignment.”
“He’s being reassigned?”
Crocker pulled a face. “Our new lady mistress on the floor above feels he is a damn fine officer. For that reason, he’ll soon be off to parts unknown to head up the station there. As long as he doesn’t end up as the new D-Int, I’ll be content.”
“Is that all, sir?”
“No.” Crocker shoved the stack of folders on his desk toward her. “This is homework. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do, Minder One.”
Chace laughed, taking the stack and getting to her feet. “Then I’ll start reading. You know where to find me.”
“Yes,” Crocker agreed. “I do.”
So it was that, six months after she’d returned from Tashkent, Tara Chace waited in D-
