“Oh my,” Marilyn says, real concern in her voice. “That’s a nasty boo-boo. Are you okay?”
I touch my cheek. “Yes, I’m fine. Just had a little accident over the weekend.”
“Can I touch it?” David asks. He’s six years old and apparently acts just like every other boy his age, and while he can be a brat most times, I love the kid.
“David,” Marilyn says, turning back to her paper, “don’t be crass.”
Casey says, “What does crass mean?”
“It’s the green stuff outside, stupid,” David says.
“David,” Marilyn warns.
“Don’t call me stupid!” Casey says, tears already threatening in her blue eyes.
I turn to Casey just as Marilyn stands and turns to David. Marilyn does her stern mother thing while I do my gentle nanny thing. I smile at Casey and tell her she’s not stupid, of course she’s not. Then I widen my eyes, jerk my head back toward David, and whisper that if anyone’s stupid, it’s her brother.
Casey giggles, the tears forgotten.
Sylvia comes over to the table with a cup of coffee. “Here you are, Miss Holly, with cream just as you like. Would you care for anything else?”
“I’m good. Thanks, Sylvia.”
Sylvia smiles, nods and turns away, becomes part of the background like she’s paid to be.
Whatever Marilyn said to David, it seems to have had the proper effect. The boy has his head lowered, nods once, then twice. When Marilyn steps back, she says, “Now, David, what do you have to say to your sister?”
He mumbles, “I’m sorry, Casey.”
Casey looks at me, the ghost of a smile on her soft face. I nod at her and she looks back at her brother across the table. “That’s okay.”
Marilyn is already sitting down, giving me that look of hers that says Just wait until you get a pair of your own. It must be a mother thing, something I’ve seen many times from other women, but the truth is I don’t plan on ever becoming a mother.
“Oh yes, before I forget,” she says suddenly, looking back up at me. “Walter told me he’d like to see you when you arrived. Something about this month’s pay.”
As far as Marilyn knows, all her husband ever talks to me about is my monthly rate. At the start she had wanted to hire someone with experience, who had a degree in child psychology and whatever else, but Walter had done his best to convince her that I would work out, and while she’d had trepidation at first, she now seems happy with me.
God only knows what she’d think if she knew I almost always carry a gun with me while I watch her children.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“He should be in his study. Don’t bother knocking. He’s expecting you.”
Sixteen
But I do knock. I knock and I wait and then I knock again. Finally I hear Walter’s deep voice—“Come in”—and I open the door and step inside.
Walter sits behind his large oak desk, typing at his laptop. The window is behind him, letting in the morning light, making it impossible at first to see his face.
“Shut the door, Holly.”
I shut the door.
“Take a seat.”
“I’d rather stand.”
He looks up from his computer screen for the first time, giving me a hard look.
I return the hard look and say, “Let’s just get this over with.”
He stares at me for another moment, this man in his fifties with intense eyes and somber face and graying hair shaved in a crew cut. He’s wearing his uniform with the three stars, and for an instant I’m reminded of the first time I met him and he only had two stars, the both of us on the other side of the world, when he walked into the room the MPs had locked me in after they arrested me.
Walter keeps watching me, not saying anything, so I decide to break the silence.
“Going to the Pentagon today?”
“I have to make an appearance once in a while. And apparently a known terrorist was hit in Las Vegas over the weekend. I need to be briefed on that.”
Walter typically wears suits; he only wears his uniform for special functions, meetings, or when he has debriefings at the Pentagon.
“Well?” I ask.
“Well what?”
“Goddamn it, Walter.”
“Hmm.” He glances down at his screen, moves the cordless mouse around, then shuts the laptop. “‘Goddamn it, Walter.’ I guess that’s appropriate enough for the situation.”
“What do you want me to say? I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
He stands up, turns away from me, stares out the window with his hands behind his back.
“No, Holly, you didn’t fuck up. The mission was a success. The target was eliminated and the prize was recovered and brought home safely.”
“If I could go back and change things, I would.”
“Don’t be childish.”
“But—”
He turns away from the window. “Scooter is dead. There’s no changing that.”
“I never should have gone out there.”
“You mean Vegas or to that compound in the middle of the desert?”
I say nothing.
“We’ve been here before, Holly. At this same exact spot, this same exact conversation. And to be quite frank, I’m tired of telling you the same thing again and again.”
He moves around the desk, walks up to me and places his hands on my shoulders. This close I can smell his aftershave and the Listerine he’d gargled after brushing his teeth.
“You never used to be like this. You always followed the rules. You always knew not to involve yourself in anything but the mission. But ever since what happened two years ago, you’ve been on this … this gradual decline. I’ve tried to ignore it, hoping you’d wake up to reality, change back to what you used to be.”
I shift my eyes away from his.
