The Takedown

Chapter 15

15

In the morning, we rise way too early, restless. We spend an hour flipping through case files, cross-checking Vinny’s known associates, before Nick asks if he can buy me a quick breakfast.

I have never, not once in my life, said no to breakfast.

The diner down the road happens to be my favorite type of restaurant: a place where the tables are so sticky with maple syrup, you never risk placing your palms down flat; you may never wrench them up again. Green vinyl booths and a soda-fountain-style counter crowd the space, and there are seven different types of pie listed on the chalkboard—from blueberry to rhubarb. Nick and I order two enormous breakfasts: lobster omelets, hash browns, steaming cups of coffee, and a slice of banana cream pie for the table. It’s acceptable to order pie at 6 a.m., if you’re anxiously awaiting news. (Or honestly, anytime.)

The food arrives on thick ceramic plates, clunking down on the table.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way...” Nick says.

“That is my favorite opener from a guy,” I say, taking a scorching sip of my coffee, prepared to throw my shields up. “Especially after he sleeps with me.”

Nick quickly shakes his head, digging into his omelet with a tinny metal fork. “It’s not bad. At all. When we were fighting, I was surprised by how strong you were. You are seriously strong.”

I fork up my own breakfast with a flourish. “I can carry my groceries all in one go.”

Nick blinks. “I think that’s the most impressive thing you’ve ever said to me.” He checks the soda fountain clock on the wall. “Ten minutes?”

Once we left the hotel, I was afraid that the game might truly be over. Last night was the honesty. Nick’s body, wrapped around mine. Naked honesty in naked form.

I chew my eggs. “Let’s make it fifteen.”

We continue to unravel each other, bit by bit, until our omelets are well past cold. The server refreshes our coffees, a buzz working its way into my limbs, and I’m reminding myself what it means to understand a person outside the contents of a file. He knows, now, that I google “world’s oldest mastiff” on a frequent basis, my fingers crossed, to see how many years with Sweetie Pie we might have left. I know, now, that he also wants to adopt a dog—an elderly one, with clouded eyes—and give her the last, best years of her life. “I’d want someone to do that for me,” he explains, “if I were a dog.”

And I like that. If I were a dog.

On the car ride home, I actually let him drive. And change the radio station. Twice. He selects a folk Christmas music channel, a Bob Dylan impersonator belting out a gravelly “Feliz Navidad,” and I spend the time flicking through recorded gift shop surveillance (there’s a dock near the back, and I zoom in on that, with no luck); I jolt when we roll to a stop in the driveway.

“Home,” Nick says, cutting the engine, and it strikes me again just how weird this is. Three days ago, I was ready to jump-tackle him out of the shower, and now—now what? When I glance sidelong from the passenger seat, the frosted window gives him an aura, haloing him with bright, cold light. He looks beautiful. I mean that unsarcastically. As fully as I’ve ever meant anything.

“I’ll get my bag,” I say, croaky, checking my phone, clearing the sleepiness from my throat.

There’s a saying about spies: that after a long, undercover mission, they “come in from the cold.” The field is emotionally snow-swept, treacherous. If you aren’t exceedingly careful, it’ll give you frostbite. I’m thinking about that now, a thin sheen of cold sweat still clinging to my back, as we follow the snow-blown footprints back into the house, the heater turned up, the Christmas decorations twinkling on the tree.

This is the warmest place imaginable.

I’m still... I’m still struggling, aren’t I? I’m missing something, aren’t I? The van, the gift shop, the C4, the mole in the FBI. Pulling my cell phone from my jacket, I rattle off a text to Sandeep—my CIA handler—and ask if he’ll do me a favor. He owes me one. I was the only person who’d play Scrabble with him at the Macedonian station house. Sandeep is a Scrabble fanatic.

In the kitchen, I expect the sharp tap of Sweetie Pie’s claws, but there’s a pale blue Post-it Note with Grandma Ruby’s handwriting, saying that she’s taken Sweetie Pie out for a long beach walk.

“I can... make us some coffee,” I offer Nick, trying to get my mind right. With the case. With us. To figure out where Nick and I go from here. Because... I live in Washington, DC. Nick lives in Boston. He’s undercover. I travel all the time. It would never work.

But... his words are plowing through me again, looping on an endless cycle: You aren’t. Unknowable. Sydney.

“Yeah, thanks,” says Nick, and it reminds me of the first time we talked in the kitchen, when I offered him that gingerbread cookie, and he wasn’t quite sure what to say next. That unsettledness pulses between us. “Why don’t I bring our bags upstairs?”

“Okay. Good. Thank you.”

Nick lingers by the coffee maker, like he desperately wants to add something else—and I wait for it. Keep waiting for it. But it doesn’t come. He simply grabs our luggage with a nod, trailing upstairs, and I’m left in the kitchen, scooping out lumps of fresh-ground espresso.

The landline rings.

I answer it, fully in my head. “Hello?”

“Ruby?” comes a voice at the other end of the line. I recognize it instantly. Every cell in my body recognizes it. He’s older, grumblier, but it’s him. The sound knocks the breath out of me. My dad. My dad, who was supposed to know me, and can’t even identify the sound of my voice.

He thinks I’m my grandmother.

I don’t say anything. Can’t. Can’t summon words. My neck’s hot. I’m steadying myself against the countertop with one hand. I’m unprepared for this. After all these years...

He doesn’t seem to notice that I haven’t responded. That Ruby hasn’t responded. He just keeps on going. “Look, I’m... This is Dean.” His tone is ragged, weathered, like he’s speaking through twigs; what I remember of my dad is almost larger than life, but this man? This man sounds so small. “I know we haven’t...” A deep breath from Dad here. “I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but uh, Calla called and left a message. Campground director. He gave it to me, and I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry, but I...”

I slam the phone down onto the receiver, eyes glazing, pulse hammering, and—

He’s not coming to the wedding. Calla called him and he’s not coming to the wedding. He’s going to disappoint her, and I don’t—I don’t even—I don’t even know what to say to him. What to feel right now. What to feel besides nausea, welling up in my chest.

Dad. I just heard my dad.

And he didn’t remember you, Sydney.

A car door slams in the driveway.

In seconds, Calla barrels through the laundry room, boots thundering across the tile. My heartbeat is pounding in my ears, but I still pick up on it through the thud-thud-thud : The slight stamp in her gait. She’s too stiff. Too uncharacteristically silent. When she sees me, she doles out a tight-lipped smile before whipping open the fridge, pulling out a small jug of apple cider, and taking a drink right from the bottle. And I’ll have to tell her. I need to tell her that Dad called.

But how... how do I... how do I even get the words out? What do I say? How do I tell her that he’s going to disappoint her again? Again and again and again, and I take a big, silent sniff of air through my nose and wipe my eyes and—“How was your drive?” That’s what training does. I’m almost surprised how good I am. How normal my voice sounds when everything inside me is trembling.

“Traffic,” Calla says with a sharp sigh, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her curls are much less springy than usual; the snowmen dangling from her ears almost look like they’re melting.

A large lump has formed at the back of my throat, and I can’t swallow it down.

Calla shoves the cider back in the fridge. It sloshes as she wedges it tight into the door, between two fancy bottles of wedding wine. Sparkling, white, Californian.

When she turns to look at me, right there in the kitchen, another memory smacks me in the face. I’m living it all over again. Suddenly, we’re kids. Eleven and nine. Dad is out decorating the front lawn. We’re playing Sting by the breakfast bar, as loud as the radio will go, whipping our arms out like birds, pretending we’re in a field of gold . It’s Christmastime. I’m limping through the dance because my knees are all bandaged up. (Turns out, it’s a risky idea to ride your bike down an icy road when your dad has explicitly told you not to.) Meaty brown scabs goop under the bandages. I want to lift them and peek; I wonder how far I can see inside me, if I can glimpse the whiteness of bone, shining back at me like fish scales. Calla—littler, wiser—slaps my hand away with a gentle swipe. “ Don’t. ”

“It’s not gross!”

“It is!”

“It isn’t!”

“You have to heal , Sydney.” Her face is so tiny and so earnest and—

Pinpricks rise along the back of my neck. Tiny pockets of light are bursting in the corners of my eyes. I’m realizing something. I’ve been telling myself for years that I’m busy—I’m just so busy with work, with foreign operations and foreign spies—and that’s true. I am busy. But I also made myself busy. I’m in charge of that. The CIA didn’t say, “Join us or else.” Every time my sister called, I was responsible for not picking up the phone.

The CIA wasn’t an escape hatch from my family.

I told myself that, too.

But... wasn’t it? A little? Didn’t it sometimes feel good to protect myself, not just from the world, but from them ? From all the memories in this house? From the idea that maybe, maybe , I couldn’t fully trust anyone—even the people I love? And it all just... built up. All those years protecting Calla, all those years keeping her close, and I... never really dealt with any of my grief.

Just like Dad didn’t deal with any of his.

Maybe he was scared to be close to us. Maybe that really was true. Maybe he buried his wife and looked at his girls and said I’m going to be strong for you until he couldn’t, until he didn’t know how. He held it in. I held it in. He fled. I fled.

How could I have hurt Calla like that? How could I have been that kind of sister?

What the fuck have I done?

Johnny stamps through the laundry room next. No bags. No suitcases. They left them in the Escalade. Which means that he parked while Calla rushed out. Did they have a fight? About what?

I stand there motionless, like a reindeer in the headlights, thoughts stampeding through my head. My dad and I, we’re the same. We’re the same. My god, we’re the same. And I abandoned her again. Calla. Abandoned her by not telling her, not reading her in. Dad should’ve chosen us. And I sure as hell should’ve chosen my sister.

“Calla, you can’t just walk off like that if—” Johnny notices my presence with an abrupt halt, his nostrils flaring, and I give him a choppy wave. He swallows. “Hi, Sydney.”

I can barely speak. Barely breathe. The person who needs the truth the most—who deserves the truth the most—doesn’t have it. “Hey, Johnny.”

“Would you mind giving us some privacy for a second?” he asks me, not particularly rude, just presumptuous to kick me out of the kitchen, my kitchen, that he’s entered. Both of his hands are perched on his hips, and—

I haven’t told Calla about Johnny.

You haven’t told your sister, Sydney.

I approached this holiday as a case officer. As a spy. I haven’t approached it as a sister . Suddenly, I can’t feel my face. I start to close the bag of coffee with measured breaths, choking on my words.

Calla doesn’t have that issue. Her words are right there. Spewing. “This is her kitchen, Johnny. Do you understand that? This is our house. You don’t own everything!”

“Baby, you’re just stressed,” Johnny says, running a hand over his forehead, and ugh —the baby . The condescension. The just . “You need to relax. Why don’t you go take a nap or something? You could—you could get your nails done.”

This time, I do not rein in my glare. My head fully whips, pupils hard and completely readable.

“Don’t look at him that way, Sydney,” Calla snaps, reopening the fridge, grabbing the apple cider jug again and clutching it like a newborn. “I’m going upstairs.” She delivers the last line with a thinly veiled tremor, flitting away.

Then it’s just me and Johnny. I smile at him in a completely straight line.

He pops his tongue into the side of his cheek. “Do you know what that was about?”

“No,” I tell him, adding with my eyes, but I bet you do.

—

Every year, in the days before Christmas, when the snow has formed an icy crust on the ground, nearly half of our town gathers at the frozen-over lake near Al’s Lobster Shack for an afternoon of skating. Hockey practice has just ended, players swapping out their sticks for paper plates at the cookie table, and my throat has never been tighter. We’re supposed to meet Grandma Ruby here, but I’m stuck in a thought loop. You haven’t told Calla. You haven’t told your sister. You’re a bad sister. You’re the worst sister. The mission is about your sister, but you’ve put the mission in front of your sister! You chose the CIA. You chose the FBI. You did not choose her , just as your dad didn’t choose her.

And I’m struggling, grappling with it, can’t quite believe that I did that. I did that. Me. Following in Dad’s footsteps when I was sure—I was positive —that I was walking my own path.

After Johnny went to retrieve their suitcases, I took the stairs two at a time and knocked on Calla’s door. “Calla Lilly? It’s Sydney. Can you open up, please?”

She didn’t answer. Another knock, no answer. I tried wiggling the handle. Locked. Was she ignoring me? Or taking a nap with her headphones on? When I texted her, the notification never changed from Delivered to Read . Okay. That was fine. Totally okay. I should speak to her alone, anyway. Without Johnny skulking nearby. Without Gail listening through the walls. Gail . Gail and her wig and her crab puffs. She’s going to go ballistic if I tell Calla. When I tell Calla?

Now I’m just standing here by the ice. I can’t seem to move. Nick gives me a head tilt from one of the benches near the parking lot, where he’s sliding on a pair of skates, and my heart clenches. Those moments with him at the Ocean Harbor Inn roll through my mind—the press of his body, the way his fingers interlaced with mine the moment before I fell asleep—and I feel unbalanced. Off-kilter. My trust issues... those were always about my dad. They were never about Calla.

She never deserved that from me.

She deserved a better sister.

Can I repair this? Is it too late?

Tying the laces on my old hockey skates, I step onto the ice, gliding over to Calla at the south side of the lake. She’s showing off her engagement ring to one of our neighbors with approximately 30 percent less enthusiasm than she showed me. When I catch her eye, I give her a head bob, gesturing toward the middle of the rink. Skate? Please? Oh god, please? She gives me a strangely suspicious glance, then shoves on her mitten again, gracefully exiting the conversation and meeting me on the ice, the toes of our skates nearly clashing. There are at least thirty other people skating with us, some slow and stumbling, some whipping by. We slide toward the other side of the lake, away from Johnny. Johnny, at the cookie table. Munching.

“I tried to talk to you earlier,” I begin. I can’t break the news here, in this public space—but I can lay the foundation. Start to make amends for everything, for the things I can’t believe I’ve done.

For some reason, Calla laughs. It’s dry. “That’s a first.” Her words crackle between us. This is more than a reaction to Johnny, isn’t it? More than whatever happened in the car. “Is it something I said, Sydney? Like, I’ve been racking my brain for three years, trying to figure out why we don’t talk like we used to. You text me like you’re booking an appointment with your dentist. Like it’s just a formality you have to go through every six months, and it might be a little painful.”

Air leaves my chest. She could’ve kicked me in the shin with her ice skate, and it probably would’ve hurt about the same. “I am genuinely so sorry that I—”

“I already know what you’re about to tell me,” Calla hedges, stoniness in her voice.

“You do?” Somehow, I doubt that. I really, really need to doubt that. The alternative is that she actually knows who her fiancé is.

“Yes.” She halts, spinning to face me, blades clamping against the ice. Her facial muscles tense. “You don’t like Johnny.”

Well, she did get that right. My neck twinges as I breathe out, cold air snapping at my eyelashes. Honesty. The beginning. Here it goes. “I don’t.”

Calla rears her head back. “I’m actually kind of shocked that you didn’t fight me on that, or try to deny it, or... even look sorry about it.” Hurt barrels its way across her features. “I just don’t think it’s fair that you can waltz back into my life and judge my fiancé, because of what? Because he likes karaoke? Because he wore your bathrobe?”

“You don’t think it’s anything deeper than that?” I push, untangling my wool scarf at my throat, which feels like it’s trying to strangle me.

Calla picks up speed, skates slashing the ice. “Here’s what I think. I think that, three months ago, I met someone very possibly great—”

Very possibly?

“And he might know me even better than you do. The me now , and—hold on, let me finish!”

“I didn’t say anything!” I cry, tension rising between us.

“But you were going to!” Calla says, exasperated. We’ve sped straight to the far side of the lake, lined with ice-crusted trees. When she cuts a stop at the shore, I almost slam into her. “Look. I love you. That’s what you don’t seem to get. I love you. I would do anything for you, and this—this is not an equitable relationship. It isn’t. I feel like I keep giving and reaching out, and you’re taking the rope and swinging it back into my face.”

In my stomach, eels slither. The snow piled on my collar has started to melt in a cold trickle down my back. “I’m sorry that I ever made you feel like—”

Calla doesn’t seem to want to hear it. “I know that Nick is attractive. I get it. I have eyes. But we’ve barely spent any time together this Christmas, and I was trying to pretend like it’s a mutual thing—like oh, ha-ha, Sydney’s just surprised us all but I have my own life, I don’t really need her—but I do need you, Sydney. I’ve always needed you. Even if it’s just the little things, like reminding me to check my tire pressure. You used to do that stuff, all the sisterly stuff that showed you had my back where I fell short, but you haven’t been there for years. Know who has? Johnny.”

“Calla,” I breathe out, almost no air in my chest. I didn’t think... I didn’t think she really noticed those little things. But of course she did, and I... I’ve broken us. I’ve broken us in the same way that Dad broke us, haven’t I?

“Last night was my bachelorette party,” Calla says, voice starting to crack. “You’re my maid of honor. You spent half the night talking to Vinny. To Vinny !” She’s getting a little louder, but we’re far out of earshot. Yards and yards away from Johnny. Whenever another skater passes us, it’s with a fast, here-then-gone swoosh.

I swallow, steeling myself. “There was a reason for that.”

To this, Calla says nothing.

I go on. “There’s also a reason that I’m here for Christmas. It’s—it’s different from what I told you before.”

“Well, you haven’t really told me anything, so—”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“From what?” she scoffs, folding her arms. “You treat me like I’m this precious, breakable thing, but you know what? It’s hard to be a kindergarten teacher. It’s hard to think about what kind of world my kids are going to grow up in, and it’s seriously hard to realize that—sometimes—there is nothing I can do to protect them. Every day, I walk into that classroom, and I fight for them. And no one gives me enough credit. I’m not going to shatter, Sydney. If that was going to happen, I would’ve broken a long time ago. Like, when I saw everyone else with their moms, and we didn’t have one. Or when Dad did what he did. I may need you, but I don’t need you to protect me. See the difference?”

This wallops me. Because suddenly I do. There’s ferocity in her eyes, literal blades beneath her feet. Maybe I have... not been giving Calla enough credit? In this way, in others.

I straighten, pulse thundering in my ears. “When I say what I’m about to say, you need to not react visibly.”

Calla crosses her arms even tighter. “Okay, now you have to just say it. Say it right now.”

“You have to promise.”

“Sydney!”

“Okay.” I let go of a sharp breath and spit it out. “Your fiancé is a crime lord.”

It doesn’t register. It must not register. She squints one eye at me. “I’m sorry?”

I gather my breath again. “Your fiancé is a crime lord.”

“What?”

“Johnny, your fiancé, is a—”

“Stop saying the same thing over and over again!” she bursts out, far too loud. A skater a few yards away slows down to peer at us. “I understand the words that are coming out of your mouth. That’s not the problem. I just don’t... Is this some sort of elaborate wedding prank that I don’t understand?”

A sour taste invades the back of my throat. “No. It’s the truth. The Jones family owns more than a chain of coffeehouses. They’re criminals. They’ve orchestrated a string of heists all over the country, and in Canada, and they’re planning another one, a much bigger one, on Christmas Day, right when you’re—”

“No,” Calla says, adamantly shaking her head. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, does she? Her face is an open book, and for once, I’m fully trusting myself . My gut, my instinct about someone I love. I’m embarrassed—horrified—by how much relief fills my chest. “No, this is... That’s impossible.”

“I said the same thing when I found out.”

“And how did you ‘find out’?” she asks, liberally using air quotes, her mittens hooking in the air.

Another deep breath. Another truth. “I’m in the CIA.”

Calla laughs humorously. “No you’re not.”

“Cal. I am.”

“ Syd ,” she says. “You’re not . You’re an educational researcher. I’ve read your papers. I’ve driven past your office. With the big sign! Off the highway! You’re...” She examines me, different strains of alarm coasting across her face. “You didn’t hit your head or something, did you? When Nick fell on that black ice? I thought you said you were—”

“I didn’t hit my head. Calla, think about it.” On instinct, my gloved hands wrap around her shoulders, and I look at her straight in the eye. “I’m gone all the time. You know almost nothing about my life for the past three years. I live in Washington, DC. I work for the government. I can take down a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man without blinking.”

“Because you took a self-defense workshop,” she deadpans.

“Because I’m in the CIA .”

A rogue snowflake splats against Calla’s cheek. “This feels very much like when Edward Cullen was trying to convince Bella Swan that he’s a vampire. I don’t like it.” She’s deflecting. Anyone can tell. Calla’s tells have always been obvious. Her face goes practically immobile, expressionless.

I drop my hands, inhaling hard through my nose. “Nothing about Johnny is suspicious? Nothing , Calla? There isn’t anything you’ve seen in the past three months that’s made you wonder? Even just a little bit? Surveillance caught you near one of the heists, in Buffalo, so if there’s anything that doesn’t seem right to you...”

Her pupils flick back and forth across my face. She’s so stiff, she’s almost vibrating. After a strained thirty seconds, where everything around us almost stands still, she breathes out an “Oh my god.”

“Calla.”

“Oh my god .”

“Just... please keep your voice down. I know it’s hard, but you can’t react here.”

When she speaks again, her voice is so tense, it’s like a squeezed fist. “If this is true, which I’m not saying that it is... I’m getting married in forty-six hours. I’m supposed to get married in forty-six hours , and you had this alleged information, and you didn’t tell me? You kept it from me?”

Another ice-skate stab, this time to my heart. “Yes.”

“Who are you, Sydney?”

I’m bleeding. Bleeding out. “You know who I am. At the core. You know me.”

“I know who you were ,” she spits. “I know the Sydney who dressed up like a pelican for Halloween when I was nine, and I even know the Sydney who snuck Twizzlers into the movies with me in college, but this Sydney?” She looks me up and down, like she’s trying to determine if she’d save me from a fire. Answer pending. “I’m not sure that I do know her.”

I gulp down a croak. Because this is not about me. No matter what I’m feeling, it’s about Calla. “You will not have to marry this man. We will get you out of this. If you want to get on a flight tonight, I will take you myself. Fly with you. We can place you in a safe house if—”

“Will you listen to yourself?” Calla hisses, hardly containing her volume. “I’m not going to a bunker somewhere in Florida. Or Idaho. Or, like, Alaska or something. That is... that is not happening. This is not happening. I’m not even sure what you’re saying anymore.”

“Alaska is not as bad as you think,” I venture, knowing it sounds pathetic.

“Sydney!”

“Or Idaho.”

Calla’s hand flies to her temple, massaging it. “I need to leave.”

“Good. I’ll come with you.”

“You’re not understanding what I’m saying,” Calla says, redness rising to her face. She’s already backing away on her skates. “I need some time to... Because Johnny isn’t...”

My panic level rises as I follow her, closer and closer to the crowd. “Calla, whatever you do, you cannot ask him about this. Okay? We’ll figure this out together, but—”

“Sydney, please just let me be for one goddamn second, okay? I need... I need a Christmas cookie or something. My sugar levels are dropping.”

I swallow hard. “Yeah, okay.”

With those words, she leaves me in the dead center of the ice. Turns out, it’s a little longer than a second. After a quick glance over her shoulder, she sprints away from the cookie table, mashing the snow with her skates. I hightail it after her, but when I see her again, it’s from a distance; she’s alone in the Escalade, peeling out of the parking lot at least sixty-seven miles an hour. Dread gutters in the pit of my stomach.

Good lord, what have I done?