5. Cali
CALI
I stand in my doorway holding the frame for dear life, because I'm pretty sure it's the only thing keeping me upright.
"Okay," I say in a voice that is somehow so calm, cool, and collected that I feel like I've been possessed by the ghost of Clint Eastwood. "Discuss what?"
The woman doesn't answer right away. She looks past me down the hall, toward the kitchen, where I can hear Isabella laughing about something and Hayden saying "no, you have to flip it FAST" in his most authoritative voice.
I can smell the pancakes. Butter and batter, warm and sweet, the best smell in the world.
She drags her eyes back to me. "You've got kids?"
I get the feeling that she already knows the answer. "Yes. Two."
"That's good. That matters." She tucks a hand in her pocket. "Is there somewhere we can talk privately?"
"Here's fine." I don't step back, don't invite her in, don't offer her coffee. She's not getting coffee, definitely not the good stuff I gave Ronan this morning. That is reserved for people who've earned it, and I don't yet know what this woman has earned.
"Fair enough." She reaches into her jacket, and I flinch before I can stop myself, but all she pulls out is a business card. She holds it out for me to take. "Special Agent Gia Mercer. FBI. You can call the field office and confirm. I'd want you to, if I were you."
I take the card. It's real. Or it looks real, which I've learned this week is not the same thing. The paper is heavy and the seal is embossed and there's a phone number and an email. I don't feel any safer holding it, though. Honestly, it feels more like a lit stick of dynamite.
"You've been watching me," I venture to guess.
She nods. "For a while now, yes."
"How long is 'a while'?"
"Longer than you'd like." She tucks her hands in her blazer pockets. "You stumbled into a web you never saw coming, and I'm afraid that it looks like you're now awfully tangled up in one spider's mess. Maybe a few spiders, come to think of it."
My stomach drops.
She means Ronan, of course.
"I should say," she goes on, "that I was impressed by your performance at the bank. You're a tough cookie. Put on quite a show. And your little doohickey made it all very easy to follow on-screen."
"It's my job."
"I know it's your job." She sighs, almost sadly, like it really is just such a shame that our paths have crossed like this. "Unfortunately, that's actually the problem."
I don't like the way any of this is going. My hand tightens on the doorframe. I'm feeling less and less Dirty Harry by the second.
"You should probably just say the thing you came here to say," I tell her succinctly.
"Alright. Straight shooter, no bullshit.
I can respect that." She squares up a little.
"The Bureau has opened an investigation.
It's real, it's ongoing, and it's a lot bigger than you.
It involves the profits from financial crimes moving through legitimate-looking businesses.
Front operations. Money that goes in dirty and comes out clean.
You understand what I'm describing, yes? "
I say nothing. But duh, of course I understand exactly what she's describing. Like I told her a moment ago, it's my job.
"There are two ways a person ends up in a case like this," Mercer continues, never once taking her eyes off my face.
"The first way, you're a victim. Wrong place, wrong time, walked into the wrong web.
I see it all the time. Somebody saw your skills and took advantage of you, and you ended up somewhere you never had any intention of ending up.
The good news about that version of events is that I can help a person like that.
You help me, I keep you safe, and when it's all said and done, you walk out on the other side with your life intact. "
I wait. There's more coming.
She pauses. Another sad, sorrowful sigh.
"The second spin of things," she says, "makes you look more like you're a participant. You knew. You helped. You built the machine that moved the money, and you knew what it was for all along." Her dark brown eyes are suddenly hard and unmerciful. "That person, we throw behind bars."
Does the doorframe wobble, or do I?
I think it's the nasty shock of déjà vu.
Because I've heard this before.
From Todd, actually, in this exact place, standing there in his slept-in shirt with his red-rimmed eyes, laying out the exact same dilemma.
One, you're a victim.
Or two, you're a participant.
Word for word. Almost.
"You look like you've heard this speech already," Mercer notes.
Goddamn, she's good.
"No," I lie. "It's just a lot to take in before nine in the morning."
She watches me and nods, but she doesn't believe me. She's like me, this woman—she takes in more than she lets on, and she files it away, but never once does she tip her hand.
"Let me ask you something," she says, changing tactics. "When did you find out what your company's tool was actually being used for?"
It takes me a moment to realize why that question strikes such a strange chord. Then, all of the sudden, I understand.
Yesterday—my God, I can't believe that was only a day ago—Todd said the agents who squeezed him knew how he and Ronan met, what he signed, all those gritty details. He said they asked about Ronan specifically and in-depth.
But this woman isn't asking me how Todd met Ronan.
She's asking me when I found out what my own tool was being used for.
That's a different question and it comes from a different place.
More to the point, it comes from someone who already knows the tool is being used for something illegal, and is just fishing to figure out how much I knew.
Todd's agents were building a story about how Ronan and Todd connected.
This woman is building a story about the tool.
Which means…
They're not the same investigation.
Oh no.
The world keeps getting less and less stable, but if there's one thing I've learned over the last two months, it's how to keep my game face on even when the floor continues to turn to lava beneath me.
Just like when I pitched Todd's betrayal like a Series A funding raise, just like when I first inhaled Paula's perfume and I knew, I clamp down all my feelings behind a vague, unemotional smile.
It's an essential survival skill. Maybe the only one I've fully mastered.
And I need it now more than ever.
Because the fork is forking, the dilemma is dilemming, and the pincers of two awful parallel paths are currently squeezing around my head.
There are two sets of people trying to hurt us.
Real feds, and fake ones.
This one on my stoop is real, I think. The ones who pressed Todd?
I can't be sure. Anyone could be anyone now.
Badges mean nothing, despite how much they impress my nine-year-old son.
It's all a game of cloaks and daggers, shadows and secrets.
I'm in very deep over my head—and the one man who could help me out might just be worse than the rest of them put together.
Even worse, he's currently twenty feet away, flipping pancakes for my daughter.
Mercer was right about one thing at the least: This is a very tangled web indeed.
"Ms. Meadows?" Mercer says. "You alright there?"
"Fine," I grit out, if only because I'm desperate not to give this woman any additional ammo that she could turn around and point at my head. "But I think this is all sounding very complex, and I'd like to get a lawyer before I keep talking with you."
Her jaw sets, just slightly. "You're being careful.
That's smart. That's what I'd do." She takes half a step closer, lowering her voice, and for the first time she sounds almost human.
"But that only helps you up to a point. There's a window here, and it doesn't stay open forever.
We've got two simple stories right now, Ms. Meadows.
I'd advise you to help me pick the one that's best for you and your family. "
The truth is irrelevant to them, Todd said. So the only thing that matters is what kind of story they can build.
Which is exactly what she's telling me right now, in slightly nicer words.
I want to laugh. Two months ago, my biggest problem was a number on a scale and the scent of perfume.
Things have gone rapidly downhill.
"I have kids," I say. "You said that matters."
"It does."
"Then you understand I have to think about them before I say anything to anyone."
"I do understand that. That's exactly why I'm here and not sending you a process server with a subpoena.
" She lets that land, gentle as a brick to the skull.
"You seem like a nice woman, Ms. Meadows.
I wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to you or your little ones. But like I said: Windows close."
I nod slowly, like I'm considering it, which I am, in the sense that I'm considering everything all at once and none of it is leading me anywhere good.
She starts to turn as if she's taking her leave. But then, in the most obviously rehearsed about-face of all time, she pivots halfway back on her heel. "I almost forgot to ask," she says. "Ronan Akov. How well do you know him?"
I shrug. "How well does anyone know another person in this life?"
Mercer chuckles. "You tell me. You've been seen around town with him quite a bit lately. You two getting chummy?"
It'd be so easy to feed him to her. She'd take it greedily, and with the proof I've compiled, I think even the high and mighty Ronan Akov would have a hard time escaping the FBI's jaws.
There's an entire computer just a stone's throw away that would incriminate him for many consecutive life sentences.
Ghost clients and shell corps, money coming, money going. Goodness knows he lied to my face enough to deserve the fate this woman deals him.
Do it. Give him up. Let her take him, so she doesn't take you and Hayden and Isabella instead.
I mean, my God—I stood in his office yesterday afternoon and told him I hoped I never saw him again! I meant it, right? I think I meant it.
But my heart decides my answer long before my head does. Is it smart? No idea. Will I regret it? Almost certainly. But is it ever a conscious choice to defend him?
No.
It's just a series of memories.
A man on his knees on the floor of my daughter's bedroom, saying goodnight to a caterpillar.
A blue swimming pool in an aquarium with the world at our feet.
A dark staircase and the shadow flying between me and the man who meant to hurt me.
It's a mess, all of it. But one thing I know for sure is this: I'll decide what happens to Ronan Akov. Not her. Not Todd. Me.
"Chummy?" I laugh merrily. "Not even a little bit. As far as I can tell, I hate the man's guts. I don't think there's a future for him and me, I'm afraid."
It's not defending Ronan. I want that on the record, even if the only record is the one inside my own skull. I don't say he's a good man. I don't say he'd never do the things you're accusing me of.
I just say, Not yet.
Not yet.
Not until I know exactly what he is.
Mercer studies me for a long moment. The garbage truck comes back down the street, grinding, and her eyes flick to it, then back to me, and I get the sense she clocks the man in the dark coat standing guard at the corner without ever quite looking at him.
"You know," she remarks finally, "in fifteen years in this gig, I've gotten pretty good at telling the difference between somebody who doesn't know anything, and somebody who knows a great deal and has decided not to say it." She tips her head. "You strike me as the second kind."
"It was a pleasure to meet you, Agent Mercer," I say icily. "But I have pancakes getting cold."
"I'm sure you do." She reaches into her jacket again—I don't flinch this time—but all she produces is a second card. When I don't reach out to take it, she sets it on the top step. "Just in case you misplace the first one. Remember, Ms. Meadows: Windows close."
Then she goes. Down my steps, past my hydrant, past my shrub, past the man in the dark coat who very deliberately does not look at her as she passes. She doesn't get in a car on my block. She just walks around the corner and is gone.
I stand there with two identical business cards for a woman I have no way of confirming is who she says she is, even though everything about her felt true.
Which is exactly the problem.
Everything about Ronan once felt true, too.
I go back inside. It's like night and day, because in here, the hall smells like breakfast and there's a kid laughing somewhere. Such a violently ordinary morning that I want to sit down on the floor and never, ever get up.
Ronan is at the stove when I come into the kitchen, but his body is angled toward the doorway and his ears are perked. He looks at me and clocks every minuscule detail of my body language in a second. He frowns.
But before he can ask, Bella brightens up.
"Mommy, look!" Isabella holds up a pancake with two lumpy ears. "It's Minnie!"
"Well, isn't that nice?" I say. "Eat up."
Ronan sets the spatula down as my daughter happily returns to her food.
"What did you tell her?" he asks.
I look at him. This man. This damn man. This whole enormous disaster of a man, standing in my kitchen in a slept-in shirt with a spot of dried blood on his collar, making mouse-eared pancakes for my children with hands that shot somebody on my stairs twelve hours ago.
One day, I'll understand him.
Today is not that day.
"The truth," I reply. "That I hate you."
He weighs that thoughtfully. "And?"
"She didn't believe me, either."