Chapter 9
Alice
Present day
“Hungry?” Carter asked as he and Alice pulled into a near-deserted rest stop. A food truck was parked nearby.
Alice shakily climbed off, followed by Carter. “Not thinking about my stomach at all, given that someone just shot at me, someone else tried to grab me, and someone in a cheap suit is right now searching my underwear drawer. Who were those people?”
“Which ones?”
“The van, and the shooter, for starters!”
“No idea. You get the plates on the car?”
“I was too busy being terrified. I saw the driver, but very briefly. The rest of the windows were tinted—pretty much blacked out.”
“Description of the driver?”
“A woman. Dark hair tied back, aviators.”
“Oh, that woman.”
“You know her?”
“No! You need to work on your descriptions if you’re gonna be a star witness in all this.”
“I was panicking! I’d know her if I saw her again. Could they have been the FBI, undercover or something?”
“Hardly their style. But I guess the Feds got their search warrant. And since you gave them the slip, they decided not to play nice about it.”
“I gave them the slip? You gave it to them on my behalf.”
“You came willingly.”
“Well, now that we can’t get my computer, I’m not much use to you, so maybe it’s time to drop me off at the Montrose Police Station.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, distracted by the blackboard menu. “Coffee?”
“Now?”
“As good a time as any.”
“Actually, yes,” Alice said, salivating. “Double espresso.”
When he returned with a takeout bag and two coffees, they moved the bike to a sheltered area hidden from the road by a stand of pines, and he took off his helmet and began changing the license plate again.
“Carter?” she said as she removed her helmet. “Couldn’t help noticing you were a little noncommittal back there, when I suggested you drop me at the police station. I know the desk sergeant. I’m sure she would—”
“I almost envy you your faith in authorities. Didn’t you read the book you’ve just written? Murder, corruption, blackmail?”
“It was … fiction,” she said, hating the whine in her voice.
“The people after you certainly aren’t,” he said, mumbling through a mouthful of burger. “I wouldn’t be going home if I were you. And we don’t know who we can trust in the FBI or the CIA or the cops. Anyway, the fact that we can’t get your computer makes you more valuable to me, not less.”
“I can’t imagine how.”
“You probably don’t know what you don’t know.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“For starters, are you sure Nika died of cancer?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“How?”
“How did she die?”
“How are you sure it was cancer? Was there an autopsy? I’m not being weirdly morbid,” he added, after noting Alice’s expression. “Former spies don’t always die of natural causes.”
“Well, I took her to oncology appointments, and sat with her while she had chemo, whenever I could get off work. They don’t give that to people who don’t need it.
Plus, I was with her at the hospital almost until the moment she passed.
Are you thinking of those Russian poisoning cases?
What do they call it—the Moscow Plague? Pretty sure it wasn’t that.
I know what cancer looks like. Her struggle wasn’t as drawn out as some, but by the end… ”
“By the end?”
Alice perched on a thick wooden post. “She looked like she was in her seventies, not her thirties. I guess there was no need for an autopsy at that point.”
“How close were you when she died?”
“We were friends, I guess, but I wouldn’t say we were all that close—she never shared anything about herself, she was mostly just obsessed with the book—but she had no one else so I—”
“I mean at the moment of her death. Were you there?”
“At the hospital, yes, but not in the room, not right at the end. I’d sat with her all night, and for several days before that, but then her ex-husband arrived.
She’d been asking for him, in her slightly more lucid moments—which I thought was her mind drifting again, but she was so insistent.
And then he turned up! So I left the room, left him to his grief, and that’s when it happened, when she died…
Carter, what’s the matter? You’ve gone kind of white. ”
“He definitely introduced himself as her ex-husband?”
“I think so. I mean, I guess it’s possible he said ‘ex’ and I put the rest together. She’d once told me she’d briefly been married, but it seemed a painful memory, so I didn’t press her on it. Why, what’s wrong?”
“When she was asking for her ‘husband’, did she use his name?”
“She might have but she was so hard to understand. I definitely caught the words ‘my husband.’ And she said something like, ‘I need to see him. I need to give it to him.’ But I couldn’t get anything more from her.
I took the liberty of searching her things to see if I could find any indication of his identity, but there was almost nothing personal there.
Just a U.S. passport, and a few photos that I figured were of her family, back when she was a kid—not on display, mind you.
Tucked away in a drawer. No wedding photo, though I found a couple of rings that could have been engagement and wedding rings.
I called immigration authorities but they wouldn’t help, so I called the Russian embassy and they said they’d look into it, but I didn’t hear back.
And then this guy showed up at the hospital and I guessed someone had gotten in touch with him. Why are you looking at me like that?”
He’d paused eating, mid-bite, then frantically swallowed. “You called the Russians?”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“She was a former American asset and you called the Russian embassy.”
“I didn’t know she was a spy! Like I say, she hadn’t told me much about her life. Well, I guess she had, but I didn’t know it was real.”
“The Russians,” he said, shaking his head.
“The woman was in her final days. All I wanted was to give her a little comfort. It was her last wish to see this guy. I felt so helpless sitting at her bedside just watching. She was dying before my eyes and… Oh God, what did I do? Who was he? He seemed genuinely upset. I didn’t think to question it. ”
“I have no idea, but I’m her ex-husband—well, my alias was. Her only ex-husband, as far as I know.”
“You married her? Omigod, you married her to save her, to get her out of Russia.”
“Wasn’t quite like that—but you already knew all that, it’s in the book.”
“I didn’t know it actually happened. That was one of the parts I made up. Of course, she may have tried to tell me. I disregarded so much that was on those last few tapes because it made no sense. But that … that makes perfect sense.”
“How so?”
“She was obviously in love with you. But you were… Sorry. Forget it.”
“I was what?”
“I … didn’t get the impression that the feeling was mutual. Or that you were available, emotionally.”
He raised his eyebrows. Note to self, she thought, you don’t actually know this guy.
“But you were noble,” Alice said, after some thought, “so I figured it was the kind of thing you’d do.
” And again with the eyebrows. “He’d do,” she clarified.
“Anderson Holt. I did think of ending the book with a proper wedding but I decided it wouldn’t fit.
I’d have to change too much of the story to make it seem genuine.
And I’d already changed so many things from her original vision. ”
“What did he look like, this ‘husband’?”
“Slender. Short dark hair, pale. He was only in the room a few minutes and then he came out and gave me a nod as if to confirm she’d passed. I checked on her and called out to the staff and by the time they called the time of death, he was nowhere to be found.”
“How do you know he didn’t finish her off?”
“Why would he do that? She had days to live, at most. She was barely conscious, had hardly spoken for a week. And if that guy wasn’t genuinely heartbroken, he was an excellent actor. He came by the house the next day, saying he wanted to see where she’d spent her last days, to get some closure.”
“And you let him in?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I told him about the funeral, but he didn’t come. Well, no one came but Kimberly and me and a few people from the cancer support group.”
“Kimberly?”
“My sister. My younger sister. Only sister, now.”
“Oh.” His brow knitted. “I’m sorry.”
Alice gave a quick nod. She never knew the correct response when someone apologized for the deaths in her family.
“You didn’t think it was strange that he didn’t go to the funeral?”
“I did wonder. I mean, what kind of husband wouldn’t show for…? But then,” she added quickly, remembering that the real ex-husband was standing in front of her, “grief affects people differently. And if there was guilt there too…”
“What did he take from your house? And how did he know where she lived?”
“Uh, I guess I must have introduced myself at the hospital. And like you say, I’m in the phone book.
I don’t think he took anything. Nothing obvious, anyway.
I told him about the rings but he didn’t seem interested.
I suggested he talk to my lawyer if he wanted to claim her assets, not that I have any idea how much money she had, beyond the fact that she never missed a rent payment, and had good healthcare, and seemed to get by okay without a job.
But he just asked for some time in her room alone, and when I came back to check up on him, he was gone. He never went to the lawyer.”
“What about a computer, documents? Was anything like that missing? He must have known she had something of value. And if he did, maybe the Feds did too—maybe that’s what they’re looking for.”