Chapter 27
Alice
Alice had a hard time getting dressed, she was that shaky.
“I just have to ask this,” said Carter, stepping in to fasten the buttons on her blouse, which gave her flashbacks to him dressing her in the boys’ bathroom at her school, several lifetimes ago. “Are you sure it’s not a trap?”
“Kimberly would never do that to me. She wouldn’t put me through it. Plus, you heard her yesterday—she basically pushed me out the door. She wants me to see this through.”
“What about Malik?”
“He wouldn’t lie about this.”
“He didn’t say much at all. He just said to meet him at the hospital and hung up. It’s almost like he was careful not to lie.”
“He was obviously not thinking straight. You need to start trusting that most people don’t have an agenda.”
“Everyone has an agenda.”
“He doesn’t, other than to look after Kimberly. Don’t judge him for the five minutes you’ve known him. He’s a good guy—he’s just a little overprotective and he’s under a huge amount of stress. Where are my jeans?”
He passed them to her. “That’s exactly why I’m asking. When people are under that kind of pressure, they do things they wouldn’t normally contemplate—like cooperating with the FBI to lure you in.”
“This is not something either of them would lie about, no matter what the circumstances. Stop looking at me like you don’t believe me. I’m not as naive as you think.”
“I don’t think that. But the guy called the cops on us. Twice.”
“And let us get away.”
“I wouldn’t have rated his chances of stopping me. Alice, my instinct is not usually wrong.”
“Neither is mine. You don’t know him. You don’t know Kimberly.”
“It’s possible they’ve got to Kimberly too, talked her around, with his help. They’re very good at that. And even if this is all true, the Feds have gotta be tapping his phone and they’ll know where you’re headed. They’ll pick you up before you get anywhere near her.”
“Drop me at a bus stop, whatever, but I can’t not go.”
“I dunno, Alice, the timing…”
“Carter, this is me pulling the ripcord. You promised me.”
His expression closed in. “Okay, I’ll take you, if that’s what you want. But I’m coming in with you.”
“You’ll risk getting caught.”
“I know.”
“No. No way. I don’t want to be responsible for that.
Like you said, you can’t clear your name if you’re locked up.
But I have to take this risk. I couldn’t live with myself if…
Look, I know that hospital as well as I know my own house.
You can drop me off at the florist on the corner—there’s a shortcut from there that will take me in through the back of the building. ”
“I’m not comfortable with this.”
“This is not about you—or me. The ripcord, Carter.”
Alice remained on edge for the entire trip to Montrose, tightly clutching her purse, and the air between her and Carter was heavy with tension.
He didn’t say another word to change her mind, but then, he barely said a word at all.
She, meanwhile, was jamming her lips shut to keep herself from urging him to drive faster.
It would be stupid to risk being stopped for speeding.
By the time they pulled up near the florist, every strand of her hair felt like it was on guard—and she had a lot of strands of hair.
“Here, take this,” Carter said, pulling a gold band off his ring finger and handing it to her.
“What? No, I couldn’t. I—”
“It’s not sentimental.”
“It’s your wedding ring.”
“It’s a tracking device. Automatically uploads its location to a secure app on my phone, and on Mom’s. And here. Cap, glasses, surgical mask. Keep your head down, and any facial recognition software will be useless. I’ll drive by again in exactly half an hour, just in case. If you’re not here…”
“Just keep driving.”
“I’d wait longer, but I need to get back and dig into the documents that are in Russian. If you’re not back by then, I’ll assume that either this is legit or…”
“Or they’ve got me. I understand.”
“Alice?” he said, when she didn’t move. “If you’re gonna go, you need to go now. We’re vulnerable here.”
“I’m not ready for this—to say goodbye to her. I’ve had all this time but I’m not ready.”
Carter unclipped his seatbelt and cradled Alice’s face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. “You will get through this. Take each moment as it comes.”
She nodded, blinking fast. As he released her, she kissed him hard, and he kissed her back like he meant it. That was the thing—every time he kissed her it felt like he meant it, like he was communicating something he couldn’t articulate. No one had kissed her like that before.
She left without another word, in case she went with her gut and said the wrong ones.
It was only the situation that was making her want to cling to him, to secure promises neither of them was in a situation to give.
She had helped him, which was what she’d set out to do.
She’d gotten him to the kompromat and the list, helped him draw the link with Tania.
He didn’t need her anymore. What they’d had…
She could lock it away as a happy memory and revisit it whenever she liked.
She laid a hand on her stomach. It felt hollow and achy.
And sure, she had a lot to be anxious about, but she was pretty sure that particular feeling was the beginnings of something you only got when you cared for a guy in a certain way.
Something beyond a mere crush. She hadn’t come near that feeling in years.
If it could spark with a stranger after a couple of days together, maybe there was hope for her.
Maybe she wasn’t broken—well, not beyond repair.
And where the hell would she find another man who made her feel like that—even just to test the theory?
Probably not by living the same life she’d always lived and doing the same things she’d always done.
As she reached the side door near the hospital’s seminar room, where she ran her memoir workshops, she pulled out her hospital volunteer ID and passed it over the scanner, holding her breath.
In her imagination, she beeped it and a SWAT team surrounded her and screamed at her to put her hands where they could see them.
In reality, the red light switched to green and the door unlocked with a faint click.
She filled her lungs, sucking the mask against her mouth.
This would save her navigating the more intense security of the main entrance—assuming it hadn’t triggered any alerts.
The cap, mask and glasses gave her a thin veil of confidence as she walked along corridors that felt both familiar and a whole new world, but she was breathing way too heavily, and had to keep raising the glasses to let them defog.
Every second person she passed looked like an undercover FBI agent or Russian sleeper agent or former CIA security guard turned assassin.
How the hell did Nika and Carter do this kind of thing for so long?
Seeing ghosts, Nika had called it. Alice took the stairwell that led up from the back of the building toward the oncology unit on the fourth floor.
On the second floor, she halted. If this was a trap, oncology would be exactly where they’d expect her to go.
That or the ER. She spun, nearly colliding with a couple of nurses, muttered an apology involving having left something in a room, and headed for the nearest ward like she knew exactly where she was going.
She walked into the first empty room she found, closed the door behind her, picked up the patient phone and dialed an extension.
“Oncology, this is Trish.”
“Oh, hi,” Alice said, trying to disguise her voice behind a Southern accent, “I’m just wanting to talk to one of your patients, a Kimberly Thornton?”
“That you, Alice? You sound funny. What the heck is going on—I saw you on the TV! I said to my husband, ‘There’s no way that woman is on the wrong side of the law.’ Something is going on.”
“Hard to explain over the phone. Kimberly? Is she there?”
“No, hon. Was she supposed to be in today? She’s not on our list.”
“Would you mind checking if she’s anywhere in the hospital? The ER maybe?”
“Hold on a sec, I’ll just log in… No, she’s not showing up as in today. Is it an emergency? Could she still be en route? I could patch you through to the ER? If she’s in an ambulance, they may know.”
“No, that’s okay, thanks for your help.”
Alice hung up and began to dial another number, then had a mental image of the SWAT team standing around Trish and communicating in hand signals about their target’s location, saying things like, “Keep her talking,” and “We’ve got her!
” She returned the phone to its cradle and left the room, pulling her cap down.
Today, she was doubling down on paranoia.
She jogged down one flight of stairs, for once grateful for the maze-like layout that had evolved like a living organism over a hundred years.
After sanitizing her hands outside Orthopedics, she shoved the glasses in her purse.
Walking around in a fog wasn’t helping matters.
She almost had to complete a U-shaped circuit of the ward before finding what she was looking for: a room with no name outside and no one inside.
She checked that no one was watching, walked in, shut the door behind her and leaned back on it a second.
Much more of this and she was going to need the cardiac ward.
She used the phone to dial Kimberly’s home number. After a few rings, Malik answered. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious.
“You lied?” she said.
“You’re calling from the hospital?”
“Where did you think I’d be calling from—a police cell? Where’s Kimberly? And no bullshit this time.”
“Have they caught you?”
“Not yet. Where’s Kimberly?”