Maggie cleared her throat and gathered herself together. “I promised your daughter I would keep her safe.”
Mr. Wallace arrived close behind his wife and took Emily up into his arms.
“Thank you,” he said, unable to say anything more.
“If there is anything we can do,” said Ms. Wallace, shaking Maggie’s hand, “Anything you need, just say the word.”
Maggie looked both of Emily’s parents in the eye. It was important they listened to her.
“I need you to follow through with the plans we discussed. Don’t try to contact anyone you know. No relatives, friends, and especially not anyone from work. That is your old life now, and if you want to make sure your daughter sees her next birthday, you must accept that.”
The British, the Americans, and the Russians would all be searching for Emily. A key witness such as she could not be allowed to disappear. They all needed her for their own reasons, and none of them would stop looking for her. Not for a long time.
Ms. Wallace nodded, her face serious. “It’s a small price to pay to have our daughter back.” Without warning, she wrapped her arms tight around Maggie, her rose scented perfume tickling her nose.
“Keep her safe,” Maggie whispered. She had done all she could. It was up to them now.
“We will.”
“And remember,” Maggie said, staring Ms. Wallace in the eyes, “if you go public about the assassination, not only will you endanger Emily’s life, but the lives of millions of people. You know the kind of people involved in all of this. It won’t end well.”
“I know what’s at risk,” Ms. Wallace assured, her set jaw a mirror image of her daughter’s. “And not only for my family. In this instance, the truth will help no one and must be buried.”
Maggie believed her. She had to if she was going to follow through with her plan.
Mr. Wallace was by their side now, and Emily was back on her feet, still a little unsteady. The effects would wear off soon. All she needed was something to eat and a good night’s rest.
Maggie released herself gently from Ms. Wallace’s hold, all of them sodden in the rain. “All right, you better get going.”
Emily stepped forward. “Thank you, Maggie.”
A warmth spread over Maggie and the urge to burst into tears sprung behind her eyes. She willed them back and leaned into the brave little girl who would soon be a young woman.
Emily peered over at the boat. “Where are we going?”
“Away,” said Maggie, tugging her jacket closer around Emily. She needed to stay warm. “It’s not safe for you here anymore.”
“Are you coming with us?” Emily asked with innocent, hopeful eyes.
“No, but you’ll be safe. I promise.” Ashton wouldn’t let Maggie down.
“Will I see you again?” Emily said.
Maggie smiled. “Perhaps one day.”
Emily stared down at her feet. “Can I call you once we get there?”
“It’s best I don’t know where you are.” If her colleagues or the Russians learned of Maggie’s escapades, they’d torture everything they could out of her. Maggie couldn’t very well give up a location she didn’t know about. She spoke to them all, trying but failing to keep the emotion from spilling into her voice. “Once you’re out to safety, you’ll be taken to a private airport. A plane is already waiting for you.”
“What about passports?” Ms. Wallace asked, clutching her husband’s hand. “Money?”
“It’s all covered,” Maggie assured. “A friend has arranged everything you’ll need.”
The Wallaces would soon have new names, taking on aliases like Maggie had done countless times before. It would be difficult for them at first, but they’d get used to it. They had to.
“And you trust this friend?” Mr. Wallace asked.
“With my life,” said Maggie. And with theirs. Ashton had really come through for her on this one.
Emily hugged Maggie. “Goodbye, Jane Bond.”
“Goodbye, brave girl,” Maggie said, allowing a tear to fall and get lost amid the rain. She straitened up and held out a fist. “Remember, what do fighters do?”
Emily grinned and bumped her knuckles against Maggie’s. “We keep on fighting.”
Maggie stayed by the pier as the Wallaces embarked. The boat rumbled to life and jet off into the East River until it vanished in a blanket of darkness. Life was full of gray areas and while she may have defied her government, she did not fail Emily Wallace.
Somethings in life were more important than following orders, though Maggie believed she had still eliminated any threat of war between the nations. While things didn’t go as planned, the sole witness to Udinov’s murder was gone. By the time the night was over, Emily Wallace will have vanished, never to be seen or heard from again. Her parents and the strings Ashton pulled would see to that.
Maggie didn’t make a habit of placing her trust in others, but she put her faith in a mother and father’s love. Without Emily, the Russian’s couldn’t prove anything, and Danielle and her team were in the clear. Any threat the chain of events caused had been removed and she had managed it without ending the life of an innocent.
Resolute in her decision, Maggie left the shipyard and slipped into the shadows of the night.
Chapter 16
22 September
* * *
Maggie sat with folded arms across from Jonathan Cole the next morning.
“If this is a joke,” she said, “I don’t find it funny.”
“I can assure you this is far from a joke.” Jonathan bristled and fidgeted in his chair. From the wrinkles in his untucked shirt and the bags under his eyes, the Consul-General didn’t get much sleep last night.
As for Maggie, she slept like a baby once she fell into Ashton’s king-sized bed. Her friend had called an hour ago to let Maggie know the Wallaces were safe and had made their way out the US undetected.
Jonathan’s assistant sat to his left, scribbling notes and keeping his head down, doing what he could to blend into the background and avoid his boss’s wrath. Mr. Cole was like a bear with a sore arse, and that was before he spilled his coffee down himself.
Maggie turned her attention to Danielle, sitting to Jonathan’s right. The day before hadn’t left Maggie without unscathed. Her muscles ached and her skin was covered with several cuts and bruises, but nothing she couldn’t hide under a long-sleeve shirt and some makeup.
Danielle didn’t fare as well. Arm in a sling, she sat scowling in another bland suit, the one from the night before well and truly ruined. The best drycleaner in New York City couldn’t have removed the blood and dirt from that ensemble.
One of her eyes was bloodshot and surrounded by a ghastly purple bruise that ran all the way across to her broken nose. Danielle winced as she coughed, her ribs likely wrapped up tight under her blouse, and left to heal on their own. If Maggie felt any remorse at causing Danielle pain, it was tampered down with the satisfaction that she didn’t appear to have been caught out.
“You lost the witness again,” Maggie spat, putting on a show for her colleagues. She slammed her fist down on the desk and tea sloshed from her cup. “After everything I went through to get Emily Wallace to you, you managed to lose her in less than ten hours.”
“We were ambushed by the Russians,” Danielle said. “They outnumbered us three to one.”
Maggie raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t the only one adding some flair to the real story. Then again, Danielle’s pride wouldn’t allow her to admit she had been bested by a detail half her size.
Jonathan mopped his head with a handkerchief and wrung his hands. “The situation is unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” Maggie interrupted, waving her hands in exasperation. “What kind of operation are your running here?”
“I will remind you, Ms. Black, that you are not the authority here. You do not get to question me or my operatives.”
Maggie balked at that, and leaned forward. “Fine, but you can re
st assure Director General Helmsley will hear all I have to say about the shocking levels of incompetence from this office.”
Letting her words settle, Maggie kicked her chair back and shrugged on her jacket.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jonathan demanded.
Maggie stopped by the door with a hand on the handle. “You’re on your own with this one. I did what I was sent here to do, and I don’t intend to board your sinking ship.”
“You can’t leave,” Jonathan spluttered. “You haven’t given your full report yet.”
Opening the door, Maggie glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll give it straight to the Director General herself. None of you have time to sit around asking me questions. I suggest you all use what time you have left to prepare for your own debriefing.”
Without another word, she walked out of Jonathan Cole’s office and slammed the door. Her work there was done, and it was time to go home.
Chapter 17
London, Great Britain
Two weeks later…
* * *
Maggie arrived at the health center five minutes early. It was a crisp October Saturday and she had wrapped up warm for the short walk across the Thames from her apartment.
“Hi, my name’s Maggie Black. I have a follow-up appointment with Dr. Kahn.”
The receptionist told her to take a seat, and Maggie joined the little cluster of women. The woman in the seat next to her appeared like her water could break at any moment.
“You have this to look forward to,” she huffed at Maggie, pointing to her swollen ankles and feet. Maggie tried to imagine her stomach that big. Stretch pants were definitely in her future. She couldn’t wait.
A lot of things in her life were about to change.
Leaving the Unit was the biggest. Maggie had spent the last eleven years building her career and working non-stop, hopping from one country to the next. It was a dangerous and thrilling lifestyle. A lifestyle she could no longer live.
Though she’d miss parts of her old life, motherhood was her assignment now and, like every mission she completed, she’d give it her all. Failing this job wasn’t an option for her.
Ms. Wallace walked away from her career as an international human rights lawyer in a heartbeat for Emily. Maggie understood why, and how it wasn’t even a question when it came down to it.
Being an agent wasn’t like most careers. Plenty of women returned to work after having a baby, more than capable of juggling a career and motherhood, both full-time jobs in their own right.
Maggie couldn’t exactly be there for the morning routine or to spend afternoons in the park together if she was in a foreign country taking out bad guys. She couldn’t return home from the office in time to collect her child from school. To make dinner, or kiss her little boy or girl goodnight.
Half the time Maggie wasn’t even allowed to tell anyone where she was. It wasn’t fair to do that to a child. To only be there for them between missions, not knowing if she’d ever make it back to see their sweet little face again.
Agents weren’t known for long life expectancies.
Even her own mother died before her time, the car crash stealing her away from Maggie when she was just six years old. She knew what it was liking losing her mum, and she refused to let her own child suffer the same fate.
If that meant walking away from the Unit, then so be it.
“What are you having,” Maggie asked the heavily pregnant woman.
“I don’t know,” she replied, pleasant and warm despite of her clear discomfort. “We want it to be a surprise.”
We.
Rummaging in her purse, Maggie found her phone and called Leon again. Bishop said he should be getting back from an assignment today, and she couldn’t wait any longer to tell him. She wasn’t sure how he’d take the news, but it was important he be the first to know.
The call rang out to his voicemail and Maggie left a message.
“Hi, it’s me. I heard you’d be back today. I know we haven’t spoken much since Venice, but I’d like to see you. I have something to tell you and it’s not the kind of thing you say over the phone. Anyway, ring me back once you get this.”
Maggie hung up as the doctor called her name. She tucked her phone away and followed Dr. Kahn into his office.
“Nice to see you again, Maggie. How have you been keeping?”
“Great, thanks,” she said, taking off her scarf and coat.
Keeping the baby turned out to be an easier decision that she expected. After New York, she thought it through and only one route felt right. While she didn’t think badly of those who chose to terminate their pregnancy, it was an option she couldn’t personally come to terms with.
Adoption or placing the child in care were out of the question, too. Maggie knew firsthand how being in the system effected a child, and she refused to even consider that for her own son or daughter. In many ways, Maggie wouldn’t have ended up in the life she was in now had she had a loving family and decent upbringing.
Dark thoughts surfaced from the recesses of her mind, taking her back to the night she killed her first man at the tender age of fifteen. Of the reason why and how it altered her life forever. Forcing the thoughts down, Maggie focused on the present and listened to Doctor Kahn.
“We got your results back from you hCG blood test.” The doctor’s tone was somber.
Maggie sat up in her chair as a knot tightened in her stomach. “And?”
Doctor Kahn adjusted his tie, his eyes fleeting from her. “I’m afraid it’s bad news.”
“What? Is everything okay with the baby?”
Doctor Kahn sighed. He reached out for her hand but pulled it back, his expression mirroring the doctors on TV when they delivered terrible news. “Maggie, I’m sorry to tell you but you’re no longer pregnant. You had a miscarriage.”
Maggie blinked. “Oh.”
For a moment she simply sat there, frozen in place as his words bore into her core.
“Was it because of me?” she asked, heart suddenly clanging in alarm. “Was it something I did? Something wrong?”
The fighting. Risking her life to save Emily Wallace. Had all that killed her unborn baby? Things had been fine when Dr. Kahn saw her last week, aside from some light bleeding. They said it was normal. That they just needed to run some tests.
“No, no,” Doctor Kahn said quickly, shaking his head. “There were chromosome abnormalities that caused problems with the fetus’s development.”
The fetus.
Maggie covered her mouth with a shaking hand. “You promise me. You promise this wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t something I did, or didn’t do?” She hated the pleading in her voice, but she had to know.
“I promise you,” Doctor Kahn assured, offering her a sad smile. “There was nothing you did, or could have done. These things are unfortunately common in the first trimester.”
Maggie took in his words and was sickened at the hint of relief inside of her. It wasn’t her fault, but that didn’t change anything. She had still lost her baby.
The life growing inside her wasn’t there anymore.
“I know the news can come as a shock. Is there anyone I can call?”
“No,” Maggie heard herself say, but it was like she was somewhere else. Gone.
Her legs moved as if on their own accord and she got up from the chair. A surge of nausea engulfed her and she stumbled into the wall.
Doctor Kahn rushed from his chair. “Ms. Black, are you okay?”
Maggie steadied herself against the wall. She didn’t think she’d ever be okay again. Her ears rang and the contents of her stomach churned in her stomach.
“Please, sit down.”
Maggie let the doctor lead her back to the chair. Her mind swam, unable to concentrate on anything yet everything at once. Her chest tightened and her vision blurred. “I need to be alone,” she whispered.
“Are you sure?”
“Go!” Maggie yelled, barely holding on to an
y semblance of control.
Doctor Kahn nodded and headed for the door. “You can stay in here for as long as you need to. I’ll just be outside.”
A guttural cry escaped Maggie’s lips as soon as the door closed. Reality stabbed through her chest like a physical pain, cracking, splintering, and shattering her heart into a thousand unrepairable pieces.
Maggie fell from the chair and doubled over.
Hot tears stung at her eyes.
She cradled her belly and shuddered at the emptiness. At the hollow feeling growing inside her where her child should be.
A future had been ripped away and taken from her. From them. One that she had never allowed herself to think about. One that she was willing to walk away from everything she knew to have. A stolen future that could never be returned.
Maggie didn’t know how long she sat there on the Doctor’s office floor. At some point, he came in to check on her and left a cup of tea in her hand. It was cold now.
Her tears had run dry and all that was left were the sobs and shaking hiccups that came afterward.
A buzzing broke the silence in the room. Maggie searched for the sound and traced it to her handbag. Reaching over, Maggie tipped the contents out until her phone landed on her lap. Her eyes were sore and she couldn’t make out the name of the person calling on the screen.
Was it Leon?
Maggie held the phone to her chest and bit down hard on her lip. It took everything she had to not fall apart again right there on the carpet. If she did, she didn’t think she could get back up. She took a long, shaking breath and steadied herself before answering.
“Hello.”
“Maggie, I have a new assignment for you,” said Bishop. “How soon can you get here?”
Maggie closed her eyes and began shutting down. The pain was too much. Too real.
“Maggie?”
Her training kicked in, her mind frantic and working to protect itself. It was an efficient way for a field agent to gain distance from the things that were required of them. Removing yourself from the task at hand. From all the violence and death.
The Witness Page 9
