by Thomas Locke
“Motel by the Orlando airport. Three hours plus traffic.”
She waited until they were on the interstate to ask, “What happened to you?”
“About what you’d expect. Highly public dismissal from my government job. Loss of all perks. Then my home. Bankruptcy.” At least his voice was the same. Not even this litany disturbed his calm. “I drifted for a while. Took a couple of dead-end jobs. Scrounged off friends until they stopped answering my calls. Then these people got in touch.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“My only contact is Vera. Same as you.”
“Have you found out anything about her?”
He showed her a very flat gaze. “No.”
Reese nodded her understanding. “Does our Vera have a last name?”
“Smith.”
She hesitated, but knew she had to press. “Still, there has to be someone who wants us here. Someone with enough clout to let you prepare this elaborate welcome back.”
“You got that, did you.”
“Not only got it, but loved it. I owe you.”
“You do, actually. Since I’m the one who pressed for you to get this job.” He drove a few miles. “I didn’t even know you were alive until I said you’d be ideal and Vera tried to have me fired for suggesting it. There were no records, no nothing. It was like the system just swallowed you.”
She nodded. It was as good a description as any. “Like I said, I owe you.”
Kevin gestured at the file. “You had best get started. There’s a lot of ground to cover. Soon as we arrive, you’re on.”
Ninety minutes into the journey, Reese completed her first read-through of the file’s contents. Kevin watched her shut the folder and spread her hands over the cover, then asked, “Any questions?”
“A few.” There were not many surprises, though. Reese had assumed it would have to be something like this.
“Anything you want to ask now?”
She stared out the window at the passing foliage. Florida in late spring was astonishingly green. Around where they were now, just north of Daytona, they passed an invisible border and entered the temperate zone. Scrub pines gave way to palms and wild bougainvillea. The changes were subtle and missed by most visitors.
Reese asked, “Tell me what you think is happening.”
Kevin nodded as though he had been waiting for this. “Soon after I reached the point of contemplating various ends to the misery, Vera called and offered me this assignment. The people hiding behind her waited long enough to be certain I would never feel any need to ask questions.”
Reese ran a finger along the edge of the file. “That pretty much mirrors my assessment.”
But Kevin wasn’t done. “They wanted to make sure I would do anything they asked, no matter how appalling it might once have seemed. Without blinking.”
She nodded a second time. There was no need to say anything other than, “Can you get me a gun?”
“I can get you any weapon you can think of, and some you can’t imagine.”
“A gun will do. And a silencer. And somebody to train me.”
“Done.”
He didn’t ask. But she wanted him to understand. “I want to be ready in case somebody ever tries to put me back inside. And something else. The first chance I get, Charlie Hazard and his entire group are going down.”
Kevin shot her a glance, deep and poignant. “Understood.”
Reese settled back. There was a deep satisfaction in having them be in sync. She offered, “I was born south of here.”
“I remember reading about that, you know, back in the day. Some Indian-sounding name, right?”
“Holopaw. On the road from Kissimmee to the coast.”
“What was it like?”
“My granny used to say Holopaw was only good for raising stunted cattle and scrawny people.”
“Sounds like an excellent place to leave behind.”
“My daddy was not much of a father. Momma was sick most of the time. My granny was half Choctaw. She used to call me a changeling. Nobody knew where I came from. The rest of the family was dark enough to pass as Hispanics. Then up I pop, white-blonde hair and pale as a ghost.”
The confession was unexpected and rare enough for Kevin to relax fully. Which was why she had spoken about her past at all. Reese seldom thought of her beginnings, much less discussed them. But Kevin was special. He had reached into the deep and offered her a lifeline. They were a team now. For better or worse. Joined by the last chance either of them were likely to have.
Kevin said, “And a beauty early on, I bet.”
“So I was told. Especially by the men who started chasing me. But the difference between me and my family went a lot deeper than skin and hair. Nobody else in my clan wanted to be anywhere but right there in Holopaw. They raised goats for their milk and made cheese. A big outing was a day at the beach or hunting wildcats in the swamps farther east. Big ambitions meant saving to buy a new airboat.”
He smiled for the first time since they’d met, and Reese knew she had done the right thing, raking over the coals of early memories. He said, “You just blew them away.”
“I was the first of my family to finish high school, much less go to college. My granny said I was born to be mad, which was where I got my drive.”
“Did you ever go back?”
“Once. My senior year. For my granny’s funeral. What a mistake.”
“Where did you attend university?”
“Princeton. Full ride.”
“They recruit you there?”
Reese felt her body go still, congealed by the rush of memories. Everything she once had taken for granted. And lost. She forced out a strangled, “That’s right.”
Kevin lost his smile. “Sorry.”
“No. It’s okay. I just . . .”
“Don’t want to go there.” He nodded. “I read you five by five.”
22
Monday morning, Lena stood on the curb fifty feet south of the bank’s employee entrance. When Robin appeared, she called, “Over here.”
Robin approached the car with wide-eyed wonder. “Your new job comes with a limo?”
“Apparently so. This morning I was working at my ratty desk in my ratty apartment.” Lena waited while the driver popped the trunk, then helped Robin settle in her briefcase and box of personal belongings. “Roger’s secretary called with the account and telephone numbers and said I’m supposed to use this company for my rides.”
“Roger’s secretary,” Robin said. “Imagine that.”
“The woman could not have sounded more bored,” Lena said. “Is that everything?”
“You bet.”
“Good. Because we’re all done there.”
Robin stared up at the Weasel’s window. “Like that’s a hardship.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Not a peep. Just stood in his office doorway and glared.”
They slipped into the limo’s backseat. While the driver closed their door and seated himself behind the wheel, Robin took a photograph from her purse and propped it on the door. A girl of four or five beamed from the picture.
Lena asked, “Who’s that?”
“My niece and godchild.”
“Why haven’t I seen her before?”
“I kept this photo in my drawer. Missie thinks I’m the greatest. She wants to follow in my footsteps. I couldn’t bear to have her see how low I’d sunk.” Robin touched the smiling face. “I wanted her to be with me this morning.”
Lena smiled too. “I like that. A lot.”
The driver asked, “Where to, Ms. Fennan?”
“Madison and 55th, please. But could you stop at the next Starbucks?”
“Sure thing, Ms. Fennan.”
Robin watched the limo pull smoothly into traffic. “Everything’s changed, hasn’t it. For real.”
The boutique investment firm of Baker Meredith was located in a black glass cube. It was one of many groups that had shifted
away from Wall Street after 9/11 and never returned. The lobby security was professional and suitably sleek. The guard walked them to the elevator and said, “You’ll need to have the receptionist call down with your details before we can fix you ladies up with permanent passes.”
“Thank you.”
As the elevator doors closed, Robin asked, “Where is your gear?”
“Everything I couldn’t fit in my briefcase is packed in boxes. I moved this morning.”
“Where, Central Park West?”
“Hardly. A suites motel four blocks from here.”
When they exited the elevator, a young man in a rumpled suit and an expression to match stood waiting by the reception desk. He moved as soon as Lena entered the foyer. “Ms. Fennan?”
“That’s me.”
“Chester Briggs. I’ve been assigned to your team.”
Lena instantly knew everything about the guy. Chester had been given duty as the firm’s in-house spy. He expected to fail. As a result, he knew he’d probably be fired. Fear of dismissal was his constant reality. Just like it had been for them.
Lena did not bother with small talk as they signed in and collected their day passes. She introduced Robin and said simply, “She’ll be working with us.”
Chester grimly accepted the news and refused to meet Robin’s gaze. He clearly assumed Robin’s presence hastened his own demise. He led them back to a corner office and stood in the doorway, waiting to be dismissed. “The partners didn’t say anything about you bringing your own personnel. I’ll need to get another cubicle assigned.”
“Wait on that, please.” Lena took a slow look around. The executive desk was far from new, probably a castoff from some partner who had recently upgraded their office. Ditto on the chair and credenza. A beige leather sofa and three chairs were clustered in the far corner, surrounding a coffee table that appeared to be coquina with bronze legs.
Lena set her briefcase on the desk and stepped to the west-facing windows. Baker Meredith was on the forty-fourth floor. Looking right, she could see a green fringe of Central Park. Directly in front of her stretched the Theater District, then Hell’s Kitchen, then the glistening waters of the Hudson River, and beyond that the Jersey sprawl.
Robin stepped up beside her and said, “The Weasel would positively croak with envy.”
Lena nodded. The office was bigger than her former apartment. She turned back to where Chester stood in the doorway and asked, “Where is your cubicle?”
He pointed off behind him. “The bull pen’s far side, over by the receptionist.”
“Okay, your first job is to move close by. Try to get Robin into the cubicle next to yours. Do I have a conference room?”
He was trying to get his head around what she was saying and what she meant. “I don’t . . .”
“That’s job two. A spare office will do, but have them move out all the furniture, then find us a table and some swivel chairs. Stock the room with whiteboards. But if there’s any delay, leave it. You two can work in here.” Lena turned back to the desk and opened her briefcase. “Tomorrow morning we’re meeting with Roger Foretrain. Dress accordingly.”
Robin gaped. “For real?”
“Yes. Chester, do you know who Roger is?”
“The risk guy. Sure.” He took a tentative step forward. “You’re . . .”
“Pitching a new idea. We are. Together. That’s how I work. The whole team stands on the podium with me. You don’t get me coffee. You don’t fetch my laundry. You don’t pull long hours because that’s what analysts are expected to do. If your work is done, go home. I’m interested in just one thing. Making the next deal.” Lena realized Robin was laughing. “I said something funny?”
“Hilarious.” She wiped her eyes.
“Chester, one more thing. You don’t take assignments from anyone else.”
He gestured back across the bull pen. “I’m working on a big deal—”
“Not anymore. Talk to the partners. Tell them if there’s an issue, they should take it up with Roger. Now come over here.” Lena set the pages she had printed that morning on her desk. All the info she had gleaned online. Everything she could find related to the most recent event. The thought that it was her last contact with the woman tightened her throat. “This is all I have. Your job is to flesh it out.”
Robin leaned in close, already focused on the project. Chester, however, held back. “Uh, the partners were wondering if they could have a word.”
“Not now, I’ve got an appointment.” Lena checked her watch. “Walk with me, please. You too, Robin.”
She did not speak as she crossed the bull pen. Baker Meredith occupied most of the floor, with partners and conference rooms ringing a massive central space. Lena knew the group had three senior partners and employed a hundred and nine people because she had checked. She felt eyes track her past the receptionist and into the foyer.
She said, “Let me guess. Foretrain told the partners to leave me totally alone. And they don’t like it.”
Chester was still working on a response when the doors pinged.
Lena stepped inside, motioned for them to join her, and went on, “They want to know how a total stranger has been handed her own portfolio. They want to shut me down. They’re worried I’m Roger’s in-house spy.”
Chester licked his lips. “Something like that.”
The doors opened onto the ground-floor reception area. Lena led them past security, out to where her limo waited. She said to Robin, “Take Chester for coffee. Tell him everything.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She turned to Chester. “I want you to talk with the partners, see if they’ll attend tomorrow’s meeting. Tell them we want them to come so they’re aware from the outset of what we’re doing. Roger is on our side, so we’ll be better off having that first confrontation with him present.”
Robin asked, “Where are you going?”
Lena drew out the card Brett had given her with the professor’s name and the address at Columbia University. She handed the card to the limo driver and replied, “To class.”
The world looked different from the back of a limo. When Lena had ridden in them before, it was because of someone else’s clout. She had always been too nervous to do what she did now. Observe. Reflect.
Lena thought back over the events of the past eighteen hours. The limo seemed to insulate her from the emotional blasts as well as the city’s din. Even so, Lena grieved in some mild sense for an old woman she wished she could have known better. Not someday in the future. Now. Despite all the upheaval in their final contact, Lena found herself comforted by how her future self had faced death not only with calm, but with the desire to relish a final taste of love.
Love.
The driver passed Columbia University’s main admin building and turned off Broadway, then right, swimming against the tide of students. Columbia was a big-city university. The inner campus was veined with narrow lanes intended more for bikes and pedestrians. Surrounding this were newer structures that morphed into the Upper West Side. University security was very alert. Lena spotted three different cops giving her ride a careful inspection in the time it took them to go five blocks.
The driver halted in front of a new-old structure, redesigned and refashioned until it could no longer claim either a style or an epoch. When the driver started to rise from the car, Lena said, “Give me a minute.”
He took in the flow of students and cycles, the narrow lane, the watchful cop. “I’m not supposed to stop here.”
“Can you circle the block?”
“Sure thing.”
As the driver pulled from the curb, Lena knew a fleeting desire to have him keep going. Back to her new suite of offices on Madison and 55th. She had all the mysteries one girl could handle. And the excitement. Because the preliminary research she’d done that morning indicated she had another project with a huge potential downside. One so large it could swallow her whole.
She had no desire
to attend a class taught by Dr. Brett Riffkind, the man who had broken her future self’s heart. Nor did she ever need to learn the details—did Brett Riffkind dump her, leave her for another, just die, whatever. The potential for wrong endings made the rear seat feel crowded.
It all came down to this. Sitting inside a limo. Doing what had been passed to her by a visitation from her future self. With her own dying breath. Lena dropped her gaze to the hand that had touched Brett’s face. She could still feel his skin, see the confusion and pain in that shattered sapphire gaze.
Lena was a professional risk analyst. She was good at her job. She knew this next step was fraught with peril.
The internal argument was silenced by the limo halting a second time in front of the mismatched building. Lena sighed defeat. The simple fact was, she had told the woman she would do this. Attending Brett’s class had formed one image from the final event. Another had been using him on this new project.
And Lena would honor her final pledge.
As the driver held open her door, Lena vowed that was as far as it was going.
She had said nothing to her future self about falling in love.
23
Kevin took the Beachline Highway west until he reached the Orlando airport exit. He then turned away from the terminals, hooking right onto a road that rimmed a man-made lake. Their destination was a Homewood Suites sheltered by palms and live oaks. A Marriott Courtyard rose to one side, a Ramada on the other. The winter season was over, the summer crush had not yet begun. The parking lots to either side of their hotel were empty. But the one Kevin entered was filled to overflowing.
Kevin parked under the foyer’s overhang. A dozen or so visitors smoked and frowned as he and Reese rose from the car. There was nothing said. A single glance was enough for Reese to know these were not people who gave much attention to casual conversation. But their gazes were sharp to the point of famished, and they watched Reese’s approach with a frantic edge.
She and Kevin passed through the jammed foyer and stopped by the hotel’s shop for sandwiches and coffees, which they consumed standing at the counter that ran along the rear windows. People flowed about them, nervously waiting for the heads-up. Reese was grateful for the moment to adjust. She had never expected anything quite so intense.
