"You should move to a small town, somewhere the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now."
Kate's eyes are wide on her small face, which seems so much smaller when he rolls his thumb across her cheek. He wants to straighten up her face like she's a schoolgirl. Soothe her like a wife.
What a cruel trick to put such delicate, finely wrought features on a woman who's been broken and forged back together in a man's world. There's something even inviting about her black eye. It balances out Kate's grit with fragility. Alejandro cannot look at the bruised, purple flesh without wondering what it would feel like under his lips. The red marks are still visible around Kate's throat. She's lucky Ted was such a reluctant killer because it would not take much to snap Kate's porcelain swan neck. Ted is even more lucky to be alive after Alejandro walked in to find him on top of Kate, those thick, dumb hands in her hair and on her neck.
Alejandro takes his time walking across the parking lot. He counts to sixty before he turns around. Is Kate is still a blubbering mess in her kitchen? No, and he can't help but feel something close to pride that she's put herself—and her weapon—back together. Yes, she's pointing her gun at him for the second time in as many days. But he lets that pass, watching her watching him; their locked stare is more intimate than an embrace. Alejandro is certain Kate's ex-husband never made her look at him like this.
A month passes. He waits for her to take his advice. Waits to see if Kate will go police some small town in Vermont that hardly needs policing. Or if she will go teach yoga in Santa Monica.
Mostly he waits for her to do anything but unsettle him.
Kate returns to the field for three weeks. Then one evening, she locks herself in that square, drab apartment. Granted, to be fair-and Alejandro enjoys indulging Kate—his flinty girl spent the day wading through the decomposing remains of women missing so long that people forgot those girls were even gone. And yet, for the first time in years, Kate calls in sick. She sits on her balcony for two straight days, chain smoking and drinking wine out of a box. Reggie lets himself in with his own key, begs her to get help, take some of her unused vacation days.
A continent away in Buenos Aires, Alejandro can't tell if he's more troubled that Kate did not do as she was told (he doesn't like repeating himself), or that Kate lets Reggie have a key and bring her greasy pad thai, coddling her like a sick puppy. Alejandro has no patience for a man who does not know how to handle a woman like Kate.
He does not doubt that she knows her apartment, her phone is bugged. Still, Kate speaks wildly. He listens to Kate swear to Reggie that she'll go to the New York Times, the Washington Post. That she will make the goddamned Pentagon Papers look like Harry Potter. He listens to Kate call her mother repeatedly, sobbing, only to hang up the phone after a few choked sentences. He pictures her looking like a little girl sitting at the table when he last saw her. He forgives her in that moment.
Then she calls her boss to ask about transitioning into policy level-a desk job, which would be the best idea Kate's had in weeks. It's also in El Paso.
She defies him, tests his limits in the way that only an adored wife or daughter can; playing the edge of what he will humor and what he will silence. Before Kate can traverse that border, he sends her a blank postcard from Cartagena. No words, just a picture of bright colonial buildings and charming plazas.
The message must have been loud enough because Kate goes silent for almost a week. She lets her phone ring its way to voicemail, not one outgoing call. Reggie comes over (his platitudes now anger Alejandro more than Kate's near betrayal), and he helps Kate pack. She says little to Reggie, except to say what books she wants him to have and what pots can go to Goodwill.
On the plane back from Bogotà, Matt tips an entire packet of M&Ms into his mouth while Alejandro smoothes the creases in his jacket. Their partnership—or at least use to one another—is fast drawing to a close. Does Matt know that? If Matt were a woman, he'd play at being a dumb blond while training his rifle scope on you. That aging, surfer boy smile is one of Matt's better weapons.
"She said she'd talk. I usually don't believe a word that comes out of most women," Matt says, talking with his mouth full. He sprawls out and flaps his sandals against the sole of his feet. Matt studies the packet, intent on finding one more candy. From where Alejandro sits three feet away, he thinks of how American Matt seems now.
"She is not most women." Alejandro will not say more than this careful observation. His interest in Kate puts her in more danger than her own stubbornness. Animals will sniff out what, who lies closest to your heart, then eat it whole in front of your eyes.
"Macer's unhinged. Get rid of-"
"We shook her awake. But now she knows what's expected of her if we need her again. If we even needed her in the first place."
"Look, between Dudley Do Right Lawyer and The Hot Chick, I chose The Hot Chick to tag along, keep things on the up and up. If I'd known she'd…" Matt doesn't finish. He kicks his sandals off and closes his eyes.
Actually, Alejandro had known Kate Macer would be a mistake.
The first time Alejandro saw Kate—on this plane actually—she startled him with her unforgiving prettiness. Eyes as blue as the Pacific and brimming with intelligence and eagerness. When she leaned forward to shake his hand, he caught a glimpse of her open, inquisitive gaze. She was so obviously unaccustomed to lying; she honestly believed they were going to El Paso and no further.
"She is not made for this," Alejandro had told Matt when Kate excused herself to use the lavatory before they landed. "This will kill her. You should not bring her to Juarez."
Matt waited until they could hear the faucet running before he replied. "As long as she goes down on the right side of the border. Hell, a dead federal agent might be just what we need." He hoisted himself onto his elbows. "Jesus, she can ride with you if you're so worried about her."
And now, over a month later, keeping the wolves from Kate remains an operation unto itself and one that Matt doesn't need to know about. He tells himself that he can let her go when she stops sleeping with the lights on. He hopes she will make a career in El Paso in the non-parental child abduction unit or something of equally little consequence to men like Matt. He also hopes that Kate will obliterate her own life and career so that he will not have to be the one to do it.
II.
Kate doesn't tell Reggie about the postcard. She worries that he still believes too much. Reggie knows the stink of death as well as Kate, but he lives in a world where he doesn't check under his car every morning for explosives and assassinations happen on the other side of the border. Reggie loves the law; he joined the FBI because he thought his boots on the ground could fight the monsters better than he ever would as a US Attorney.
Juarez, the tunnels, Fausto all open a jagged crevice between her and Reggie. The distance between them, between her and the rest of her team makes the air feel heavy. It's not insurmountable, but the split runs deep. When she presented her final report to Jennings, she kept her eyes glued to the middle distance. Jennings was more than happy to stare at the desk, but when Reggie looked her square in the face, she felt her throat close up.
"Who wrote this, Kate?" Reggie demanded. "That kind of operation, and this report is one page?" He turned to Jennings at that. "You didn't write this, Kate."
Reggie always corrected her grammar, loved to mark up her first drafts with his red editor's pen. But, this paper is flawless. Written by a man who speaks better English than either she or Reggie.
"That's, that's my signature, sir," Kate affirmed. She pointed to the bottom of the document. The "M" had blurred when a fat tear rolled off her cheek and onto the page. Even now, Kate wonders if Alejandro wiped her tears because she truly reminded him of his daughter, or if he just wanted to keep her signature neat and above reproach.
"Kate, this report is silent as to the deaths of Fausto Alarcon and his family. Wife. The two boys—youngest one was ten. Single gunshot wounds." Jennings didn't ask her a question, but Kate knew the answer all the same. She looked straight ahead.
"That was almost sixty miles to the south and west of us. Probably another cartel seeking to exploit…vulnerabilities in the leadership given the sudden…disruptions in the hierarchy." Kate had thought that lying was a little like sex, and once you fumble your way through the first time, it gets much easier.
When Jennings nodded, slow and approving, Kate felt a fluttering hope that there'd be no more tests after this one. Reggie shook his head and mouthed, Unbelievable.
Jennings excused Reggie and shut the blinds to the conference room. With his back turned to her, he said: "You're a big-picture thinker now, Kate. Maybe it's time to…to bring you indoors, have you build up cases, start thinking policy-level, start thinking about your career in the Bureau. They can make a spot for you in El Paso." He rested his hand on her shoulder. "Good work on that report. I hope you keep thinking long term, and Washington is long term."
Now, she sprawls out on the hardwood floor of her new living room in El Paso. A half-empty bottle of chardonnay sits next to her. When Kate starts to think that she let herself be pimped for a promotion and an upscale condo, she wants another drink more than she wants a cigarette. She divides her life into a "before" and an "after" since she got on that fucking plane with Matt and Alejandro. Kate definitely drinks more in the after and sees no point in stopping.
She pours herself another glass and slowly walks the perimeter of the condo. Nice hardwood floors, granite countertops, no balcony. Her cell buzzes on the counter; it sounds like there is a swarm inside. Kate hopes it's Reggie calling to apologize for what he said to her when she left Phoenix.
She'd stopped by his place with the U-Haul so that she could show him which state was prominently featured on the truck's livery. Hawaii—that had to be a good sign, right? He climbed in the truck next to her, said: "Don't kill the engine and hear me out."
Kate hoped beyond hope this was about his wedding being cancelled in Las Cruces.
"You're taking a payout, Kate," he told her quietly. "It's their version of a payout because they can't give you a wad of cash. But, you're taking their bribe all the same. This isn't you! This isn't who you are!"
"Reggie, you don't—"
"No, Kate—you don't fucking know! Did a tour in Iraq and you're talking at me like I haven't seen some shit go down? What I put my life on the line for—what I thought I put my life on the line for…it sure as shit wasn't so I could come home and stand by while a couple spooks spit on the rule of law, and you just hold the door open for them!"
It was written all over his face: Reggie thought she was on the take, that her silence had been negotiated and paid for. She wanted to cry, which only made her angry. She leaned across him to open his door.
"Tell me about the last time that you actually felt a gun to your throat," she said quietly. "Tell me about the last time a man strangled you until you thought your eyes were going to explode. I want something to show for it. They took my name. And I will not go away empty-handed."
Reggie has no idea how much a single signature on a piece of paper can cost. And she'd pay the ransom all over again to keep her life. Kate knows now that there is no mission, no idea she loves more than her own life. Still, Kate worries that she parted on bad terms with Reggie and that he doesn't want her in his wedding anymore. She won't admit she was wrong, but she'll say "sorry" all the same.
"Jesus, will somebody answer that?" she says to her empty condo. She leans forward a little about to get her phone when it stops vibrating.
Kate settles back onto the floor, resting her back against one of the moving boxes. These days, her limbs creak and ache, like her body has not recovered from running a gauntlet. Nothing in her training prepared her for being so thoroughly used by men of no principal or nation. It leaves her feeling horribly compromised and exposed. She is raw, her wounds have been infected. Her fingers walk towards her service weapon to pull it closer. Kate thinks about getting up to turn off the light, but sometimes she sleeps with it on.
"Fuck it," she says aloud. Her thumb traces a rib, where Alejandro shot her through her Kevlar vest. A couple nasty welts rose up there, became scars that are still visible.
"You fucking asshole," she mutters.
Her landline rings. Reggie and her mother have that number, even though Kate herself has yet to memorize it. Kate's mother thinks that her daughter screens her calls, which is true. Probably better to answer now than stoke her mother's martyrdom. Kate finishes her wine and refills her glass before going to answer.
She hopes that her "Hello," is not too strained or disinterested to her mothers' ears.
A beat passes, a second of silence that sends Kate's heart to her feet.
"Kate. How are you?"
Alejandro is soft-spoken, sounds genial. It occurs to Kate that she never heard him raise his voice once in the time she knew him, and given the circumstances, Kate thinks that's one of the more alarming things about him.
She holds her hand to her heart, willing its racing pulse to slow. Her fear threatens to spiral out of tempo. Somehow, Kate finds her voice. I still have my voice, you forced me to sign my name away, you almost got all of me, but you don't get to take my voice.
"I haven't been choked or shot this week, so I can't complain." Her palm flattens against her mouth to keep her from screaming. The blood pounds in her ears, thumps like thunder.
"You're doing well for yourself," Alejandro muses. "I wish you'd done as I said, instead of moving closer to the border. But, your willingness to accept your government's…" he pauses. The lawyer in him probably can't abide being imprecise, so Kate doesn't attempt to fill in the blank.
"Gratitude," he continues. "Gratitude for your service. Matt feels better about you this way. But I still think you are no wolf."
She can see her gun from where she stands. It's ten feet away and may as well be on the moon if Alejandro is within a mile of her. Kate holds her breath while her feet fall in silent pads towards the living room. She allows a slow exhale when her free hand closes around the Glock.
"I don't work narcotics," she says perhaps too defensively. "They have me looking for children nobody can find." She moves from room to room, turns all the lights on, looks under the bed and behind the shower curtain. Kate's heart slows down a little.
"You sound like you've been drinking, Kate." He sounds disappointed in her, as though he caught her sneaking in past curfew.
"Where the hell are you?" She doesn't expect an answer or at least one that doesn't lead to more questions. "I mean, where did they send you this time?"
"Oh, some place I doubt you would like very much."
Kate strains to hear something, anything on his end. Cars, sirens, gun fire. The agent in her searches for breadcrumbs. Then, she catches the faint rumble of thunder in the background and rain humming against glass.
"Sounds like you got out of the desert."
"You should too."
Kate slides down to the floor again. Something in her chest shifts. She doesn't know why she is still on the phone with him. Something keeps her there on the floor, talking to him, and Kate realizes that she lived an entire lifetime in the three days that she knew him.
Her voice softens more than she wants. "You sound like you haven't slept in days. What time is it there?"
"Very early, or very late. It all depends on how you look at it."
"You can't tell me anything, can you?" Kate snaps. "You can't give a straight answer to a straight question, can't even tell me the fucking time. Why did you call? To scare me? To mindfuck me?"
"I'm speaking to you, Kate, because I like you. I like to know that you're doing well." It's an answer even if it's a lie. "Many people tell me things. Some of it is of use to me, most of it isn't. But then there are the things I hear that are of use to you."
All Kate can do is shake her head, no, no, no. Please don't tell me anything that puts me in your debt, please don't make me owe you anything.
"Kate," he says a little sharply. "Are you listening to me?"
"Do I have a choice?" Kate suspects that with Alejandro, the best she can do is pick her poison.
"Always there is a choice. You can hang up, or put down your drink and pay attention."
Kate chooses to keep her drink, but she sits up a little straighter, ready and waiting. And waiting.
Finally, she says: "What is it? What do you want me to do?"
"I respect you too much to tell you how to do your job. Keep an eye out. I'll be in touch."
And he hangs up, before she can tell him to never call her again. But she knows he will because she wants him to.