Two months later, he walked back into her life. Sat right down at her counter and ordered a coffee, cream, no sugar. She was so distracted that she didn't realize who he was for a moment. Nicky was a professional; she quickly schooled her features, but a careful observer would have noticed the way her hand trembled as she poured his drink.
"What am I supposed to call you?" she asked quietly.
"You can call me whatever you want," he said, reading the name badge pinned to her pink polyester bosom. "Janet." The hint of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. "Funny. You don't look like a Janet."
"You don't look like a David either," she retorted. He would always be Jason to her.
"Is there somewhere we can talk?" He knew they were safe here, for the moment at least, but old habits were dying hard.
"Sure." She turned over her shoulder. "Hey Moe, I'm gonna take my break now." The fry cook grunted and shrugged a greasy shoulder. "This way." She led him into the restaurant's supply closet, locking the door behind her. Nicky sat on a jumbo box of paper napkins. The man she knew as Jason reached behind her head and switched on the radio, just loud enough to muffle their conversation. Some country-and-western singer was crooning about how her man done her wrong. It seemed oddly appropriate.
"So," Jason began. "You changed your hair."
Girlishly, Nicky ran a hand over her head. When the cheap black dye had begun to fade, she treated herself to a box of L'Oreal in a rich chestnut brown. The color was oddly flattering, a change from her natural blonde. "Is that your way of saying you like it?"
The faint smile again. It was impossible to say how much she missed seeing him smile. Not since Paris. "You like it here?"
Changing the subject, of course. "It's safe," she said. "No one asks any questions." Nicky - Janet - had taken up waiting tables in a small diner in Middle Of Nowhere, Montana. She'd chosen the location deliberately, guessing that if she fell in among the survivalists, no one would object to her lack of documentation. She'd guessed right. "I rent a room down the street, two hundred dollars a month, cash. I don't have a phone or a TV or a car. I think they think I'm fleeing from an abusive ex."
"Good girl," he said, oddly proud of her ingenuity. "Are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Fleeing an abusive ex."
"In a manner of speaking." Nicky gestured around the tiny closet, with its industrial sized jars of ketchup and mayonnaise. "I waited tables in college. I'm rusty, but believable. I'm not like you, Jason. I wasn't trained to blend in. I was trained to keep my head down, mostly."
"I'm sorry." It was the first time she'd heard the assassin use those words, and it jarred her slightly.
"I'm a big girl," she defended herself. "I knew what I was doing."
She noticed the way the hairs stuck up at the front of his head, giving him an oddly youthful appearance. He had aged so much since their time in Paris.
"Where are you headed?"
"You're not supposed to ask me that," Jason chided her.
"You don't have to answer."
"Missouri." He said the word deliberately, as if he was still trying it out.
"I hope you find them," Nicky said.
"I don't know," Jason replied. "For years they've thought I was dead. Now I have to tell them that their son is a trained killer." He was looking down at his hands, and Nicky wondered if, like Lady Macbeth, he always saw them stained with blood. "I don't know which is worse."
She remembered being mesmerized his hands, in Paris, as he methodically cleaned his gun every day. She could never quite explain it but she'd always had a thing for his hands.
"Well," Nicky said, "they're your family. I'm sure they'll… understand." She wasn't sure at all. She knew he would probably lie to them about it.
"Tell me about Paris," Jason said. "I'm trying to put it all together. I remember we spent a lot of time together, didn't we."
"The agency rented this old warehouse," Nicky started. "Of course we all lived in different apartments all over the city but the warehouse was our home base. Our cover was an import-export business but in that part of town nobody asked too many questions. I ran the place, kept an eye on you and the other operatives."
"That sounds exciting." Jason didn't sound like he thought it was exciting at all.
"It was boring," Nicky confessed. "I mean, if I was bored, I can't imagine how it must have been for you guys. The warehouse was crammed full of junk - a lot of antiques but nothing valuable. And boxes and boxes of records. You found a turntable and you fiddled with it for days until you got the RPM's just right." She smiled at the indelible memory of La Marseillaise played slightly too fast. "Or sometimes, to kill the time, we'd play chess."
"I didn't know I play chess."
"Well, it's a bit of a stretch to say you played it," Nicky teased.
She had to smile at the disbelief that tinged his voice. "You beat me?"
"I'm a logistics expert for the CIA. Well, I was." He looked at her blankly. "Jason, I spanked you."
He shook his head in mock dismay.
"You got so obsessed about it, too. You read all these books on strategy. You used to play the other" - she stopped just short of saying assassins - "the other guys who worked with us, you had this whole elaborate flowchart system worked out. You were so serious about it."
He chuckled a little bit. "And did I ever beat you?"
"Once," she said. "The night before the Wombosi mission."
"Well, I wish I remembered that."
"I talked to Pamela Landy," she said, to change the subject.
"You did what?" He jumped up and faced her.
"It was a secure line, relax. And it was before I came here." She tugged the sleeve of his jacket until he sat down again. "She stuck her neck out for you. I think she's earned a little trust."
"Is she doing all right? I saw the hearings on C-SPAN."
"She's doing all right," Nicky assured him. "By all appearances Landy's going to come through this smelling like a rose."
"Hm." He wasn't convinced that anyone who'd ever been involved with Treadstone or Blackbriar could ever sleep at night. Too much blood had been spilled for that. "Is she going to be taking over Vosen's job?"
Nicky shook her head. "She told me she's done with that. She got a golden parachute and a book deal. And… there's something else."
She told him what Landy had told her: that when she'd discovered Vosen was sluicing off agency dollars to fund his highly illicit operations, she'd simply done a little sluicing of her own. There was a window of opportunity between the chaos of the initial discovery and the men in the black suits hauling all the file boxes away. Get a pencil, Nicky, because I'm only going to say this once, Landy had said, and rattled off the number of a Swiss bank account. It's there if you want it - you and Jason. David. If you see him, tell him I'm sorry.
"How much is it?" Jason asked, not softening at the secondhand apology.
"I don't know. I was afraid to ask."
"I'd hate to see her arrested for fraud, after all this."
"I think the agency is going to overlook it," Nicky said. "I think they consider it a reparation for what they did to you, and for ordering the hit in Tangiers."
"I didn't ask for anything from them."
"Would you rather have an unofficial payoff or an official apology?" she said slyly.
"You can't pay the rent with platitudes," he concurred pragmatically.
"I think that, soon, it's going to be safer for us. Not safe, but safer." Nicky blushed a little at her use of the word us.
"It will never be safe," he said. "Not after the things I've done. And you'll never be safe - with me."
"I don't want safe," she said. It was the closest as she had ever come to confessing her feelings for him. It would have to do.
He stood to leave, and a lump rose in her throat. Jason Bourne was about to walk out of her life again. "Can I - can I make you a sandwich for the road?"
"No, thanks." He had planned to leave casually but her face stopped him. "After I - take care of some things - I'll come back. I will."
She chewed her bottom lip. "I might not be here anymore."
"I'll find you."
"I know you will." Impulsively, Nicky put her arms around him for a goodbye hug. She lingered there for a moment, memorizing his scent, his muscles through the sleeves of his coat. "We'll always have Paris," she added whimsically.
Jason raised an eyebrow, quizzically. "What?"
Of course he wouldn't remember that. "Never mind."