Red had finished his last call of the day. He was annoyed with the state of affairs. Trying to recover from the damaged inflicted by Stone was consuming his time. He should be brokering deals or gathering more information, but instead, he was assuring everyone he was as powerful as he had always been. The itch came back, but it was because he was annoyed. The inner voice told him just a few hits would take the edge off.

Instead, of seeking out where the kit was left on the kitchen counter, he dialed Anna's number.

Anna answered on the third ring, "Anna Higgins."

"Is this the woman who let some old man ravish her last night?"

"Definitely not. An old man could not do to me what my lover did last night."

Red chuckled, "How has your day been?"

"Is that why you called me to ask about my day."

"Yes," Red responded.

"What's wrong?"

"Just a rough day is all," Red said, "Business has been tiring, and Elizabeth has been here all day."

"She is not a fan of me," Anna said, "I think she has a crush on you."

"More like she wants to kill me," Red said, "She barely tolerates me these days."

"Oh I think you have it wrong," Anna said, "She was clearly jealous today when she saw me."

"When will you be finished with work?"

"A few more hours," Anna said feeling sorry for him because he sounded exhausted still, "Has it really been that bad of a day?"

"Yes," Red said closing his eyes, his head had ached ever since fighting with Lizzie.

"Is there any way you can send Dembe or someone to get me? Or I can have my driver bring me if you give me the address. I can finish work my way to you," The sound of his voice was enough to tell Anna that he just needed comfort and it was another opportunity for her to spend time with him.

"I can arrange a ride for you. How long do you need to be in the office?" Again he was not sure why he did not just give her the address to the safe house, he'd be moving in a day, and there was nothing to indicate she was anything other than she claimed to be.

"I can be ready in twenty."

"I'll call you back with who will be picking you up," Red hung the phone up smiling at it. He dialed Dembe's number who answered on the second ring.

"What is it, Raymond?" Dembe asked still sounding annoyed with Red.

"Can you pick up Anna in twenty minutes at her office?"

"Yes," Dembe said, "Am I bringing her to the safe house?"

"Yes please," Red responded, "Thank you."

"I will have her there in an hour and a half with traffic."

"Did James get back to you about Lizzie's car?" Red asked remembering that bit of information from earlier.

"Yes. It's the transmission," Dembe responded, "He can fix it but thinks it's better just to junk it and get a new car."

"I'll let Lizzie know."

"I already told her," Dembe said, "I have to go. I'm getting into traffic." Dembe hung up without saying goodbye.

That told Red his friend was still upset with him.

Red walked out into the living room and found Agnes crawling around in the giant playpen. "When did she start crawling?"

"Last week," Lizzie said looking up from her laptop quickly flipping onto a word document so Red could not see what she was browsing. Her anger from earlier lessened and morphed into concern.

"Dembe and Anna are on their way over," Red saw something in Lizzie that looked like jealousy. "I heard about your car."

"If you offer to buy me a car I'm going to throw my laptop at you."

Red raised his hands, "Fine I won't. Would you like to stay here tonight or do you want Dembe to take you home?"

Liz had answered before she thought about it, "I can stay here tonight," She did not want to tell him that her apartment felt like a safe house without Tom. Empty and void of anything, it was a sham just like her relationship with Tom Keen. However, the prospect of spending an evening seeing Red and Anna together was also unappealing.

Neither person talked about the elephant in the room. To Red's relief, Lizzie seemed to have let it go. For now, he reminded himself, she would bring it up later, wield the knowledge as a weapon to inflict a wound when she needed too.

"Please be kind to Anna," Red said, "She is a good person. Get to know her before you judge her."

"I was nice this morning," Liz defended herself wanting to question Red more about his drug usage, but based on her search of the internet, Red did not have any of the symptoms of heroin addiction. Yes, he had a kit, but she had never actually seen him high. Dembe seemed to know Red was high earlier, but this could be the occasional use, as Red indicated. He did not neglect himself. He still was groomed and dressed perfectly. She had seen him eat that morning, and he had cooked lunch. He did not eat any of it, but they had fought. His arms were always covered, but this morning she had seen him in a t-shirt, and there were no track marks she remembered seeing. Maybe it was true, and he was not addicted but occasionally used for recreation. He was a criminal, after all, it was not too far removed, especially given his epicurean way of life.

Instead of asking him what she really wanted she followed up with, "I'm not so sure how good she can be if she is with you."

Oh, that had been a punch to the gut, but Red did not react Lizzie's words. Instead, he took a breath to calm himself and changed the subject, just to keep the peace, "Anything specific you want for dinner?"

Lizzie glared at him when he didn't take the bait, "No whatever will work."

"Do you or Agnes need anything for the night?" Red was remaining calm, but a voice was raging in his head to bring up Tom Keen, to throw her glaring mistake in her face. To ask her about the noise complaint and what had transpired, but he knew she would only get even more defensive thinking he had been checking on her and not Tom.

"Dembe already offered to pick up clothes and toys for Agnes."

"So everything is already handled. Great," Red said leaving the room quickly to avoid saying something he knew he'd regret. He walked into the kitchen and found his wooden box. He grabbed it and took it back to the room, placing it back in the nightstand. Already he was trying to form an excuse for the bruise on his arm. If Anna saw it, she would ask, and he needed a reason for it. He could not claim another B12 shot. Maybe a vaccine for some tropical climate he might have to go to shortly?

Returning to the kitchen, he searched the fridge and decided to make a simple pasta dish with chicken for dinner. The sauce would need an hour or so to truly get the proper flavoring, so he started on it to keep himself busy.

Lizzie eventually joined him in the kitchen, "I am sorry about before." She said, "It was a low blow,"

Her statement had shocked Red. He was already suspect of what she was doing. She needed or wanted something from him. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have seen that their relationship was one of emotional abuse. A constant cycle. Starting with a honeymoon phase, turning into her lashing out at him for something and treating him like dirt, then the phase where she let him back in, and then it would morph into the start of the cycle, and so on and so on, over and over.

Liz was the one to break the silence again, "Where did you and Anna meet?"

Red studied her and did not see anything sinister in her question, but he still asked, "Are you sure this is what you want to talk about?"

"It's this or heroin," Liz said knowing he would choose to talk about Anna. She did not want Red, at all. But she didn't trust Anna either. The best way to get information about her was to start with Red. Red would have done his due diligence to check her over, and if Lizzie pretended to want to get to know the woman, it might be enough to get Red to tell her.

"Anna it is," Red said not feeling like another fight, "We meant during the Bougainville Civil War."

"Where was that?"

"Papua New Guinea. A small island that was of no use except that it was rich in natural resources to be mined. The locals were not happy with their treatment, or the fact that the "red-skins" and "white-skins" were invading their home for profit."

"What were you doing there?"

"Trying to broker a deal."

"Which side?"

"The governments," Red answered adding details, "It was not completely by choice. I was still establishing myself and only had a handful of clients. At the time it was my largest client that wished to make the deal. So I went."

"What was Anna doing there?"

"She was taking a break from graduate school traveling the world. She happened to land there and started taking pictures of the conflict."

"And how did you two meet? She snaps a picture of you making the deal."

"No," Red chuckled at the movie type meeting Lizzie suggested, "Word had gotten out to the resistance that a new player was coming to broker a deal between the government and a security agency full of mercenaries. The government was struggling to maintain order and keep mine operations going with the resistance attacks. I was still establishing myself and did not have the security nor the contacts I have today. I had no idea what I was walking into. I was also a lot more devil may care back then about my own security. The resistance needed for the deal not to go through. If it did, it meant the end of the civil war. The resistance was not military trained, and mercenaries would quickly stop any fuss they made. The American government knew I was a threat, even starting out, and had managed to leak to the resistance my military photos and with it the knowledge that it was I who would be there to broker the deal. I was leaving my hotel to meet with the government officials to start negations when a group of six or seven men surrounded me. Even back then, in the peak of my physical health and strength, I knew I would not be able to fend them off. I fought anyways, did not want to go down without a fight. They beat me unconscious," Red said, "Anna stopped them from killing me. She even managed to drag me back to where she was staying. She tended to my wounds and left me, in what she thought were safe hands, while she went away for a bit."

"She did all of that for a stranger?"

"Yes, and more," Red answered, "The people she was staying with sold me to the resistance for a large sum of money. The opposition took me and tortured me for weeks. It was one of the first times I experienced torture on the other side of the law," Red eyes were far away as he remembered the pain. It had been shortly after the skin grafts had completely healed. The BRA had taken to burning him, bringing back memories of the fire, and the feeling of cooking alive. "She somehow got me out of there," Red smiled as he continued, "She is a good person if you give her a chance I think you would like her."

"Did you finance the start of her non-for-profit?"

"Of course not. She would not have taken my money if I offered it to her. She got a sizeable sum from her husband when they divorced. He came from a well-off family."

"Why did they divorce?"

"I don't know," Red answered, "I did not know they were divorced until we bumped into each other in Chicago."

"You don't find it a coincidence that you bump into her twice in one lifetime. She had to be the only other American in Papua New Guinea, and then you bump into her a second time when your business is at its weakest, and you are at your weakest. In a random US city?"

"It seems highly improbable, but I do not think she has an alternative agenda if that is what you are hinting at," Red said trying to not get defensive. "WE did spend quite a lot of time together after leaving that damn island, and she never once cared about my business."

"What makes you so sure?" Lizzie sad, "You are not one to trust people that easily."

"I've known Anna for a long time," Red answered.

"If you say so," Lizzie said stretching on the stool.

Red felt his blood pressure increase, he wanted to call Lizzie out. To point out just because her husband had used her, it did not mean that was what Anna was doing to him. But Red knew it would just be a fight he did not want, and he knew the anger he felt was likely a symptom of the heroin and cocaine. The mood swings could be a bitch.

"Will she be spending the night again?" Liz asked trying to keep the judgment out of her voice. There was something she did not trust about Anna.

"I do not know. It is up to her," Red answered.

"I better go check on Agnes," Lizzie was forming a plan in her mind, it started with more recon on Anna. So far she had found very little about the mysterious woman on the internet. "Oh Red."

"Yes Lizzie," Red said lifting his head to look at her in the entryway.

"Can I borrow a car tomorrow?" Lizzie asked, "I need to run some errands before work and start looking for a daycare for Agnes."

"Yes. I can get Dembe to give you keys to one of the cars," Red said, "you could just…"

"I just want to borrow," Liz stopped him from offering her a car.

Thanks for reading!