She was in the office especially early this morning, 5:58 by her watch. Those months with Sam, when they had been in that strange territory where they were more than exes but not yet friends (again) and sex had only underscored the distance between them, she would doze, at best, next to him. What she had really wanted to do was to leave, if they were at his place, or ask him to leave, if they were at hers, but she had shrunk from treating him as if he were someone she had picked up when she was too lonely to go home alone. Not because it would hurt him but because it would hurt her, further confirm her fears that she was incapable of getting past Helena's betrayal. So she had started thinking of leaving the agency, leaving New York, leaving him, and then had come the meeting with Pete, when she had learned what, who her next assignment would be. And everything had changed. She still slept like crap – when Helena wasn't in the bed with her – but coming to the office with her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, the 20 oz. cup of coffee in her hand trembling, she might look the same as she did when she had come into the office to escape the morning dance with Sam, but she didn't feel the same. She felt . . . better. It was the only qualifier she would allow herself, for now, but she was optimistic about an upgrade.
Myka had the files of Jim Wells and Charlie Wells open on her desk; she had been looking at them continuously, obsessively. She didn't think either would tell her anything new about Helena, but one or both might tell her more about Burdette. Although there was no solid evidence to tie him to their deaths, the FBI and Helena were unshakably convinced that he had been behind them. They had been well designed and well executed, Gentleman Jim ostensibly dying of a heart attack, unremarkable given his age and the life he had led, and Charlie dying at the hands of his fellow prisoners, similarly unremarkable given his circumstances. Helena believed that Burdette had had them killed because he had always resented the Wellses; his pleasure at having his former boss and his boss's son working for him, being at his beck and call, not as sweet, in the end, as the revenge for years of humiliation.
She had thought that, too, her response colored by her own years of humiliation, perhaps. She had never elaborately staged Helena's death in her mind, but she had had countless fantasies of throttling her. There was nothing like a new perspective, however, to make you see everything differently. Looking at the photos, Myka didn't sense anger; she saw efficiency and, in the case of Charlie's death, a little chest-thumping, which wasn't directed at the remaining Wells but law enforcement. See what I did? Come get me, I dare you. Helena would resist the conclusion, but Myka was beginning to believe that Burdette hadn't had the Wells men executed because they frustrated him or betrayed him. He had had them killed because they were no longer of any use to him, and rather than letting them become of use to someone else, whether the FBI or a rival, he had ensured that they would never be of use to anyone ever again.
The only reason Helena was still alive was that her association with Burdette had ended so many years ago that both her usefulness and the risk she posed to him were limited. Until now. The agency and the DOJ had tipped the scale the wrong way. If she were Burdette, all she would see when she looked at Helena was risk, risk that Helena was working a con, possibly with the assistance of law enforcement. Yes, the Bowdoin haul might still be worth millions, maybe even hundreds of millions given how art prices had skyrocketed over the past 25 years, but what shape were the works in and how complete had the haul remained? Just because there had been few whispers over the years about the works and their whereabouts didn't mean that Gentleman Jim and his co-conspirators hadn't managed to find buyers for them.
Furthermore, Myka continued arguing with herself, if Nate had want the artworks that badly wouldn't he have tortured their location out of Jim Wells before he had had him killed? She paged back to a photo of Jim holding court at a table outside a café, the remains of a meal pushed aside, the men frozen in the moment of sipping from their wine glasses or lighting cigarettes. The photograph had good definition, considering that it had been taken at a distance. The resemblance between Helena and her father was strongly marked despite the toll of Jim Wells's various indulgences. The fleshiness of his face, the lacework of blood vessels just beneath the surface of his skin couldn't disguise the origin of her cheekbones, her nose, the tilted cantilevering of her eyes. Take away the resemblance, take away Helena, and Jim Wells looked little different from a moderately successful crook; there was nothing about him that suggested he would withstand the kind of interrogation that Burdette could devise. He had served time, but that hardship had been decades of lavish dinners and expensive hotel suites ago.
So, if Nate could have gotten the information out of Helena's father one way or another but hadn't, why was he pretending an interest in the Bowdoin artworks now? Myka knew what Helena's answer would be, it was the explanation she had given when she suggested enticing Burdette with the Martin Phillips she planned to "enhance" – he was obsessed with the Wells family. Sighing, Myka closed the files. What was it that Helena said marked the ruin of a good con artist? When he began to believe in his own fantasies. Admittedly, she couldn't peer into Burdette's mind, but Myka suspected that the only one who remained obsessed with a Wells, besides another Wells, was a certain lovelorn FBI agent.
She needed another coffee and something to eat. Her apartment was looking more and more like a suite in an extended-stay motel, smelling of cleaning fluids but not actually clean and offering an array of aging condiments but no real food. She was spending most of her evenings at Helena's place; she wasn't sleeping over, but she was showing up after she had left the office for the day, which might be 7:30 or 9:00. Helena had started waiting dinner for her so they could eat together, and Myka realized that they had slipped into their old routine from when they had lived together. Except, of course, that they weren't living together, the old Myka wouldn't have been able to conceive of, let alone accept, the possibility that the meals and kisses and their mutual worrying about the threats posed by Burdette, on the one hand, and the Winslows, on the other, was all part of a con that Helena was running. The new Myka could live in both worlds, the one she hoped was true and the one she feared was the reality, but only for a time.
Despite Helena's increasing anxiety about Burdette, they were both in agreement that the more immediate threat was the Winslows. Christina's collarbone was healing nicely, but Jemma's face seized with guilt and remorse every time she looked at her. Ben's rage-fueled claims that he would have Christina removed from Jemma's care weren't idle ones. He and his father could bring considerable pressure to bear on a judge. They wouldn't be so crude as to try to blackmail or bribe one; they wouldn't need to. The Winslows had the money to buy a legal team who could outsmart, outmaneuver, and outperform Jemma's counsel. It was no criticism of her attorney. Myka had seen it often enough in her own work. Even airtight cases could develop gaping holes when a top-tier law firm was hired by the defense. Jemma would need more ammunition against the Winslows than the hard work and dedication her attorney would promise her. Mrs. Frederic said she had evidence of the senator's past influence-peddling, but Myka wasn't sure how damaging 40-year old tales of corruption and bribery would prove to be. They could just end up being another quaint hallmark of the '70s, like leisure suits or streaking. She uneasily rolled her shoulders under her blazer as she left the cube farm for the main doors. She couldn't say which put her on edge more, having Mrs. Frederic whisper her tales of ancient wrongdoing from the shadows or the prospect of asking for Claudia Donovan's help.
Passing through security, she saw Leena wildly waving at her. "Wait up, I'm going wherever you're going."
Reluctantly Myka stopped and stepped aside to let incoming staff enter the office. So close to the outside, to coffee, yogurt, precious minutes to clear her mind, but with Leena flagging her down just as she was about to escape, not close enough. If this had been the weekend and they had been outside the office, she would have gladly waited, but here, inside the office, she couldn't assume that Leena was interested in a friendly chat. This Leena was the psychologist trying to assess how well she was handling the stress of her assignment or, worse, the director-whisperer sent to gauge how close she was to fucking it all up and putting Burdette beyond the agency's reach. So Myka didn't hesitate to grumble at her as they badged themselves out, "Did your bosses ask you to evaluate me or threaten me?"
Leena wasn't offended, although her smile faded. "I shouldn't have to remind you that they're your bosses, too. Maybe I want to talk to you because I've missed you." Myka noticed that she didn't say her desire to talk to her wasn't also work-related, and, after a pause, Leena added, "I can wear multiple hats. I have a professional and a personal interest in how things are going with you and Helena." As they waited for the elevator, she suggested quietly, "Let's have our coffee outside."
It may or may not have been the same bench they had sat on when, months ago, Leena had encouraged her to give Helena the benefit of the doubt, but Leena had the same gently inquiring expression. She was even sharing her lemon poppy seed muffin with her, just as she had the pita chips and hummus. And just as she had then, Myka was eating it, having discovered that the hard-boiled egg she bought with her coffee wasn't going to be enough. Or maybe she was eating it because it gave her an excuse not to look into the face of her friend, whose first loyalty, she reminded herself, would be to the agency. Awkwardly capturing some muffin crumbs that had escaped her lips, she searched for a napkin until Leena pressed one into her hand. "Why are we out here, Leena? Being 30 feet from the doors doesn't mean that you won't repeat anything I tell you that you think is a concern."
"Less likely to be interrupted or overheard, that's why. Myka, I don't want to have to tell Pete or his boss anything." She sipped her coffee. "So, if he has to hear something, I want him to hear it from me, when I can provide context – and not from someone who was standing outside my office waiting to talk to me."
"Context?" Myka echoed. She crumpled the napkin into a ball. "It sounds like you've already made up your mind that there's something to report."
"Ugh, this is not how I want it to go." Leena looked away, squinting at the sun. She set her tea down and pulled her blazer tighter. "You can already feel fall in the air." Her voice grew even quieter. "There's always been this fundamental discomfort between the two of you. It was as if your history trailed you wherever you went. But recently? I have to admit, it's a pretty good road show version, but the tension is different." Her laugh, also quiet, carried an appreciative note. "It's not you, it's her. I think tension and discomfort are your base, Myka, but Helena, I can tell she's happy."
Myka wished she had gotten a larger coffee. More accurately she wished the coffee shop sold a larger coffee. "I thought you told me, way back when, that I should entertain the possibility that she wanted to make amends. That's what I'm doing." Did she sound disingenuous or did she sound oblivious? She doubted that she sounded sincere.
"There's the happiness of being forgiven and then there's the other kind." Leena held up her hand to forestall a response. "I don't want more explanation because then I probably would be honor-bound to tattle on you. Letting her make amends doesn't mean letting her back into your bed, or heart."
"Why do I need that little voice inside my head when I have you?" Myka asked sardonically. "Isn't this when you remind that though she may be sorry for what she's done, she's, at bottom, a con artist?"
She had meant it rhetorically; she didn't need Leena's concurrence. It was the thought she carried with her when she left Helena's apartment, and it was the thought that hung over her when she lay sleepless in her bed. It wasn't if Helena would revert back to her old ways – and that was giving her the benefit of the doubt by assuming she hadn't always approached her arrangement with the FBI and Justice as something to be subverted - it was when and why. Leena, however, appeared to be pondering the question as if it really deserved an answer. "I could take a lot of terms out of the DSM, but Helena doesn't readily fit into any category. Maybe the truest thing to say about her is that she grew up believing the only person she could trust was herself. When we're under stress we tend to rely on old patterns of behavior, even when we know they're not healthy. If she feels threatened, she'll take matters into her own hands, regardless of whether it's the best course of action."
It was a kinder assessment than Myka had expected. "What are my old patterns? You know the saying, forewarned is forearmed. Obviously the old Myka is no match for the old Helena, so maybe I should tell Pete to make sure he has reinforcements." She had tried to make a wry joke of it, but what she heard was bitterness.
"You always want to make a situation work. It's what makes you a good agent, Myka. You seek solutions." Leena had turned her head to meet Myka's eyes. "You're smart and you're persistent. You have the tools to outwit her. You just need to be on your guard."
"Lucky for me, it's another old pattern."
She had wanted to tell them in person. Not only tell but explain, she had wanted to explain to them in person because telling them over the phone that she and Sam were getting a divorce would have resulted in a confused and ultimately resistant silence. The resistance wouldn't be coming from her father. Although he wouldn't be diagnosed as having Alzheimer's for another few months, he no longer listened to his wife's end of their phone calls with their daughter and grumbled his objections loudly enough to ensure that Myka could hear them. His would be the confused silence, not the silence implacably opposed to the end of the "good thing" that her marriage to Sam had represented. Her mother had called it that during a visit she and Sam had made to Colorado Springs during the first year of their marriage. "Don't get me wrong, I'm still not happy the two of you eloped, but it's a good thing you have with him, Myka." "Good thing" had been almost fervently underscored, as though people or maybe just the Berings in particular got only one good thing in life, and this marriage to Sam was hers. It said more about her mother and the mystery of her parents' marriage than Myka was comfortable thinking about. Was it worse to believe that her father was her mother's one good thing or the penance Jeannie had had to pay for not recognizing her good thing when she had it?
Her father had shuffled away from the front door, without a hello or a complaint or even a grunt as she had entered the tiny foyer with her overnight bag. Her mother had pressed her to eat, shaking her head when Myka said she had eaten a sandwich on the plane. Out had come the coffee maker, the generic brand chocolate chip cookies, and Myka had sat at the table in the dining nook, trying to ignore both as she repeated that the divorce was no one's fault and that Sam would make another woman a wonderful husband. It was no one's fault, she had said again the next day when she and her parents met Tracy and their grandson at a nearby park.
"You have the best of intentions, but sometimes it doesn't work out." Myka picked up her nephew at the end of the slide. He squirmed from her arms and ran to the steps leading to the top of the slide, pulling himself up by the handrail since the steps were too far apart for his legs to easily negotiate them. His were not the long, coltish Bering legs that both she and Tracy had inherited from their father.
"Sometimes you give it more than a couple of years before throwing your hands up and saying 'We had the best of intentions,'" Tracy sniped.
Her father might be disengaged, shambling along a paved walkway, but there was no shortage of Bering spleen and venom. Tracy was carrying the family's standard for this visit. Myka ignored her and waved at her nephew, who was third in line to go down the slide. She knew she hadn't given her marriage her all, but then she had no "all" to give. It wasn't self-pity if it was true, was it? Myka felt her mother's arm around her waist, and Jeannie gave her a quick, reassuring squeeze. After he had tired of the slide, they had taken Noah to the swings, but he grew bored with the gentle pushes of his aunt and grandmother and demanded that they go to the pond and feed the ducks. Tracy shepherded their father back into the fold, and Myka heard her say under her breath to their mother, "He said he was trying to get back to the car, but he couldn't remember where it was parked." The pond was within a relatively short distance of the playground, not so far that kids would complain of the distance but far enough that the younger ones especially were convinced that they had circled around to the other side of the park. More than one sign informed visitors not to feed the ducks, but Tracy opened her handbag and took out a plastic baggie of dried corn. Her jaw stubbornly set, she sent Myka a dark look and urged Noah to the water's edge. "At least it's corn and not bread. What are you going to do, arrest me?"
Tracy had offered her verdict and that night, after an excruciatingly quiet dinner at home, her father pronounced his judgment. Putting his cup of coffee on an end table next to a battered leather easy chair that had seen service in the bookstore, he said, "I knew it was never going to work out." Grunting as he lowered himself onto the cushion, he added, "You've never made good choices, Myka. First it was that kid at college, could never look me in the eye. Then it was that girl at law school you brought home one Thanksgiving, after you decided you were bisexual." He had hooked his fingers in air quotes. "She was always trying to show me how smart she was. And then you picked the whopper, the one who emptied out a museum right under your nose. She almost cost you your job. She probably should have. The FBI practically had us in prison as her co-conspirators." The gaze he turned on her wasn't confused or distracted, it was bright and hard and unrelenting. "Tell me, what kind of guy is going to want to marry a woman who allowed millions of dollars of art to disappear? Not one who's worth a damn."
Jeannie vaguely shushed him as she sat down on the sofa across from him. Myka shrugged and wearily said, "Thanks for your opinion, Dad." If she had been going to kill him, she would have done it years ago. She sat in the opposite corner of the sofa and picked up the brick of a thriller she had purchased at the airport. Like her, the federal agent who was its hero was involved in a potentially career-ending affair with a woman possessed of a shady past, but unlike her, the federal agent would emerge both triumphant and unscathed. Or so Myka presumed, she still had 550 pages to go.
Later, when she was packing for the flight back to New York the next day, she left the paperback out of her bag. There really was no need to read to the end. Her parents had already gone to bed, which was why she jumped a little when she heard a quiet knock at her door. Her mother, wearing a light robe over the prim, floral nightgowns she had favored since Myka was a child, took in the open bag on the bed.
"Your flight isn't until ten. Are you planning to leave at the crack of dawn?"
"It was always going to be an in-and-out kind of visit, Mom. If I can get in earlier . . . ."
"I wish your dad and your sister could have found it within themselves to say that they were sad or sorry." Jeannie scuffed across the carpet to give Myka a hug. "So I'll say it for them, we're sorry to hear the news, and if there's anything we can to do to help you through it . . . ."
"Thanks." Myka sat on the corner of the bed and Jeannie joined her. "Sam's a good guy. He's not to blame –"
"Has she come back?" Her mother was looking anxiously at her.
Myka stared at her in surprise. "What?"
"Has Helena come back? Because you're not a quitter, Myka, and I could tell you were happy with Sam. I can't think of what else might have happened." Her mother's hand had clamped onto her wrist. "She's not worth going to prison for. Don't fall for whatever she's telling you."
"Mom, she hasn't come back. I don't know where she is, and, believe me, if she ever did come back, I'd turn her in. It didn't work with Sam because –"
"Because you're not over her." The pressure on Myka's wrist became more painful. She had had no idea her mother was that strong. Her mother smiled sadly at her. "You're like him, you know. The two of you, you've always wanted to . . . surrender . . . to something all-consuming. Your father came out here to be a great skier. When that didn't work, he wanted to become a great writer. He wanted so much to be a part of something larger, and when he couldn't find something to match his dreams, he turned on himself." She sighed. "And anyone near him."
It was perilously close to an explanation that he had tried to crush her soul because he loved her. If she had ever been going to ask her mother why she had continued to stay with him, Myka would have done that years ago, too. Instead she leaned over and kissed her mother's temple. "What I can't forget is how special she made me feel, Mom. It may have all been a lie, but I've never felt that I mattered so much to anyone, that I was . . . unforgettable." Myka couldn't pronounce the word without blushing with shame. As it had turned out, she was all too forgettable.
"Love," Jeannie Bering said bleakly, "is the greatest con of them all."
Christina had already been in three time-outs, her bad temper succeeded by tears and then by more sulks. It had been raining all day, a cool, steady rain reminiscent of fall, and Myka remembered how Leena had pulled her blazer tighter when they had talked in the courtyard earlier in the week. Coloring books and markers were strewn across the living room floor, and a stack of Disney DVDs was on the cabinet next to the TV. Her tear-stained face was turned up to her mother's; a tantrum had ensued when Helena said she couldn't watch Frozen until she helped pick up the books and markers. Détente wasn't likely, given the scowl on Helena's face.
"Let's go out and jump in puddles," Myka said, leaping up from her chair, headed for the coat closet in the foyer.
Christina spun around, eyes wide with excitement. "We can go outside?"
"Rain melts only the Wicked Witch of the West." The allusion was lost on Christina, who apparently hadn't been introduced to Oz and Dorothy and the Yellow Brick Road. Yet the puzzlement disappeared with a brush of her hand across her face, as if the tears and the unhappiness that had caused them were never to be recalled again.
"I don't think jumping's good for her collarbone," Helena objected.
"It's just an excuse to get out of the house. Don't be so literal-minded," Myka chided her as she placed Christina's rainboots on the large yarn rug that virtually covered the width of the foyer.
"I've been dealing with a cranky four-year-old all afternoon. Both my appreciation of irony and my patience are gone." Helena had joined them, helping Christina wriggle her feet into the pink plastic boots. "Can't go out in the rain without your wellies," she said, tapping Christina on the nose. Myka was skeptically examining a rain poncho she had found, holding it up and glancing from it to Christina and back again. "It'll fit," Helena said with a softly derisive snort and carefully slipped it over her daughter's head. She then searched the closet shelf until she found an umbrella, which she handed to Myka.
"You're not going with us?" Myka asked. What had seemed a simple solution suddenly blossomed into an engineering problem. She had a child who was ready to fly out the door in pink . . . moonboots . . . and she would be all that was between that child reinjuring her collarbone or running into the street in front of a car or returning home a sodden mess, or all three. And she was supposed to manage an umbrella on top of it.
"Oh, no," Helena said, smiling. "Jemma got to escape to the movies this afternoon. I'm going to make myself a cup of tea and enjoy the silence for as long as it lasts."
On cue, it started raining harder once they left the protection of the porch for the sidewalk, and Myka felt the raindrops pelting her clothes as she struggled to open the umbrella. Christina obediently stood next to her, the shapeless rain poncho making her look like a cartoon ghost, a bulb-shaped head appended to a mini tablecloth. She held the umbrella over their heads as they started at a sedate pace down the sidewalk. Christina tentatively kicked through a few puddles and soon grew confident enough to run through a larger one that covered the sidewalk ahead of them. Her running in the boots was awkward enough that Myka had visions of her feet tangling and the fall landing Christina squarely on her collarbone, but her giggles and shrieks of pleasure stilled the "Be careful!" and "Slow down!" that Myka was tempted to shout. The girl had been cooped up all day, the past two weeks, really. She deserved the freedom to run around a little, even if it was risky, and her running wasn't that awful, was it? But when Christina hitched to her left, her right boot dragging, Myka sped up to keep even with her. There was giving her freedom and then there was being negligent.
"Maybe we ought to slow down a little? We don't want to arrive at the princess's house too soon."
"We're going to a princess's house?" Christina looked up at her expectantly.
Myka could almost hear Helena snickering. "Um . . . it's kind of like the bald princess's house, her castle. You can see it in your imagination, but you can't see it out here." She gestured at the homes on either side of the street, larger, set farther back, and with a market value considerably higher than Helena's and Jemma's.
"If it's in 'magin'tion, how will we know we're there?"
Maybe The Wizard of Oz wasn't such a useless reference after all. Playing Glinda to Christina's Dorothy, Myka said, "We'll be there when we close our eyes." She stopped and closed her eyes. "Do you see it?" She looked down through the screen of her eyelashes at Christina. Christina faithfully nodded. "What does it look like?"
"Big and pink and it has sparkles." Like a flower, Christina's face turned unerringly up at her again, her eyes squeezed shut. Then she opened her eyes and sighed when the same homes as before swam back into view.
Myka flushed. Glinda actually sent Dorothy home. What she had done wasn't magic but a chintzy trick instead – 'It's there in your imagination, kid.' Her father, in a kinder mood, would have said something like that. Want a princess house? Close your eyes. Myka opened her mouth but shut it a second later for fear she would promise Christina something else she couldn't deliver. Christina didn't hold the absence of a big, pink castle with sparkles against her, stamping her feet in the next puddle they came upon and pointing at the water as it lapped over her boots. Shifting uncomfortably in her increasingly wet shirt – the umbrella provided only partial protection – Myka called softly to her, "Let's turn around and go home. We don't want Mommy to worry."
Christina didn't protest, walking close to Myka. Bumping against Myka's hip, she said, "Do you know what Nonni said? She said I should be in the market for a new daddy. Can you really get daddies at the store?"
If only. Feeling she was on surer ground now that she wasn't promising Christina castles and princesses, Myka said, "You can get lots of things at a store but not –"
"Will you be my new daddy? I don't like the one I have."
Myka stopped, letting the umbrella swing to the ground. Christina had asked it speculatively, as if she were trying it out like she might a sales pitch for Girl Scout cookies before she started ringing doorbells. Door to door to door she would go, inquiring of the adult who opened the door whether he or she would be her "new daddy." Sure it was a ridiculous scenario, but Christina, even at four, had the impulse to change a situation she didn't like. It was better than enduring it and promising yourself that when you graduated from high school, you'd pack your bags for college and never look back. She knelt, letting the rain wet her hair. "I would love to be your new daddy, but I think the one you have won't want to be traded in. Maybe you and I, we can make him a better daddy." Doubtful, but anything was possible. Look at her and Helena. Maybe her belief that life was something other, better than the stark binary of predator and prey wasn't so foolish. If there were more than snakes and mice in the world, there were more than the mommies and daddies you were born with. "No matter what, I will always be your Myka."
Christina wasn't old enough yet to ask her what that meant, which was a very good thing, since Myka didn't know either. If Helena wasn't conning her and if Burdette didn't kill them both, she might have a chance to find out. Christina seemed satisfied, turning the conversation to dinner and asking her if they could have hot dogs. "How about on princess placemats we make ourselves? And with sparkly tater tots?" Myka couldn't conjure castles out of thin air but she could shake some candy sprinkles over tater tots. Sprinkles weren't that much worse than ketchup. They couldn't be.
"Yesyesyesyes!" Christina shouted. Myka had barely straightened and lifted the useless umbrella before Christina was tugging at her hand and ordering her to hurry up.
It was reckless to be violating the visitation agreement yet again. The Winslows could use it against Helena if their attorneys were to depose her or Jemma, but Helena didn't object as they stayed past five and then six, boiling hot dogs and baking tater tots. Jemma was content to let them make a mess of her kitchen while she and Christina drew flowers and princesses and castles on several sheets of paper. Helena crossed her arms over her stomach in mock or, possibly, real disgust as Myka shook sprinkles over the tots, murmuring, "You'll have to eat them, too, you know."
She was silent as Myka drove her back to Mrs. Frederic's, although Myka felt Helena's gaze on her for the entire ride. The quality of the silence was different; it wasn't angry or resentful. It wasn't despairing or calculating. It seemed thoughtful, musing. Myka felt as she sometimes did under the eyes of a sales associate in a department store, pictured in a variety of outfits, all of which were more flattering and expensive than the clothes she was wearing. Before she got out of the car, Helena leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "You are not your parents, Myka. If we come out on the other side of this in one piece, we're having more children."
Entering her own apartment, Myka closed her eyes and in her 'magn'tion saw a home that had easy chairs so deep you had to be pulled out of them, fireplaces, a master bedroom with a bed big enough that their kids could jump up and down on it and still not wake her and Helena. Opening her eyes, she immediately closed them against the drabness. Of course that had been its appeal, initially. After her divorce, she hadn't wanted anything that looked like a home; she had wanted a hotel room, only slightly bigger. She missed the mess of coloring books and markers, stuffed animals, and dolls, she wanted to lay next to Helena in the quiet and spaciousness of her bedroom, she wanted to make love to her all night and then wake up to the sounds of Christina playing or demanding breakfast of her nonni in the morning. She wanted many things now when she had spent many years not wanting or hardly wanting anything at all; she was unaccustomed to how driving desire could be. In April, she had had no dissatisfaction with the apartment; at the end of August, she could hardly stand to be in it.
She turned her small TV on only to turn it off. Reading a book wasn't what she wanted either. She had a half-bottle of wine in the fridge, but she wasn't sure how easily it would ride on top of sparkly tater tots. Besides, drinking a glass of wine solely to pass the time until she could talk herself into going to bed, it completed the picture of dreariness that the apartment had begun to symbolize for her.
Choosing a bottle of water instead, she uncapped it only to hear the buzzing of her phone. It could be Helena, or it could be . . . Pete. She would have preferred Helena, but any interruption of the sterile silence was welcome. Unless he was about to tell her that the case against DeWitt had gone south. "What's going on Pete?"
"I got a call from DeWitt's attorney, Mykes. He wants to talk." After a pause, Pete said, "He wants to talk to you. His attorney made that very clear."
"Do you have any idea what he wants to talk about?"
"Nope, but I suggest you make meeting with him your first priority. He probably just wants to scam us, but if it could help us . . . ."
"Should I take Helena along?"
"No, he wants to talk to you and only you. Stop in with an update once you've seen him." Just as the call ended, she could hear Pete yelling "Travis, put my controller down and go to bed."
She had wanted something to occupy her thoughts. Opening her closet, she surveyed her suits. While they all tended to be in dark colors and conservatively cut, some were more actuarial than others. A navy pantsuit with a lighter blue button-down shirt, he would expect her to wear something like this, to underscore that she was a law enforcement agent. Did she want to conform to his expectations or try to unsettle them? Myka closed the doors. She could spend all night trying to outguess him. He would be trying to work her, to find the weak points he had missed the first time, when she had been Helena's neglected wife. He would be looking to play on her vulnerabilities to find out what the FBI had on him. The more he could make her question herself, the less attention she would be paying to him and what he was trying to do. He would be seeking to distract her, as Helena had eight years before. She wondered if he had managed to discover that fact; it would explain why he was insisting on talking to her and only to her. She had been conned once before. That was one explanation, although if he had discovered who Helena was, maybe he was hoping that their investigation of him was tainted by the fact that she was a felon. But he wouldn't need to see her to work that angle . . . . Myka flopped on her bed. She could count on having another sleepless night.
She made sure she was late. She had called ahead to arrange the meeting with DeWitt, but she had also said that regardless of how late "traffic" might make her, he was to be kept in the interview room. If there were complaints about disruptions to schedules or the need to ensure there was additional monitoring, they could be forwarded to her bosses. DeWitt wouldn't be surprised by the ploy; he was well versed in displays of dominance, but he might be irked by it all the same. Some part of him, buried deep underneath the overweening self-confidence and unrelieved narcissism, would find his imprisonment galling. While she didn't want to waste time or betray herself or the agency to him by trying to outfox him, running 20 minutes late wasn't late at all when you trying to get anywhere in the city in the early morning.
DeWitt was a study in nonchalance when the guard opened the door to the interview room for her. His eyes were closed, his hands resting on his thighs, but he was smiling. His eyelids fluttered and rose slowly, his smile becoming broader and self-satisfied. "This is a good place to think, to close your eyes and let your thoughts order themselves. The cell I'm in is crowded and noisy, but here," he gestured at the walls, "I literally have room to think, and it's peaceful. So I have to thank you for making me wait. I've put the time to good use."
"Are you finding jail stressful, Bryce? Did you ask for me to take your confession?" There was one chair opposite him. She couldn't pull it out; it was bolted to the floor, as were the table and the chair he was sitting on.
"Not at all. I'll be out of here before too long. You have to know how weak your case against me is, built on the so-called confessions of people who I thought were my friends. But people as rich and powerful as they are don't make friends with the likes of you and me, Myka." His gaze, which had been drifting from her to the door to the walls before lighting lazily back on her, as if she weren't important enough to hold his attention, suddenly sharpened. "I always sensed a connection between us. You know what it's like to feel that you've spent most of your life on the outside looking in."
"And here I thought you just wanted to fuck me."
His laugh was so short and surprised that it sounded more like a bark. She had chosen to wear her hair up today, like the day she and Helena had met him at Barrington. All that was missing was the twin set. She had banked on the fact that hearing "fuck" come out of her mouth would be like hearing his first grade teacher say it. It was another cheap trick to keep him off balance, but she wasn't above resorting to them. "You were a challenge, and I can't resist a challenge. On the other hand, your 'wife,'" he said with ironic emphasis, "would spread her legs for anyone if it got her closer to what she wanted. Helena Wells, what didn't she do to pull off the Marston Gallery heist? But you would know that better than anyone, wouldn't you?"
Myka tried desperately not to stiffen. DeWitt researched his marks and made educated guesses about what he didn't know. Helena's name and the Gallery heist had been linked before, and while it wasn't public knowledge that Helena had previously worked for the FBI, jails were notorious rumor mills. A number of the guards knew her by name and more than a few could remember her from the years when she wore Marston in the grim set of her face like a scarlet A, when she would arrange time for an interview or interrogation and never lift her eyes from the floor as she passed them, dreading the contempt in their glances. The guards, like the inmates, suffered from boredom, and though they were generally cautious about what they revealed concerning the agents and the U.S. attorneys they led to and from the private rooms, DeWitt was clever enough to elicit more information from them than they knew they were providing. Moreover, if he had a halfway competent attorney, the attorney would be diligently unearthing everything he could about consultant Helena Wells and Agent Myka Bering, searching for any error, any crossing of a line in their interactions with him and the other Barrington alums. As for her and Helena's past relationship, the fact that their jury-rigged marriage, with its tension and disagreement, had been believable at all was because it had traded on those old emotions. She hadn't been acting the unhappy spouse, she had been unhappy. DeWitt wasn't clairvoyant, he was a con.
"If what women do is 'spread their legs,' it's no surprise that you don't have any friends."
"We all spread our legs for someone, Myka. It's who you spread them for that's important. If you don't choose wisely among the people who are inevitably going to fuck you over –"
"We end up like you?" Myka cut in abruptly. "You're the one wearing a jumpsuit and sitting in a cell, Bryce. Where's Chris? Where's Alex?"
DeWitt's face didn't tighten; rather it seemed to undergo a subtle rearrangement, as if the bones were shifting under internal pressure. It wasn't idle speculation to wonder how close he had come to launching himself across the table at her. "I know I'll be vindicated." He looked away from her, and when his eyes met hers again, they had a roguish cast. "But I'm not averse to hurrying my vindication along. I have some information to share with you."
"For a price, I presume."
"I'm open to negotiating." Seeing the skeptical curl of her mouth, he said chidingly, "She's never going to deliver what she's promised. She'll string you along until she's ready to disappear and poof," he closed his hands into fists and then opened them, spreading his fingers wide, "she's gone. She'll have an escape hatch that you won't find until she vanishes through it."
Unwillingly, Myka remembered the homemade signal-jamming device, designed to neutralize the ankle monitor, that Helena had dropped into her hands. Helena claimed that she never would have used it, but Helena claimed many things. She had left their loft days before the Marston heist, vowing to be back soon. Yes, poof. After Marston, when they had tried to trace Helena's movements, they had gotten no farther than Chicago. She had purchased a one-way ticket under the name of Helena Wells, and after that she had vanished into cyberspace. The identities she had assumed, how she had gotten to Houston, and, more important, how she had gotten out of the country, they were never able to completely put together. Myka suspected that Joshua Donovan had done his best – and his best was very, very good – to erase any electronic traces, and what he hadn't been able to erase, he had tried to corrupt or bury under a mountain of garbage data. Helena maintained that she had been too broken by her own deception to complete the theft, but she hadn't been so broken that she wasn't able to elude the FBI.
Of course, Helena had an escape hatch. She would always retain the instincts of a con. Myka could only hope that she would rise above them. "What do you have to sell, Bryce?" She didn't hide the weariness.
"I know where the Bowdoin art works are hidden."