It was easier than she thought it would be not to say anything about her discovery. Hank and Marilyn were working each other up about local politics – "An out-and-out crook!" "I went to high school with him, and he fixed the student council elections!" - when she returned to the office. Hank only offhandedly asked what she thought about the paintings, so it wasn't difficult at all to respond with a polite "Interesting" and not fear that she would be pressed for more. However, the sooner they left the church the better, and she tried, without much subtlety, to suggest it was time that they leave. Marilyn simply refilled the grandma mug and pushed it toward her. "Not before you have another a cup of coffee, hon. Hank and I haven't run down everyone we know yet."
Hank and Marilyn weren't much of a test, not even when Hank said, after she walked with him to the entrance of Serenity Bay, "My door's always open to visitors, even you, Special Agent or whatever-you-are Bering, especially if you find out what happened to all that art." Myka only smiled and thanked him for his time. Back at the office, she didn't feel the slightest temptation to run to Pete or Steve with the news, and later, when Helena stopped by her cube on her way home, mildly curious about the outcome of her visit with one of her father's childhood friends, Myka took a pondering sip from her sixth coffee of the day and simply said, "About what you would think. He remembered pranks and petty thefts but never thought that Jimmy Wells could pull off something like Bowdoin."
Helena's glasses were on the top of her head, and her fingers were smudged with what looked like colored inks. She looked less like a frazzled professor and more like an old-fashioned copy editor. "He didn't pull off Bowdoin, not really. All the ways that art could have been used, and it's probably mildewed and disintegrating in a storm sewer." She noticed Myka staring at her hands. "We were asked to take a look at counterfeit Vera Wang." She held her hands out, palms toward Myka. "So poorly fabricated, the dyes weren't even set." She turned her wrists to give her palms her own once-over. "Thankfully, the miscreant's career in off-off-off-the-rack couture is at an end. It wasn't just a blemish on fashion, it was a blemish on clothing. I had more style when I took shears to my jeans." "Punk" Helena flashed through Myka's mind and she involuntarily smiled. "Small victories," Helena said softly, "that's what you used to say, remember? 'We don't have to have big victories because small victories stack up.'"
Myka nodded, trying not to think about the Degas drawing and whether the big victory of finding the Bowdoin art would feel anything like a victory if Helena had known all along where her father had hidden the works. It was easier to keep all of that at the back of her mind when, much later, having had among the oldest and most reliable of her turn-ons working on her since the morning, she could pull the v-neck sweater over Helena's head, unbutton her blouse, and indulge in everything that "sexy professor" had been suggesting to her for the past ten hours.
She didn't find her sleep troubled by her secret, she didn't dream about it, and the next day she worked for hours without thinking about it. Yet it was there, just under the surface, an insistent, niggling question, "What next? What next?" An agent more focused on his successes than his failures probably would hear it as a chant that would grow to a roar once he stepped out onto the field, "Bow—doin! Bow—doin!" Then the acknowledgment that she was no Pete Lattimer and the dig into her back that her secret was threatening to become were forgotten when she answered the phone, her work phone, her direct line, and heard the words, "This is Mark Winslow. We need to talk. . . now."
It was a subway ride to the Lexington Avenue penthouse where he waited for her. Myka stood, hanging onto on a strap, surrounded by middle schoolers on a field trip to the Met. The kids were leaning around her, talking, laughing, enjoying the break from school, even if it led only to a museum. She imagined an older Christina among them, or, better yet, Christina and Helena with her on a visit to the Met, Helena telling Christina about the paintings they were going to see, Christina not quite rolling her eyes but meeting Myka's and signaling her intention to ditch the tour of Renaissance masterworks and head straight for Ancient Egypt. If they could curb Christina's impatience, there might be time for a side trip to the Hudson River School painters.
But that was in the future, a future receding from her with every step she took toward Winslow's home. There would be cries that he should resign, the Senate might muster the courage to censure rather than reprimand him, but none of it would change the outcome, which would be no resignation, no removal. Unless he had explicitly bribed or coerced the police and the attorneys in the D.A.'s office, it would be a difficult legal case to make. If, on the other hand, Fargo were able to provide proof that Winslow had broken laws in his real estate dealings, then the sheer historical weight of his corruption, the decades of self-dealing and misuse of his position might grind him fine, if exceedingly late. But Fargo had yet to send her anything, and he might never share the evidence he said he had, possibly because Winslow's crimes were less than he had made them out to be or because he couldn't trust a woman who represented a government he distrusted. In reality, Mark Winslow's power to wrest Christina away was no less today than it was yesterday.
The realization was only further confirmed by her having to wait 20 minutes in the lobby before the security guard confirmed with a dismissiveness that relegated her to the status of a deliveryman – or reporter – that she could go up to the penthouse. The guard punched in a code in the elevator car before stepping out with a bored "Mr. Winslow's staff will meet you outside the elevator." A note of warning entered his voice as he said, "Wait until an escort arrives. It won't be long."
The doors had barely begun to open and a woman was there to greet her. She seemed more of a housekeeper than a personal assistant or member of the senator's professional staff, dressed in a tunic and slacks that Jeannie Bering might wear and her expression more welcoming than Myka had expected. "Mr. Winslow is on a conference call right now but expects to be with you shortly." She turned toward a dark paneled door at the end of a short hallway. The marble here was both colder and more expensive than the marble in the building's entrance, and Myka wanted to pull her suit jacket tighter about her. With a swipe of a key card, the woman opened the door and gestured for Myka to enter. She felt she had stepped into the impersonal elegance of a luxury hotel. More marble, a chandelier above her head, and a set of shallow, wide steps that led her down into a room offering her, at its far end, a panoramic view of the city's skyline. She didn't take the liberty of walking over to the windows; she stood, stiff and straight, next to the nearest piece of furniture, a long, low-slung sofa, her feet sinking into a rug that looked like it had just been unrolled. The color scheme was as cool as the temperature, subtle grays modulating to an ice-rinsed white. Myka would have held out her hands had there been a fireplace, but if there had been one, it probably would have been unlit.
"Can I get you something to drink?"
Myka started shaking her head then rethought her decision. "A glass of water, please." Her mouth had already started to dry in anticipation of the conversation she was about to have with Winslow. She had sat across from criminals whose rap sheets would have papered the walls of the interrogation room, and she had sat across from peers and superiors in the FBI who were, to a one, convinced that she had betrayed them. But this meeting with Winslow, if she didn't handle it right, could hurt Christina. Myka hadn't moved from her spot next to the sofa when the woman returned with a crystal beverage glass, its sides intricately etched, water barely visible for the ice that filled it. "Please take a seat. Make yourself comfortable. He shouldn't be too much longer."
Comfortable. It was impossible to imagine Christina romping in this room, although Winslow's housekeeper, assistant, whatever she was seemed the type to sneak her a treat. Myka sipped the water. It had a faintly fruity taste, blueberries, maybe blackberries. She didn't sit, she didn't try to jiggle open the drawers in the casual tables, she listened for Winslow, but she could hear nothing but the chink of ice settling in her glass. The woman had silently disappeared, but Myka suspected that were she to wander from the room the woman would magically appear to guide her back. Politely, of course, pretending that Myka had been motivated by need rather than curiosity, but firmly. Winslow would compensate his gatekeepers well. They guarded his privacy, kept his secrets. No matter how pleasant his staff were, they would be impossible to win over and difficult to frighten. Their loyalty might be contractual, but unless they saw a greater advantage in leaving, or betraying him, their first, second, and third responses would be to shield him. There were no friends to be made in this household.
Ten, maybe 15 minutes passed, before the woman entered the room to take Myka to him. Myka followed her down a long hallway that appeared to run the width of the penthouse. Other, more casually furnished rooms opened off on either side, one even crowded with the toys a four-year-old would want to play with, doll houses, giant balls, princess and Wonder Woman costumes, rows of finger paints and markers. These were the rooms the Winslows lived in. The hallway ended at double doors, made of a heavy, dark wood. The woman opened the one on their right and stopped just inside. "Mr. Winslow is waiting for you in his office."
Myka passed her, entering what was clearly a suite. There was another set of double doors, made of the same wood, opposite her and on her left, a single door, as oppressively dark and heavy as the double doors, but to her right, the door was open, and at the far end of the room was a desk set in front of windows providing another angle on the city's skyline. She half-expected Winslow to be sitting behind the desk, like a school principal, or, more befitting his sense of himself, a Wall Street banker or FBI director, using the symbolism to impress upon her how little authority she had in comparison. Instead he was standing off to the side of the room, slim and gray and nondescript, next to a couple of library-style chairs, wing backs in dark leather upholstery. Dark wood, dark leather, she could be in a cologne advertisement. The snark didn't make her mouth and throat feel any the less dry, however, and she wished she had remembered to bring the glass of water with her.
Mark Winslow was dressed as if he had another appointment, or several, lined up for the day, which, considering the trouble he was in, wouldn't be surprising. The jacket and slacks were obviously part of a suit, and the pale blue shirt, open at the collar but only by one button, likely cost as much as any one of her suits. He was shorter than he looked on TV and his face was more lined, but the well-groomed coif of white hair was no less impressive now that she could see it up close. "Take a seat," he said, "we have a lot to talk about." The curtness with which he had summoned her earlier had disappeared. He sounded no friendlier, but he did seem prepared to engage with her, to talk, in fact.
It was bait she knew better than to take. To engage was to give ground, and she wondered if she had made a fatal mistake by responding to his summons, but she had needed to know what weapons he still had at his disposal. "I don't see that we have anything to talk about, Senator," she said coolly, not moving. "If you want to discuss FBI matters, I'm sure you know the appropriate channels. I'm not one of them."
He didn't blink, he didn't redden. He sat down in the nearest wing back and looked up at her. "Yet you came." He let the silence between them lengthen before shifting his shoulders in what might have passed for a shrug. "You're the agent assigned to Helena Wells, my granddaughter's mother. You can't expect me to believe that you know nothing about her . . . history . . . with my family."
"Your history with Helena and the state of your current relationship with her are personal matters having nothing to do with my responsibilities."
She knew this was the kind of sparring that consisted of more feints and jabs than punches. She was waiting for the blow that was meant to make her see stars, to show her that he was the heavyweight. "That's disingenuous, considering you were lovers when she was planning to steal millions of dollars' worth of art from under the FBI's nose."
Myka smiled. He had barely clipped her jaw with that one. "Senator, if you have concerns, I'm sure you have the director's number at your fingertips. If there's nothing else. . . ."
"I know that there's an ongoing investigation of Nate Burdette. I also know that Helena is 'assisting' your investigation and that, in return for her assistance, her sentence will be commuted, to time served no doubt." He waved her toward the other chair. "My intelligence is better than yours," his eyes bored into hers, "and my reach is longer. If you think the media's twisting of decisions made by police officers and prosecutors concerning my son is going to stop my family from pursuing every recourse available to us to save Christina, then you're very sadly mistaken. I know things about this investigation that will shred what little faith the public still has in the FBI's integrity, and I will not hesitate to bring them to light."
She had been expecting this threat or a similar one, and even if Winslow himself was too compromised to call for Congressional inquiries into the FBI's activities, his fellow senators and his friends in the House were not. Eight years had passed since the Marston Gallery debacle, but there had been other mistakes and lapses of judgment. It was easy publicity to accuse a law enforcement agency of what amounted to criminal behavior, and few politicians would turn down the opportunity. "I can't comment on the status of an investigation, active, potential, or otherwise."
"But you could comment on the wisdom of assigning an agent to a felon with whom she has a personal history, couldn't you?" He folded into his lap the hand he had used to wave her to sit down. He was beginning to enjoy himself too much to take offense at her continuing to stand. "Hypothetically speaking, of course."
"I'm not at liberty to comment on anything," Myka repeated.
"If you can't comment, you can act, I assume. Christina is a bright, loving little girl. I don't know what sob story Helena has peddled you, but she inveigled my son into participating in an art scam, seduced him, and then bore his child, all the better to have access to both our money and our influence. I have nothing against Christina's grandmother except that she's completely under the thumb of her daughter. Whatever Helena Wells has promised the FBI she has no intention of delivering, Special Agent Bering. I will not let Christina be poisoned by that environment any longer. You tell your bosses that I'll expose the corruption at the heart of the Burdette investigation. They can't shame me into keeping quiet, not when that investigation is riddled with members of the 'Wells gang,'" he smiled thinly at the tag, "pretending to be on the right side of the law."
Members, plural. Meaning more than Helena . . . and assisting in the Burdette investigation? Winslow's thin smile had morphed into the triumphant smirk of a cartoon villain. All he lacked was a mustache to twist with delight. Somehow he had managed to land a blow, a real one, maybe to her temple because she suddenly felt dizzy or maybe to her gut because she felt like she couldn't breathe, either. Myka wasn't sure whether swaying wasn't just as much of an admission that he had gotten to her as sitting down would be, but she planted her feet wider and straightened her shoulders. She tried to think her way through what he had said. It didn't make sense. The FBI and Justice had concocted the deal with Helena only because they had been running out of weapons to bring Burdette down. He had eluded their traps and eliminated their agents. Helena wasn't a last resort or Hail Mary exactly, but Sam and his brethren at Justice had been concerned enough about her commitment to leak the results of the DNA test to the Winslows. If she had to worry about Ben Winslow and his father claiming her daughter, then she had less time and incentive to screw over the FBI. Helping the government to get Burdette was Helena's best chance of getting out of prison early, and getting out of prison was her best chance, her only chance, of keeping Christina.
But Justice and the FBI had sought insurance . . . . If Helena couldn't find a way in, had lost her special touch with Burdette or revealed that it was a con like everything else about her, then they needed to find another option, and since they were already scraping the bottom of the barrel if they were relying on Helena, the back-up had to be even less desirable, even more of a risk. It had to be someone with access or who could get access to Burdette, and it was someone, according to the man continuing to smirk at Myka from his chair, who had with worked with Helena or her father. There weren't many people, still living that is, who could meet both criteria. She had read Jim Wells's file so many times that she could recall not only the faces but also the names of his confederates. They had been fleeting associations for the most part. Gentleman Jim had needed a certain skill for a certain job and a man, or woman, with that skill. There had usually been such a man or woman, often fresh out of prison and needing the money. They had looked young in the file, the sullen faces in the mug shot; no matter how pinched or mean or simply weary they had looked, they were uniform in one respect, hardly any of them had been over 40. ("Jim always believed cons had a better chance of succeeding if someone young and pretty was setting the hook," Helena had told her once.) The rare exception had been the Bowdoin heist, but the experience Jim had needed then had to be honed by time and repetition. The Bowdoin Museum was almost begging to be robbed, but it still demanded cool hands and heads.
The young criminals whose mug shots were in Jim Wells's file were no longer so young; they were middle-aged at best, and the ones who hadn't aged out of committing crimes were likely dead or serving time. It was hard to believe that any of them were Justice's last hope. In his last years, Jim had worked his cons alone. The man who had stolen masterworks was reduced to phone scams, trying to lure men his own age into investing their savings in nonexistent companies and entice widows into taking luxurious cruises, equally as nonexistent. Documents in the file had hinted, and Bobby "B.O." Olson had jeered as much to Helena, that Jim had turned to Nate for help, running the same kind of errands and taking on the same kind of scut work that he had given to Burdette years before. Unless she were to believe that Hank Gryzbowski had been playing a masterful role from, first, his recliner in the nursing home and then from a chair in St. Mary's administrative office, pretending that he was a harmless old man who had let childhood affection for a friend occasionally steer him into Jim Wells's orbit, there really was only one "former associate" whom Justice and the FBI could be working with.
Disconcerted by Winslow's revelation, Myka felt her determination to show no reaction to his insults and threats begin to weaken. "The distance between the Winslows and the Wellses isn't as great as you think. I met your son at the hospital when Christina was hurt –"
"Yet another example," Winslow interrupted her, "of how unfit the Wellses are to raise her. Christina could have had a skull fracture and there her grandmother was, nodding off on a bench."
Myka hardened her voice. "Instead of comforting and reassuring Christina, you son only scared her the more by threatening Helena and Jemma. He wasn't sober, Senator. He was more of a danger to Christina than they were." As Winslow seemed on the verge of protesting, Myka leaned incrementally forward, hoping she wouldn't have to grab at a chair to maintain her balance. Not that it would matter much in the end. He would shrug off her words as if she were the kind of anonymous government functionary he stepped on with impunity every day. "As I've told you before, if you have concerns about the FBI, you're free to express them to my boss and his bosses. I believe our meeting is over."
She turned away from him, walking quickly, but not too quickly, toward the suite's entrance. He called out to her, "I've given you fair warning. I'll not sacrifice my granddaughter to the FBI's cockamamie schemes, and I'll make sure to grind what's left of your reputation, Agent Bering, into the mud."
Myka expected to have to find her own way out of the penthouse, either that or she would be escorted by a phalanx of security-for-hire, but instead she found only the middle-aged assistant or housekeeper who had greeted her. With the same efficient politeness, she led Myka back to the penthouse's doors, as if her employer had just concluded an interview for an article in the Times rather than threatened, and loudly at that, the destruction of a law enforcement agency. Looking her in the eye as she passed into the hallway, Myka said, "He must be a barrel of laughs to work for."
The woman said nothing, her face impassive as she closed the door.
After the cold malevolence she had encountered in Winslow's penthouse, Myka welcomed the abrasive sounds of the city's traffic. Out here everyone could honk, give the finger, scream "Fuck you!" or "Learn how to drive, asshole!" and face equal odds of being ignored or given a finger or a "Suck mine!" in response. Democracy in action. The power plays the senator was willing to engage in were hardly less crude but exponentially more brutal. Myka wriggled, shaking herself almost like a dog. She needed to put Mark Winslow's threats behind her and concentrate on the information he had provided her. The Wells Gang, members, plural. Her next move was to confirm her suspicions about FBI and Justice's other criminal-turned-collaborator in their effort to bring down Burdette.
She arrived at Sam's office just as he was ushering a visitor out. The woman looked vaguely familiar, and Myka remembered having met her at last year's holiday party, feeling no better that the joke that Sam had brought his ex-wife as his date was trumped by the better one about the AUSA who had brought his boss's ex-wife. Myka rapidly sorted through names but was torn between Tracy and Lacey. Tracy/Lacey and Sam were teasing each other with the slightly self-conscious familiarity that comes with recognizing an office friendship might be tipping over into flirtation. Seeing Myka waiting impatiently for them to be done, Sam grimaced and Tracy . . . no, Lacey said abruptly and with embarrassment, "I've taken up too much of your time as it is."
"Come by later and we can hash it out some more," Sam said, his tone softening while the glare he permitted himself to throw at Myka was unyielding in its resentment.
Lacey uneasily acknowledged Myka with a glance and then murmured to Sam, "We'll see how the day goes."
Myka watched her fast-walk her way down the corridor before she followed Sam into his office. Lacey would be welcome to what tag-ends of him would be left behind when she was through with him. She shut the door. "I've spent the morning being threatened by Senator Winslow, who plans on making public every secret he knows or is able to ferret out about this investigation, including the fact, apparently, that Helena isn't the only one you've made a deal with. What in the hell do you think you can give Joshua Donovan that he can't scam or embezzle or hack into for himself?"
Sure, it was possible that she was wrong, but there was no one else among Helena's old associates who was talented enough and cocky enough to play the mole in Burdette's organization. He had maintained a distant orbit around Nate, according to the information she had read, but his skills were such that he was one of the few, the very few, whom Burdette would treat with respect. No strong-arming him into jobs, no cheating him, it was one king cobra acknowledging another. The flush that rose in Sam's cheeks didn't contradict her. He hadn't taken a seat behind his desk; instead he had stood next to it with an almost visible impatience that had warned her he would kick her out of his office on the flimsiest of pretenses. Donovan's name had embarrassed him but as he settled a haunch on a corner of his desk, more out of weariness than a desire to confess, Myka knew, he tried to brush aside the accusation.
"Mark Winslow will say anything at this point." He put his hand behind him, searching for his coffee mug.
"That's hardly a ringing denial." He shrugged at her words and sipped his coffee. Myka tried to fix him with a cool stare. "When I had a chance to think about all those deals Burdette made going wrong, guns and drugs not showing up where they were supposed to, Joshua Donovan did cross my mind. Who could get close enough to Burdette to know where he hides his assets and live to tell about it? No one the feds sent in. Burdette's been able to pick them off one by one. And if it was someone deep in his organization, why would they betray him now? But Joshua can get close without being close. He can find out more about Burdette, more about us, than we know about ourselves."
Sam's eyes, too bleary for 11:00 in the morning, finally met hers. When had he last slept for more than a few hours? Last week? Last month? "You should know better than most that we don't have the luxury of rejecting the compromised, not when the stakes are high. We need to make use of every resource we have and implement what safeguards we can."
"What safeguards do you think you've implemented against him?" Myka knew she was jeering, which was hardly the right tone to take with Sam when he was obviously sleep-deprived and just as obviously annoyed with her showing up unexpectedly. But she remembered, with more clarity than made her comfortable, sitting in the coffee shop with Joshua Donovan, listening to his sly, reedy voice as he suggested, not very subtly, that she didn't know the people she worked with as well as she thought she did. He had been right, and he had been right not only because he knew more about Helena than she did (and apparently more about Pete, because he had become her boss when all the bets were that it would be the other way around) but because he also recognized something about her, that, despite the evidence of her own childhood, she still believed that people could be better than they were, would strive to be better than they were, like Helena, if given enough support. He had teased her, prodded her, and though she realized Helena's association with him sent all the wrong signals, she had buried all her doubts because Helena would never betray her. If she had been merely stupid, Donovan would have exercised caution, but she had been willfully blind, and he could have tormented her all afternoon in that coffee shop and she wouldn't have understood what he was telling her. Like the con he fundamentally was, he had identified her blind spot, just as she was sure he had discovered Sam's.
"You want to know what we can give him that he can't take for himself? Try freedom." As Myka continued to look at him skeptically, he lowered his voice and said, "I can't share the details, but he was working for a European client a while back who gave one of our sister agencies the chills. He was interfering, knowingly or not, with their investigation of his client. My bosses caught wind of it and offered him a deal. He cooperated with us or we let our sister agency bring him up on some very serious charges. Even a Joshua Donovan can't bamboozle those guys. He decided to cooperate with us." Sam took another sip of his coffee, gazing at her over the rim of his mug, daring her to find fault with the deal. "What I just told you doesn't leave this office."
"It's about to leave the senator's. He thinks we're behind all the news about the dropped charges against his son and the missing arrest records, and he's not willing to listen to alternative explanations. It's another example of malfeasance by Justice and the FBI. He's betting it'll start an even bigger firestorm."
"We'll deal with Winslow. Don't try to take him on, and don't go mentioning this to Pete." He waved his arms wide, coffee sloshing up to the rim of his mug. "Not any of it, not this conversation and not your meeting with Winslow. Work on keeping Helena out of trouble," his mouth twisted bitterly, "if you can."
"Helena's not the one you should be worried about." It was a line from countless crime shows, the warning from the cop who had seen too much to the cop who didn't know as much as he thought he did. Myka almost felt silly for saying it, but she was beginning to suspect that Burdette wasn't Sam's blind spot. Helena was. Putting Burdette away would be even sweeter if he could prove to her that Helena never should have been trusted. So what if he lost Myka in the process? He would be right in the end, damnit. She looked at the tense line of his jaw. All these years and he had never realized that Helena hadn't stolen her from him; he had left her for the taking. If he had done as little as tell her that he would miss her while she was in Dorchester, Helena would have remained a half-acknowledged temptation. She had wanted to be committed to him. She might have been more in love with the middle-class-conforming life he had seemed to promise than with him, but she had been . . . on the verge of being in love with him. She didn't believe in honoring the traditional roles in the nuclear family, but she believed in the nuclear family. She wanted to experience what it could be like, not as she had lived it, and Sam was a vast improvement over Warren Bering. But he had said only, "We'll grab a beer after you're back," and that had not been enough, not nearly. Dorchester had been, well, Dorchester, and the transformation of a vaguely shady art restorer and artist into the love of her life had begun. When she had been Sam's to claim, he hadn't been interested, but once she put herself beyond his reach –
"It's under control, Myka." Pointedly he looked from her to the door. "I've got to get some work done before my next meeting. Is there anything else?"
She shook her head. She left him, shoulders bowed over the papers on his desk, with the unaccountably eerie feeling that this would be the last time she would be in this office, that this would be the last conversation of substance they would have. The feeling persisted in the elevator ride down to the lobby, the car filled with Sam's clones, ambitious young attorneys in business suits scrolling through the messages on their phones. Whether the Burdette investigation ended in success or failure – and she had the much more well-founded feeling that it would be the latter and not the former – she wouldn't be working with Sam again. Probably because she would have been drummed out of the FBI for any one of, oh, say, a dozen reasons, trusting Helena, sitting on the location of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of stolen artwork, conspiring against a U.S. senator, just to name three. But Sam had betrayed her twice, first by lying to her about the real reason the FBI and Justice had entered into a seeming devil's bargain with Helena Wells, and then by enlisting Joshua Donovan's "help" without telling her, without giving her the chance to warn them that Donovan was a greater danger than Helena.
And a danger to Helena. Not physically, that wasn't how he operated. He had helped to engineer her imprisonment, and if he still held a grudge against her for almost torching the Marston Gallery heist, he had the means to send her back to prison. The spreadsheet with the curious outflows of assets that had Sam more than half-convinced that Burdette was stashing away money for the day that he and Helena would leave the U.S. for whatever extradition-free paradise he had found for them – when Myka had first seen it, she had had the paranoid hunch that came from working with informants playing both sides against the middle, that someone with the skills to penetrate Burdette's financial network would have the nerves of steel necessary to embezzle from him, too, and make it look like it was all Burdette's doing. Now that she knew Donovan was working for Burdette, or pretending to work for him, just as he was pretending to work for Justice, she needed to give the information a closer look. It was a trap, for Burdette, for Sam, for all of them, and the only one who would escape without losing his reputation, or his life, in the process would be the one who set it, Joshua Donovan. If that cocky, preening bastard took off for island sunsets with his suitcases loaded with cash (metaphorically, of course, cash would be too 20th century for Donovan) . . . . Myka slowed her rush to the subway station, letting herself be jostled by people less troubled, apparently, by the thoughts running through their heads. To be fair, their thoughts probably weren't full of their imminent disgrace . . . or demise, depending on how things turned out.
Myka felt a sharp blow against her back and spun around to face a short, red-headed woman stumbling away from their collision. "Watch where you're going, bitch," the woman snarled, before pushing and body blocking her way through the cluster of pedestrians ahead of her.
Short, malevolent, the red-hair a poorly cut cap on her head, the woman was too old, too work worn, but the resemblance was undeniable, and Myka grinned, never having been so glad to be reminded of Claudia Donovan. Joshua's better - and faster - than anyone I ever met, except possibly his baby sister. Helena had claimed that years ago about Claudia, and not for the first time was Myka fervently hoping that her trust in Helena's claims wouldn't prove her wrong.
…..
Sunday afternoon was the kind of fall day that belied the gray threat of winter; everything had the sharpness and clarity, not to mention the beauty, of diamonds. There were no shadows on such a day as this, and Myka felt her spirits correspondingly rise. Burdette, Winslow, Donovan . . . and Sam were nuisances, cartoon bumblers and villains who could be defeated by the simplest of measures –- lassoing them together like cattle, pulling the rug out from under their feet, promising them a cookie if they held out their hands and then snapping handcuffs over them. It was the crime fighting of a preschooler, but Christina would likely devise more imaginative outfoxing than that. She was a Wells. But this afternoon she was focused on conquering the leaves that Jemma had raked, jumping into a pile of them as Myka turned the car into the driveway. Jemma's efforts at yardwork were desultory at best; most of the yard displayed a patchy carpet of leaves, yet one small section had been assiduously raked and it held the pile that Christina, her giggles ringing out like crystal, was plunging through, leaves flying and whirling up before drifting down again onto her hair, her jacket, her grandmother.
"Mommy, come play!" Christina ran toward them, arms outstretched for a hug. Helena lifted her, burying her face in Christina's hair. "My-ka can make the most biggest pile for us."
Helena raised her head, strands of Christina's hair straggling across her face, and laughed at Myka's expression. "She thinks you're a superhero, you know." Then she rubbed her nose against her daughter's cheek. "My-ka will make us the biggest, bestest pile ever."
Jemma was all too willing to surrender her rake. "I'm sure I've strained muscles I didn't know I had. I'm ready for a spot of tea and a nap." Passing Helena and Christina, she kissed them both, and Myka noticed that Helena even leaned in for the peck on her cheek. "Don't bring her in until you've worn her out," Jemma advised Myka with a growl that did little to blight her pleasure at the scene.
"Which one do you mean?"
Jemma nudged her. "Ha, that's a good one. Better make it both of them."
The rake was cheaply made, and Myka suspected she raked as much dirt and dead grass as leaves, but she managed to amass a pile big enough for Christina and Helena to jump into at the same time, though it barely hit Helena mid-shin. It was too early yet for the leaves to be falling in earnest, but Christina wasn't a hard judge to please. She clapped her hands and window-dressed her mother with a sprinkling of leaves when Helena took a seat in the pile and gave Myka a skeptical flex of her eyebrow that said, Is this all you can do?
Myka grabbed for her phone but came up with it too late to capture the moment. Christina, no longer interested in decorating her mother, was monster-stomping leaves, laughing at the crunching sound they made under her tennis shoes, and Helena was pushing herself up, brushing the leaves off a jean jacket, which, when Myka had first seen it a couple of hours earlier as Helena had shrugged it on over a simple, spread-collar shirt in the palest of pinks, had engendered fantasies of a Harley-riding Helena that had jumped her pulse. The potency of her fantasies wasn't the least undermined by the fact that Helena had declared motorcycles "hellish, bum-bruising machines of death." As Myka automatically re-raked the leaves back into a pile, she wondered if it were as unrealistic a fantasy to imagine that the two – then her eye caught Christina mid-monster-stomp – the three of them had any chance to live together as a family.
It had been their mother's idea, of course, that he should take them and teach them. Their mother always supported their father's claims of having just missed being an Olympic skier, just as she supported his claims of having the talent to write the Great American Novel, if not the time or the opportunity. Who else better to teach their nine-year-old and five-year-old daughters the basics of downhill skiing than a man who would have made the team had he not blown out his knee during a minor competition in New York? (At least the knee part of the story was true. As a child, Myka had always been fascinated by the trails of scar tissue that wound over and down the misshapen joint.) Amazingly enough, their father had agreed to the idea. It had been an especially good Christmas for the bookstore that year. The big box retailers, Borders, Barnes & Noble, weren't yet threatening to drive him out of business, and Amazon was little more than an idea in Jeff Bezos's mind. They would have to make a day of it since the closest ski resort to Colorado Springs was over two hours away, but he would pilot them down a bunny hill and see if they took to it like he had when he was a boy. Their mother's face had lit up at his unbegrudging assent. She would fill thermoses with hot chocolate and fix sandwiches for a winter picnic.
Tracy perked up only at the mention of hot chocolate, but Myka was running to the coat closet, eager to get out her winter jacket and boots. They were both Christmas presents, and though anything on the clothing spectrum was usually the worst Christmas present ever, the jacket and books were sporty-looking, like something a skier might actually wear. She might even discover that she was good at skiing despite the clumsiness that irritated her father and her increasing need to get up close to an object to see it clearly. Their mother had been talking about taking her to the eye doctor, but that wouldn't be happening for a while, and it wasn't like she was going to ski into a tree. Her eyesight wasn't that bad.
Their holiday break was almost over before they went. Their father, when it came down to it, was reluctant to close the store for an entire day, and he wanted to make sure that he picked a day when the store typically wasn't busy. As the days wore on, Myka began to dread the trip. It was assuming all the hallmarks of a Bering family outing doomed to end in disaster, mainly because the success of it was dependent on their father's uncertain temper. Something was bound to set him off – a big bill had come in the mail, the weather had turned bad, the resort would be crowded, the trip would cost too much money, the kids wouldn't pay attention to him, their mother would put mayonnaise on his sandwich instead of mustard or marshmallows in his hot chocolate and he didn't like either. On the day they went, a lot of those irritants had come to pass. The furnace had gone out and he had had to have it fixed, a light snow had fallen, the resort was both crowded and expensive, Tracy was more interested in building snowmen than skiing, and he had counted the marshmallows floating in his hot chocolate. But other than the occasional muted groan, he seemed to be having fun. Even though Myka repeatedly crossed her skis and wiped out more often than the kindergartners on the bunny hill, their father would only wearily say, "Let's try it again." Myka did, with no discernibly different results, and she started to fear that their father's persistence would become a form of punishment. He had been that way about her dismal performance on a youth soccer team, having her practice passes until it grew dark, dismissing her complaints with a harsh "If you want your coaches to let you play, you'll have to stop making mistakes. You have to be better, Myka." She wasn't, and that was her one and only year of playing soccer. He would be ten times worse here when it was his sport she was learning, or, more accurately, failing to learn. Yet he surprised her again, when, after what felt like her 20th wipeout, he said with greater gentleness than she had expected, "Let's call it a day and have some more cocoa. We can always come back and show this hill who's the boss."
They never did. Sometimes a school friend's family would take her skiing with them or there would be an extracurricular event sponsored by her school. Eventually she could make her way down a beginner's run without falling, but she never developed into a good skier. She could only assume that her father had foreseen that she would never be much of a skier and that he had withdrawn his investment in her skiing just as he had with soccer. But the belief took nothing away from that day. On their return to the car, he had carried Tracy piggyback to her delight, and he had sung along with the radio on the way home. Best was when he had said to her, as though he were seeking her confirmation, "It was a good day today, wasn't it? We'll have to put this one in our pocket." She felt that he had taken her into his confidence, entrusted her with something precious. She had patted the pocket of her new jacket, convinced that she could feel the shape of the day through it, shrunk down to a jewel.
It had been a good day, like this one was. Although it wasn't cold enough to justify it, Myka made hot chocolate when they came in from playing in the leaves. She found a battered box of Swiss Miss packets a few weeks shy of their expiration date and heated water in a kettle. Helena's and Christina's cheeks were red from their exertions and their eyes, Christina's just as dark but less mockingly angled, shone with pleasure. Once again, Myka was too late to get a picture, but rather than try to put the moment in her pocket and hoard it for fear she might not have another one, she let it pass without regret. There would be many moments like this, she told herself fiercely; she didn't have to clutch this one to her. Later, while Christina napped on a living room rug, having fallen asleep in the middle of designing her Halloween costume, Helena pulled Myka against her as they lounged on the sofa, pointing first at Christina and then at Jemma, who was snoring softly in an easy chair.
"They may fuss at each other, those two, but they're inseparable. Jemma will have to come with us when this is over, when we're free to start over."
Myka twisted her head to look up at Helena. Usually they were in the opposite position, Helena resting against her, not an unpleasant weight on her shoulder, ribcage, stomach, but she didn't mind the switch. It had been an exhausting week, and she was, just maybe, more in need of a human pillow than she had thought. "I'd fantasized about leaving. It was what I promised myself I would do when I learned that I was going to be working with you again. 'When it's all over, I'm gone, from the FBI, from New York, from the past eight years.'"
Helena's gaze was somber. "I can understand it. Sometimes a do-over won't work. Sometimes you have to make a clean break." Seeing that Myka was about to protest, she placed her finger on Myka's lips. "I'm not talking about you or not only about you," she amended wryly. "I bought this house with the money from the half-forgeries I made of my father's paintings, paintings that Ben sold through his gallery. It's tainted, this place, by Gentleman Jim, by the Winslows, by who I was then. It's like radon gas or asbestos, and Christina's breathing it in every day."
Myka kissed Helena's finger. "Okay, we'll move to Maine . . . or Hawaii. You'll draw caricatures of tourists, I'll get on the security staff at a resort, and Jemma'll take Christina to the beach. We'll make a life together, the four of us."
"Maybe I'll end up fleecing tourists with shell games and tickets to fake attractions," Helena said lightly, but her eyes looked no less serious. "You can take the girl out of the game, but what happens if you can't take the game out of the girl?"
"Hawaii it is then," Myka murmured sleepily. "Lots of dolphins there. They'll make you feel better about things."
"I don't need dolphins for that, only you."
After dropping Helena off at Irene's, Myka decided not to go into the office. Her apartment wasn't an appealing prospect, but sitting at her desk would only remind her of the multiplying obstacles in her path to putting Burdette away, to proving that Helena had reformed . . . to watching dolphins as they slept in the blue waters off Maui. The mess of coloring books, dolls, and Christina's latest obsessions, pictures of the U.S. women's soccer team and Simone Biles, overlaid by the smell of the macaroni and cheese that she had demanded for her dinner, followed Myka into her dark apartment like taunts. For a moment she flashed on an alternate reality, one in which her elaborately marshalled defenses against pregnancy had failed her, and she had given birth to Sam's child. The same noise, the same mess, the same pasta-based, kid-friendly meals but not half the joy. The glimpses of what her life might have been like with Helena always had an immediacy, a fittingness, that suggested the separation between her dream life and her real life was only one determined kick away from collapsing into each other. But this unwelcome film reel of Life with the Martinos, she could view only with a shudder, launching herself away from it with a wild, Indiana Jones-like leap to something opposite to what she was imagining. The smooth, cool feel of the bottle in her hand, chased away the image of her trying to mollify Sam's baby in Sam's kitchen while Sam, in the spare bedroom, labored over the case that would make his reputation. Myka shut the refrigerator door before its contents, a cluster of yogurt containers and a half-empty cardboard holder for the beer could nag her about grocery shopping.
Turning on all the lights didn't make the place feel any homier, they only emphasized how dusty everything was. Her laptop was on the breakfast bar where she had left it in the morning, and when she woke it, a half-composed email to her mother blinked at her, waiting to be completed. Myka hesitated, then wrote, I remembered our winter picnic and Dad trying to teach me and Tracy how to ski. Tell him that I was thinking about him. She wanted to type and that I love him but she couldn't move her fingers over the keys. Instead she finished with and that I promise to make good on the slopes someday. If it were one of his good days, he would appreciate it more than a cloying I love you, anyway.
Scanning her inbox, she spotted a sale announcement that should have gone into her junk mail. It was from an online shoe store she had patronized for a while, but she had taken herself off its distribution lists, at least she thought she had. She opened it, ready to click on the unsubscribe link again, refusing to be seduced by the boots and casual shoes on sale until she saw a pair of boots that were unlike anything else on the site. They looked as if they had been walked through fresh dog turds. Her eyes skipped to the name and product description. Winslow boots. Handcrafted by our own U.S. senator. Designed to be covered in shit and come out smelling like a rose. Fargo. She glanced at the URL, definitely not the shoe store's. It was an impressive fake, and even more disconcerting was the realization that he had been able to find out she was a customer.
The part of her that had been cybersecurity-trained over and over was protesting, but she clicked on the image. With her luck, she hadn't opened a gateway but an expressway. She didn't conduct any work business on her laptop, but she had a few agents' – friends' – personal emails and phone numbers. She could be bringing down the FBI with just this one click. On the other hand, Mark Winslow could hold a press conference tomorrow and reveal what he knew about the Burdette investigation. Trying to rid her mind of thoughts about the damage Fargo could do if he got behind the agency's firewalls, she focused on the zipped file that had replaced the boots.
She had learned not to trust that information promised to be "explosive" or "game changing" was significant enough to redirect the course of an investigation. By the time she had sifted fact from speculation, accounted for inaccuracies and skipped over what she had gotten from other sources, sometimes there was nothing substantial left. She prepared herself to discover that Fargo had delivered much less than he had promised. Four hours later, she admitted she had been wrong. She hadn't gotten through all the documents – there were hundreds of them – but she had read enough to understand the harm that Winslow and his cronies had inflicted upon one small Pennsylvania community. Land purchased cheaply from his father-in-law's chemical companies, environmental tests and disclosures altered to show only minor pollution and toxicity, clean-up efforts falsified. A real estate development company had started selling lots and an affiliated residential construction firm had started building houses. Property taxes were increased to build a new school. The town was thriving, and then suddenly it wasn't. Residents, especially those in the new developments, were becoming sick. Some were developing respiratory illnesses, others were suffering from chronic fatigue and nerve damage. The youngest and most vulnerable were developing rare cancers. People filed suit against the construction firm and the development company, owned in turn by a series of LLCs stacked together like nesting dolls. In the intervening years, records had been lost and the LLCs had undergone so many ownership and name changes that no one could agree on who knew what when. But Fargo had tirelessly explored every trail. While some of the documents were clearly copies of internal emails and memos - Myka didn't want to guess at how Fargo had obtained them - others were just as obviously public records. He had visited courthouses and combed through newspaper archives. He had talked to former residents and compiled obituaries. This wasn't a half-assed smear campaign; it was a sober assessment built on meticulous research. There wasn't a reputable media outlet that wouldn't publish this. In fact, her source at the Times wouldn't forgive her if she didn't give him this. And it was just one file, the history of one of Winslow's real estate ventures.
Myka tried to save the information onto her hard drive, but as she could have predicted, Fargo had locked it down. She could look but she couldn't touch. Frustrated that she had no apparent way of contacting him, she remembered the Contact Us link at the bottom of the email. She clicked on it, and a dialog box appeared. Seeing no other instructions, she began to type. Impressive. But if you want my help, you have to let me help. Let me send this to my friend at the Times. She paused, then typed, He's honorable. She sent it, half-fearing that this would be enough to evoke Fargo's paranoia about the long arm and aggressive grasp of the government. He was probably hearing a commando force on the stairs to his door – or would when he read it.
She was closing her laptop when she saw that she had a new email. She hadn't been expecting Fargo to respond immediately, but the timing was auspicious. It was a customer service email from a credit card company whose cards she had cut after her divorce from Sam. Warily she opened it. Much like the footwear company's sale announcement she had received, it looked legitimate, the color scheme, the logo. Her eyes flicked to the URL. It was slightly off, and then she read the message. She was supposed to provide confirmation that she had, in fact, charged a pair of Winslow boots to her account. She needed only to click on the chat box to speak with a customer service representative. Irritated at his roundabout method of communication and even more annoyed that he continued to flaunt his access to her personal information, she couldn't deny her admiration as well. He was inventive, she had to give him that. She clicked on the box.
How may I help you?
If you want his crimes to be known, Fargo, let me send the file to some of my media contacts.
You're happy with your purchase of the Winslow boots?
Myka took a long pull of the second beer she had grabbed from the refrigerator when she was reading the file. She would need a buzz to get through this conversation. Yes, I want to encourage my friends to buy them. Do you have more to offer?
I'm sorry. We're just a credit card company. You'll need to contact the retailer for product information.
Fargo, quit fucking with me. It's 2:30 in the morning. Will you release the file or not? Regretting her flare of impatience – she hadn't drunk her beer quickly enough – Myka typed, My contact at the Times is Joe Oliphant. He's one of the administration's sharpest critics, and he's not tolerant of politicians in general. He'll know how good this is. He'll work with you, and, like I said, he's honorable. Check out his stuff, if you doubt me.
Myka waited. The average person might think that a feature writer whose specialty was domestic politics and an FBI agent assigned to fraud investigations, and mainly art frauds at that, wouldn't have many occasions to cross paths. Given the current state of domestic politics, maybe the operative word was "shouldn't," but she and Joe had helped each other out numerous times. It wasn't only the shady business dealings of representatives from both parties; Myka had worked more than one forgery investigation involving a prospective ambassador or cabinet member who had unwittingly tried to sell or donate a counterfeit work of art. The embarrassment factor alone was typically enough to pique Joe's interest. They had developed a mutually beneficial relationship in which Myka would "leak" (with the permission of the FBI's upper echelon) certain information to Joe, and, in return, he would provide information from his own sources. There were other writers with whom she had established similar relationships, but Joe she trusted and with him, there wasn't the awkward history of having slept with him or almost having slept with him. Men old enough to be her father, just like women with dark and impenetrably dark eyes, were on her "not ever" list.
Tell him to watch his email for a special, one-time offer.
It wasn't the method she would recommend, but she would give Joe a heads-up tomorrow morning . . . this morning. In about six hours. She hoped that it would be soon enough. About to type her thanks and sign off, she received another message.
You had better be right about him because it's you I'll destroy, Agent Bering, if you're not.
The chat window closed with a Thank you for contacting us. Have a nice day. Foolishly, Myka hit the Enter key several times, to say exactly what she didn't know. She had no real power to threaten him. He had just shown her how he could bring her down with a key stroke. Once again she was overmatched.