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“Screw you, Webster,” she said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. But her tone was better, her back a little stiffer. “I just can’t stand this—being away from Akiko and not knowing what she’s thinking. How she’s doing.” I didn’t say anything; it was better to let her keep going and get it all out at once. “This is the only secret I’ve ever kept from her. Well, the only one that matters,” she amended. “She also doesn’t know how much I spent on recarpeting the hall stairs.”
“Wool?” I asked.
“Organic. From New Zealand,” she said. “I’ll send you the link.”
She leaned over and took the cigarette out of my hand, drawing a deep breath and causing the cherry to glow bright red before she handed it back. She held the smoke in her lungs a good long while before blowing it out in an exhalation that went on forever.
“I miss that.”
I flicked her a look and she pursed her lips. “Don’t give me that look. I know I can’t smoke. One more thing breast cancer managed to take away.” She gestured loosely towards her chest.
“They look good,” I told her. “Nat said she’d love a new pair.”
“Nat can kiss my pretty plump butt. They look good but I was sick as a dog for eight months and my nipples are still numb.”
“You’re here,” I reminded her.
“I’m here.” She edged nearer, bumping my shoulder with her own. “The question is, for how long?”
I shook my head as I ground out the cigarette on the sole of my espadrille. I tucked the butt into the pack. “I still can’t believe that little shit tried to blow us up. I want to know where he got his orders.”
“Who says he did?” she said. “He might have gone rogue.”
“To take out four retiring agents? Why?”
“We know things.”
“We don’t know anything that would be a threat to Brad Fogerty, the punkass little dynamite jockey.”
“So, Fogerty had no grudge against any of us,” she said, working her way through it. Mary Alice’s approach to everything was slow and methodical. She was good at detail, even better than Helen, often spotting what the rest of us had missed even if it took her longer to get there. I rushed in, relying more on instinct than anything else, and sometimes justblind damned luck. It’s what made us such a good team. I was her hare.
She smiled, the first genuine smile I’d seen from her in twenty-four hours. “I know. I’m tortoising. Bear with me.” She went silent for a while and I watched the lacy edge of the waves, ruffles that flounced up onto the sand and drew back again like a flamenco dancer’s skirt. A tiny grey crab scuttled over my foot.
I turned to stare at her. The pale oval of her face glowed in the shadows. If I could have seen it better, I knew I’d find a narrow line sketched between her brows. And suddenly I was impatient with it all. “Mary Alice, you can’t whitewash this or find a silver lining or look on the goddamned bright side of life. Either we were meant to be blown up by the same people who cut our paychecks for forty years, or they knew it was going to happen to us and did nothing to stop it because they had bigger fish to fry. And it doesn’t matter. They won’t let us go. We know too much. In the space of a day, we’ve gone from possibly expendable to a monumental threat.”
“How?” she challenged me, squaring for a fight.
“Knock it off, Mary Alice. You’re not this stupid. We know where the bodies are buried—literally. This isn’t a footnote, it’s a goddamned reckoning, and you don’t want to acknowledge that because it means you have to figure out what to do about the problem of Akiko.”
I heard her exhale through her nose, sharply, like a bull will before it charges. “My wife is not a problem, Billie. But I don’t expect you to understand that.”
She started to stomp off, a tricky thing in deep sand. “Hey, Mary Alice,” I called after her. She turned back and I stuck my middle finger up.
She flipped me off in response as she stalked away. I dug out a fresh cigarette and lit it, blowing a mouthful of smoke out slowly. “That could have gone better,” I said to the crab.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was three hours wheels up to touchdown in Miami and we took our time disembarking, careful not to draw attention to ourselves by hurrying. We made our way through Customs and Immigration, but Minka’s work was good. We cleared the official channels with half an hour to spare before boarding our flight to Atlanta on another airline. When we arrived, Hartsfield was thronged with the after-Christmas crowds, everybody pushing and shoving. So much for peace on earth and goodwill to men. It must have gotten thrown out with the reindeer wrapping paper.
It was elevenpmby then, and we caught the last flight to Birmingham, landing after midnight. Natalie was whimpering with fatigue, but I pushed on, followed doggedly by Mary Alice and Helen, who somehow managed to look perkier than the rest of us. I picked up the rental car Minka had reserved for us, and we settled in for the final leg. Natalie dove for the back seat,crashing into sleep as soon as she landed. The rest of us took turns driving, and five hours later I was at the wheel again, crossing the Twin Span Bridge into New Orleans just as the sun came up. I followed I-10 into the city, keeping with the flow of morning rush-hour traffic until we got close to the French Quarter. Mary Alice was dozing in the passenger seat and Helen and Natalie were curled together like puppies on the back seat.
I poked Mary Alice awake. “Better get them up. We’re almost here and we’re going to have to move fast when I stop.”
She roused Helen and Nat and collected the little baggage we had with us. I left the car running on a side street just off of Rampart. Within half an hour it would be in a chop shop, stripped for parts, leaving no trace of how we’d gotten to the city even if anyone managed to track us as far as Birmingham.
“What now?” Mary Alice asked, shouldering her bag.
“We walk,” I said, pointing towards the Quarter. If I’d been on my own, I’d have taken a precautionary lap around the block, but Helen was drooping again and Natalie was barely on her feet. Going without good sleep for twenty-four hours is easy when you’re twenty; it’s a bitch when you’re sixty. I felt every minute of that lost night as we trudged down Ursulines. It was as quiet a block as you could find in the French Quarter. No drunks stumbled down the uneven sidewalks; no vomit pooled in the gutter. It was almost serene.
