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Natalie folded her arms over her narrow chest. “Are you sure it was necessary for you to take him out? I mean, it was supposed to be up to Helen to take the shot.”
I glanced at Helen but she said nothing. “I made a choice.”
Natalie snorted. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time you poached a target.”
“No, Natalie, it wouldn’t. I have occasionally taken point on a job when it wasn’t my responsibility because—” I looked at the naked, broken anguish in Helen’s eyes and swerved from what I was going to say. “Because I made a judgment call. He was planning on eliminating all four of us. He only delayed because he was trying to get me to tell him where the rest of you were,” I finished.
“You didn’t have a choice,” Mary Alice said firmly.
“Poor dumbass Sweeney,” Natalie murmured.
Helen looked down at the ground and continued to say nothing.
Akiko roused herself when I finished. “Shorthand this for me,” she said. “Please. I want to understand.”
I wiped my mouth on a napkin and put it aside. “When we realized the organization we work for—”
“The Museum,” Akiko put in.
“The Museum.” I nodded. “When we realized the organization we work for targeted us for termination, we contacted a former associate of ours to find out why.”
“And that was this Sweeney person?” she asked.
“Correct. Our rendezvous with him was supposed to give us information about what was going on. We were careful enough to meet him in a neutral location, but it turns out we shouldn’t have trusted him at all. He came to kill us, Akiko.”
“So what happens now?” she asked. “They tried to kill you and they failed. I mean, they don’t just say, ‘Fair enough, our bad,’ and let you go home? Right?”
I heard the note of hope in her voice, and so did Mary Alice, who winced a little as she spoke. “We can’t go home again.”
“Ever,” Natalie said.
Akiko turned to her wife. “Are youshittingme? Mary Alice.”
Mary Alice was rubbing her hands together, the knuckles white and then red. She was one of the most accomplished killers I knew, but sitting next to her wife, she looked small, crushed down by the weight of the secret she had carried and what it was doing to them now.
Akiko persisted. “Mary Alice,look at me. What happens now?”
Mary Alice took a deep breath. “We need more information.”
“You have information,” Akiko countered. “You said they wanted you dead because you broke some code—you were killing people for money instead of on assignment.”
“But we weren’t,” Helen said in a patient tone. “That means they have bad intel on us. Somebody is setting us up.”
“So tell them the truth,” Akiko shot back. “Tell them. They will listen. They have to listen.”
Natalie sat forward, her expression sympathetic. “I know you’re having a bit of trouble with this, but they won’t listen, actually. It’s not really what they do.”
Akiko turned on her. “A bit of trouble with this? I’m having a goddamned nervous breakdown. The woman I love most in the world has—after five years of marriage—decided to finally tell me the truth about what she does. That’s five years of lies. That’s ashit-tonof lies.”
“I was trying to protect you,” Mary Alice said feebly.
“I think,” Akiko said in a voice like acid, “that ship has sailed. I am on the run for my life with a cat who hates to travel, and I don’t know when I can go home again. So fix this, Mary Alice.” She got up, Kevin struggling in her arms, and leaned close to Mary Alice. “I mean it.Fix this.”
She left us then and Mary Alice blew out a slow breath.
“She’ll come around,” I said.
Mary Alice gave me a doubtful look as Helen cleared her throat. “Alright, we need to make a plan.”
