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“You hungry?” she asked Annie.
“I don’t… I’m not sure.” She still felt nauseous.
“I’ll have someone bring you some food,” the nurse said. “Just in case.”
After she left, Annie said, “Mom, I have to go back to LA. I can’t just quit school.”
“I think you’re confused. You don’t have to worry about anything right now except getting better. Mr.Clifton said that once you recover, your job will be there for you.”
“But—”
“Enough, Anabelle. You’ll tire yourself out.”
She was tired but figured if her mother wouldn’t answer her questions, someone else might. She just had to behave for a while. When her food came, she ate as much as she could stomach. She talked to the doctor about her shoulder, listened tohis instructions. Her mom stayed until visiting hours were over, then promised she’d be there again in the morning, bright and early, with her daddy in tow.
After her mother left, she had plenty of time to think about what had transpired. What Frank Clifton had clearly orchestrated from the very beginning. The shift to the FBI. The task that Buck Baker had given her. The man who would surely recognize her. The pager that hadn’t gone off in weeks. Clifton knew she’d be in that house, had known exactly when to page her, had made sure Agent Katz was available to carry her to safety if she survived the exchange of gunfire.
Perhaps Frank had grown wary of their arrangement. Perhaps he wanted to force Annie out of Los Angeles. Blowing her cover would do that. He either had a lot of faith that she would survive the situation or didn’t care whether she lived or died. Either way, Annie wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
And now she was back in Ohio, thousands of miles away from where she wanted to be. Clifton’s plan had worked.
Later that night, when everyone expected her to be sleeping, she adjusted the bed until she was sitting up. She reached across the bed with her good arm and, gritting her teeth, picked up the phone. Sweated through dialing Helen’s number only to have a prerecorded voice tell her that long-distance calls were not permitted.
She threw the receiver to the ground. It clanked against the side of her bed, tangled up in the metal rails, and hung swaying until it started to beep, beep, beep.
* * *
Frank came to see her wearing khakis and a short-sleeved polo shirt. She’d never seen him out of a suit before.
“You won’t be going back to school, Annie,” he said by way of greeting. “You’ve lost your funding for that, I’m afraid. We’vepacked up your things and explained to your, ah…what do you call her? Your landlord?” He chuckled. “They told Mrs.Everton that you wouldn’t be returning and paid your rent for several months to compensate her.”
“But why?” Annie said quietly. “I don’t understand why.”
“You failed at your task! You killed a man! I think we can safely say you’re scrubbed from Los Angeles for a while,” he said. “But no matter. After you heal up, you’ll come back to me, like we discussed.”
She stared numbly at the thin blanket covering her knees. They were weaning her off the painkillers before she went home, which only exacerbated her misery. She almost wished that Dasha’s not-so-dead husband had killed her after all.
“It’d be better if you didn’t try to contact her,” Frank said. “Better for Mrs.Everton and her children. Make a clean break.”
She didn’t see a way out. Not anymore. She would never do anything to put Helen or her family in danger. She couldn’t live with herself if Helen lost her job because of her. Frank wouldn’t hesitate to do that.
She nodded at him. She was so tired. “All right,” she said. “You win.”
Because there was fighting for what she wanted and there was banging her head against a wall, and she knew what her life had become. She resigned herself to a predictable existence. Better the devil she knew, even if that devil was Frank Clifton with her whole career mapped out in his head.
Chapter 16
Los Angeles, 2005
She officially started working asthe chief of the LAPD’s financial division on Monday, but she rolled out Sunday afternoon on a pharmaceutical bust that had already been in the works. A break in the case was a break in the case, and she wanted to be there as it unfolded. Still, she felt left behind and out of sorts as she slipped on her police windbreaker and sent one of her lieutenants to get her a badge and a firearm. It probably wasn’t the way things were done, but the need to jump in trumped procedural decorum. She’d apologize when it was over.
This was how she lived her life now that she was in her late thirties. She’d spent too much time trying to please other people at her own expense, and for what? To be chronically single and eternally lonely?
When she officially began work on Monday, she was running on only a couple hours of sleep. The rest of her division was just as worn out.
And they didn’t like her.
She didn’t expect to be greeted with open arms by a bunch of men who’d spent their years on the force climbing the ranks, only to be passed over by a woman just approaching middle age. That would never be a peaceful transition. But she naively thought maybe one or two of them would be more open to new blood.
