Authors: Lis Wiehl,April Henry
A smile spread across his face. Good food and a Saturday morning with Nicole—what more could he ask for? Well, maybe a whole weekend, instead of a few hours while Nic’s parents took Makayla to her ballet lesson. Even so, Leif had looked forward to these two hours all week. Maybe afterward they would go for a walk along the river.
But when Leif looked across the table at Nicole, she hadn’t touched her food. On Leif ’s recommendation she had ordered the Ranch Benedict, a mouthwatering—and artery-clogging—combination of poached eggs and crisp bacon served over biscuits and covered in gravy. Instead of picking up her fork, she still cradled her mug of coffee in front of her face, the rim resting against her lips so Leif couldn’t see her expression.
“Are you okay?” He kept his voice low.
The tables were close together, but the clatter of silverware provided a kind of camouflage. Nicole didn’t like to look vulnerable in front of anyone. Even strangers. Even friends. Even the guy who hoped that she might consider him her boyfriend.
“Hm?” She shook herself and focused on him. But only for a second. Then her gaze slid off to the side. “Just admiring the decor.”
Leif turned to see what she was looking at. Was it the inflatable moose head or the glittering disco ball? Or maybe it was the old pinup calendar from back in the day when Miss May actually wore a one-piece bathing suit? Or maybe it was nothing at all, and Nicole was just looking for an excuse not to make eye contact.
Bertie Lou’s in Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood was a hole-in-the-wall, with room for maybe two dozen diners, tops. From the vintage movie posters to the menu that warned
Open ’til 2 p.m. or until the cook gets tired or quits
, the restaurant was one of a kind. Even the waitstaff was anything but generic. The waiter had the market cornered on mellow surfer dude, and the tattooed, pierced, and dyed waitress was all sassy post-punk.
Leif had thought Nicole would enjoy the restaurant’s funkiness, but so far she had yet to crack a smile. “You’ve got to try this,” he said, lifting his loaded fork toward her. Would she refuse? You never knew exactly how Nicole would react to an offer.
Instead she obediently opened her mouth, and he slid the fork between her lips. He wanted to kiss her in the worst way. With a small sigh, he ran his thumb over her top lip, wiping away a stray chip of garlic.
Nicole’s lips finally relaxed into a smile, and her gaze met his— and then stayed put. Her look was as warm and intimate as any kiss. Leif forgot all about his food as he watched Nicole swallow, the long column of her throat moving, and then lick her lips.
Leif had worked alongside Nicole for months before he had seen her smile at a New Year’s Eve party. But that smile had surprised him. Jolted him, even. Her whole face changed. Her eyes warmed, the skin at the corners of her eyes crinkled, and her expression relaxed from guarded to joyful.
The second he had seen that smile, Leif had decided he would go to whatever lengths were necessary to see it again. Nicole’s smile let him catch a glimpse of the girl she must have been. Before she had learned to be cautious. Suspicious, more often than not.
That caution and suspicion made her a fine FBI agent. But were they so good for being a human being?
Her expression changed, as if she had remembered something she had left undone. She looked away again. Leif took the opportunity to shovel in another mouthful and look around the restaurant. Nicole’s was the only black face. What was it like, he wondered, to so often be the only African American? At work, she was not infrequently the only woman, or the only black person, in a room. He figured it was just one more reason, although an unspoken one, why her face was always guarded. Her eyes observed but gave nothing away. In meetings, she often held her hand over her mouth whenever she wasn’t speaking. And she said very little.
But when she did speak, everyone listened.
Over the past year Leif had watched agent after agent try to flirt with Nicole—most of the single men, even a few of the married ones. All of them capsizing on the icy shoals of her disregard. Her look and her tone said she couldn’t be bothered.
As a result, there were rumors. Heath Robinson, another agent, was the worst. He wasn’t used to rejections. He bragged that no woman ever turned him down. But Nicole had. In spades. So now Heath whispered behind her back that Nicole hated men and, if he felt he had a receptive audience, that she more than likely was a lesbian.
At work, Nicole kept to herself, a cipher who never talked about her personal life, never bothered to deflect rumors. She didn’t even keep a picture of her daughter in a frame on her desk. But shortly after Leif had transferred to the Portland field office, he had seen a photo of the girl. Of Makayla. He had needed a paper clip, and had been standing next to Nic’s cubicle. After a moment’s hesitation, he slid her pencil drawer open a couple of inches and then caught a glimpse of the edge of a photograph. Knowing she would kill him if she caught him looking, he had inched the drawer open a little farther. And found not the picture of a man he had half expected, but the picture of a little girl with neat braids. With green eyes and skin lighter than Nicole’s.
That had been a surprise. And when, a few weeks ago, Nicole had told him the secret of who Makayla’s father was and what he had done, it had set Leif back on his heels. It helped him understand why Nicole was always on guard. And made him fall even more in love.
Now he wondered if she had another secret. Bigger even than the one she had told him before. Whenever she saw him lately, her eyes would light up, but then the light would fade. He could actually see her tamping it down.
She looked guilty, that was it. Like something was bothering her but she didn’t want to tell him.
“I love to see you smile,” he said now. “I’d do anything to see that smile more often.”
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. Her face tightened up.
“I’m not like you,” she said in a low voice. “I can’t let down my guard and laugh and joke around. I am what I am, Leif. People like you, sometimes they spend all their time trying to get me to smile, to laugh, to loosen up.”
People like you?
Leif opened his mouth to interrupt, but she lifted her hand.
“And at first, you like the challenge. But eventually you’ll get tired of it. And meanwhile, I’m still me. And I didn’t change. It’ll be you who has changed.” She pressed her right hand over her heart.
“I don’t want to change you, Nicole,” Leif protested. “I like you. And I want you to be happy.”
“You know what I’ve been wondering lately?” Nicole said. “And please don’t take this the wrong way.”
Had those words ever been followed by anything good?
Leif said evenly, “What’s wrong?”
“Why are you dating a black woman, Leif? Aren’t there any blue-eyed WASPs out there?”
A pit opened up in his stomach. “I’m not dating a black woman. I’m dating
you
, Nicole. Or at least I’m trying to.”
“Are you thinking that I’ll be easy?” Her eyes flashed. “Is that what you’re looking for?”
Leif snorted. He couldn’t help it. “There is nothing about you that is in any way easy, Nicole Hedges.” In a way, it was a compliment. At least his version of one.
Her face closed up like a fist. She pushed her chair back and got up.
“Nic, no, don’t.”
His voice had risen. Her shoulders hunched, and she looked, not at him, but at the faces of the other diners staring at her.
And then she was gone, the door banging shut behind her.
Barbur Bargain Motel
E
lizabeth kicked the motel door closed behind her. There was already one witness too many.
“Don’t make a sound.” She pointed the gun—one of two that Donald Dunbar had given her—not at the stupid blonde twit’s head, but at her chest. Center of mass. So many important organs and major arteries were located in the trunk of the body. Even if you didn’t have a marksman’s aim, you could still kill someone with a single shot. Don had taught Elizabeth that when he taught her how to shoot.
It was a million little things that had told Elizabeth that something might be up. The tight way Joey had held his body when she hugged him. The way he had enunciated each word so clearly. How he had practically demanded she spell out what she wanted. As if he knew he had a witness. But she hadn’t felt any sign of a wire when she hugged him, running her hands up and down his back.
So afterward she had stayed in her car in the parking lot, pretended to flip through a magazine, looking up every few seconds. And ten minutes later she had looked up from an article on teeth whitening to see a blonde girl slipping inside the room Elizabeth and Joey had just left. She must have been listening on the other side of the wall.
“I’m a reporter for Channel Four,” the stupid girl said, lifting her chin. As if that would stop her from being killed. As if Elizabeth was supposed to put down her gun and have an animated discussion about freedom of the press.
And then the words sank in.
Channel Four?
“Did Cassidy put you up to this?”
“What?” The girl’s face changed as she did a rapid calculation. “Is she jealous? Is that what this is all about? I was going to give her this story, I was. I just wanted to find out more about it before I told her?” Her voice rose at the end of every sentence, turning even statements into questions. “Do the legwork for her? That’s all? But I was going to turn it over, I swear. I’m not trying to steal her story. Where is she? This is all some kind of joke, right? A trick?”
She started to drop her hands, looking behind Elizabeth as if she expected someone to jump out and yell
Surprise!
or
You’ve been punked!
Without giving any warning, without really knowing herself that she was going to do it, Elizabeth squeezed the trigger.
And then she let out a little sound that was nearly a laugh as the girl’s body fell back across the still-made bed. That had worked out well. And it was much more satisfying than a paper target.
Except, Elizabeth realized as she heard a rustle, the stupid girl was still alive, twisting restlessly on the bed like a sleeper trying to wake.
Slowly, Elizabeth walked over to stare down at her. Keeping her distance, in case it was some kind of trick.
The bullet had caught her just below the hollow of her throat. The girl pressed her fingers to it, but the scarlet blood ran between them like water.
“It’s so hot,” the girl murmured, her eyes rolling back in her head. And then suddenly two lines of blood shiny as paint ran from her nose. More spilled out of her slack mouth. Her body shuddered and then was still.
She had to be dead. Still, Elizabeth touched her arm to make sure. A poke and then a pinch. Hard and sharp.
The girl didn’t move.
Had anyone heard? Elizabeth stood still for a moment. She had read that most people who heard a single gunshot wrote it off as a car backfiring. The room was filled with the sound of the five lanes of traffic rushing by, horns and motors and squealing tires. No one went to this motel expecting peace and quiet. No one expected to sleep. When she looked through the peephole, she saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Elizabeth’s mind was racing now. Part of her was jubilant. She had done this thing. Taken care of the threat. It had been years, but she still remembered how good it felt to do that.
Another part was thinking about what had to be done. Step by step. How had the girl known to come here? There could only be one answer. Joey. Joey had gone behind her back. Had turned on her. Rage burned in her veins, but she forced herself to think it through. If she herself killed Sara—and Elizabeth would like to, it would be a pleasure—it would be all too easy for the authorities to figure out who had done it. She still needed Joey. Needed him to do the thing she had paid him to do. And after that, all bets were off.
Working fast, Elizabeth wrapped the dead girl in the bedspread. Luckily it was made of some kind of cheap brown fabric that seemed closer to plastic than cotton. She dragged the body off the bed and across the floor and left it next to the door.
After putting a washcloth under the bathroom faucet, she wiped down anything she might have touched—the doorknob, the door-frame, the light switch, and the wall around the switch. The damp marks it left behind showed her any areas she missed.
The key card was still by the TV. Taking it, Elizabeth went outside, moved her car until it was just next to the door, and popped the trunk. Then she waited in her car, watching until the housekeeper pushed her cart a few steps closer to the room. She had to move fast. As soon as the housekeeper went into another unit, Elizabeth opened the door. It took all of her considerable strength to heave the girl’s wrapped body into her arms, pivot, and let it thump into the trunk.
She didn’t hesitate, she didn’t look around, she didn’t act nervous. Just closed the trunk. Act as if what you were doing was perfectly natural, Elizabeth had learned, and everyone around you saw it the same way. Furtive looks and nervous movements were for amateurs.
The housekeeper would notice the missing bedspread, but this seemed like the kind of place where they expected a certain amount of thievery. Everything was either bolted down or so cheap it wasn’t worth stealing.
The wallpaper behind the bed was an ugly pattern of a dozen random colors. It had been specially designed to not show dirt or fingerprints. And as Elizabeth left the room, she didn’t notice that one more color had been added to it. High-velocity impact splatter was not one of the things Don had taught her about.
Downtown Portland
O
n Wednesday Cassidy had been hanging up her mat when Elizabeth said, “Nordstrom is having a sale this weekend. Want to go shopping Saturday?”
Cassidy tried hard to look like the offer was no big deal. She had dropped so many hints about how she would love to do something with Elizabeth besides take her class and occasionally drink coffee in the café. “Sure,” she said lightly.