“Gina, wait,” Rita got to her feet. Now they were all standing. Wasn’t this fun?
But Gina closed the door behind her. Quietly. Firmly. In Max’s face.
Well, that went about as well as could be expected. Max reached for the doorknob. And wasn’t this going to be one grim, silence-filled ride back to the physical rehab center?
“Have you ever told her how much you love her?” Rita asked him.
He managed to hide his surprise. The answer to that question was none of her goddamn business. He also didn’t ask why in God’s name would he tell Gina that, when what he really wanted, really
needed
was for her to find happiness and peace? Which she’d never do until she’d succeeded in leaving him behind.
“Although, to be honest,” Rita added, “she certainly seems to know, doesn’t she?”
“Sometimes all the love in the world just isn’t enough,” Max said.
She made a face. “Oh, dear. If you’ve allowed that to be one of your defining beliefs, that world of yours must be a terribly dark place.”
Christ. Spare him from psychoanalysis by people who didn’t even know him.
She didn’t let up. “What are you so afraid of, Max?”
Leaning heavily on his cane, Max just shook his head and followed Gina more slowly out the door.
FBI H
EADQUARTERS
, W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.
J
UNE
20, 2005
P
RESENT
D
AY
Peggy Ryan was in talking to Max. Jules could hear her, laughing at something their boss had said, even as Max shouted, “Come in.”
They both looked up as Jules opened the office door, as he stepped halfway inside. “Excuse me, sir.”
And just like that, Max knew.
It was a little freaky, but Jules saw it happen. Max looked at him, glanced down at the document Jules was carrying, then looked back, hard, into Jules’s eyes, and he somehow
knew.
He’d been leaning back in his chair, but now he sat up, holding out his hand for the news that he already knew was coming, his face oddly expressionless. “Gina?” he asked, and Jules nodded.
There was no way Max could have known that Gina was in Germany, let alone anywhere near that car-bombed cafe.
And although Jules admired the hell out of his boss and thought the man brilliant, highly skilled, and capable of outrageous acts of bravery as he employed his frontline method of leadership, Jules was firmly grounded in reality. Despite popular belief, he
knew
that Max was not capable of mind reading.
Which meant that Max had been waiting for this.
It meant that every single day since Gina had left, he’d been waiting for—fearing and dreading—this very news.
What a hell of a way to live.
Peggy Ryan was oblivious. In fact, she was rattling on about some case she was working on, even as Jules handed Max the dreaded list of civilians killed.
Jules turned to her and cut her off mid-utterance. “Ma’am. You need to leave.”
She blinked up at him in shock, her expression rapidly morphing to outrage. “Excuse
me
—”
“Now.” Jules grabbed her and lifted her out of her seat.
“What are you
do
ing? Get your hands off me, you . . . you freak,” she squawked as he pushed her out the door.
George was out there, by Laronda’s desk, waiting to flag him down, cell phone to his ear. “Her body’s in Hamburg,” he told Jules.
“Thanks. Fill Peggy in,” Jules tossed the order past the woman and shut the door in her angry face.
But then he wondered if he himself weren’t on the wrong side of that door. God, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn around and look at Max.
Who was stone-cold dead silent.
It would have been better if he were shouting and breaking things. Punching a hole in the wall. Max rarely lost his temper, rarely lost control, but when he did, it was an earthshaking event.
“Can I help you, sir?” Jules whispered, still facing the door.
“Has her family been contacted yet?” Max asked, sounding remarkably normal, as if he were inquiring about nothing more troublesome than the usual morning traffic on the Capital Beltway.
“I don’t know, sir.” He slowly turned around.
Max was sitting behind his desk. Just sitting. Jules could read nothing on his face, nothing in his eyes. It was as if Max had shut himself down, made his heart stop beating.
“But I’ll find out,” Jules continued. “We’re also making inquiries as to why Gina was in Hamburg, why she left Kenya, what she was doing, where she was staying . . . I’ll get you that information as soon as I have it. George just told me that her body is . . .”
His voice broke. He couldn’t help it. Her body. Gina’s
body.
God.
“Still in Hamburg,” Jules forced the words out.
“Have Laronda get me a seat on the next flight to Germany,” Max said, still so evenly, so calmly. But then he realized what he’d said, and for a moment, Jules caught the briefest flash of the emotion the man was hiding. “
Fuck
!” But Max just as quickly caught himself and was back to calm. Smooth. “Laronda’s not coming in today.”
“I’ll do it, sir.” Jesus, what a day for this. Max’s assistant Laronda would know exactly what to do, what to say . . . Such as,
Sir, are you going to Hamburg to identify Gina’s body and bring her home, or to locate and decimate the terrorist cell responsible for that bombing? Because that second thing might not be such a good idea unless you’re looking to end your career.
Jules cleared his throat. “Although, maybe you shouldn’t go there by yourself—”
“Get me Walter Frisk,” Max ordered. “And find Gina’s parents’ phone number. Laronda’s got it somewhere on her computer.”
Still Jules hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. “Max, God, I’m so,
so
sorry for your loss.” His voice broke again. “Our loss. The whole world’s loss.”
Max looked up, and it was eerie to be stared at with such soulless, empty eyes. “I want that plane reservation on my desk in two minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” Jules closed the door behind him and got to work.
C
HAPTER
T
WO
K
ENYA
, A
FRICA
F
EBRUARY
18, 2005
F
OUR
M
ONTHS
A
GO
Where,” Gina asked, “are we going to put them?”
“The tents?” Molly replied as she dipped the first of the bedpans into the pot of boiling water.
“Mol, you’re not listening.” Gina did the same with the next one, careful not to burn her fingers as she took it out. “There are no tents. The tents won’t arrive until
after
the busload of volunteers.”
Molly stopped, pushing her unruly reddish hair from her damp face with the ungloved part of her arm. “We’re getting a
busload
of volunteers? That’s wonderful!”
“Most of them will only be here for a few days. Only two are permanent,” Gina told her. Again. She loved Molly Anderson dearly, but when her tentmate’s attention was focused on something important, it could be difficult to pull her away from the task.
And in this case, Molly’s attention was focused on four thirteen-year-old girls who had been brought to their camp hospital with terrible, life-threatening infections.
They would, Sister Maria-Margarit had told them in her dour German accent, consider themselves lucky if just one of the girls survived the coming night.
To which Molly had muttered, “Over my dead body.” She’d then set to work sterilizing everything that would come into contact with their newest patients.
“When does the bus arrive?” she asked Gina now.
“In a few hours,” Gina said, adding “Shit!” as she burned her fingers.
“Sugar!” Molly spoke over her, giving Gina a look that said
robot nun at five o’clock.
The camp had two types of nuns. Human nuns, who laughed and sang and warmly embraced the diversity of the villagers and the volunteers, who saw life’s glass as half full; and the nuns that Molly had nicknamed “robots,” who looked out over a congregation and saw only sinners. Anything less than perfection was to be frowned upon. These robot nuns could, Molly had told Gina, find the problem with a glass that was too full. After all, it might spill, don’t you know?
This sister frowned at them both.
Probably because, in the three-million-degree heat here in the kitchen, both Molly and Gina had had the audacity to roll up their sleeves.
“I think it would be a good idea if we made sure the two permanents were comfortable,” Gina said as she helped Molly lift the pot and empty the hot water down the sink. The volunteer turnover rate here was bad enough as it was. If conditions in the camp were even more primitive than usual . . . “We don’t want Sister Grace and Leslie Pollard changing their minds and leaving on the next bus out.”
“The sister can bunk in with the other nuns,” Molly said, leading the way into the hospital tent. She grabbed a surgical face mask from the pile by the door.
Gina did, too, reaching up to slip it on past her ponytail—except her ponytail was gone. She encountered only shockingly short waves. God, Max would so hate that. Not that he’d ever admit it, but he’d loved her long hair.
Except what he loved no longer mattered. The man wasn’t in her life anymore. If he hadn’t shown up looking for her by now, over a year after Gina had left D.C., then face it, he was never coming.
And she would not, could not be like Molly—who was waiting, waiting, still waiting for her so-called friend Jones to magically reappear. Oh, Molly swore up and down that she no longer spent much time thinking about the guy, but Gina knew better.
It happened mostly in the evenings, after their work was done. Molly would pretend to read a book, but she’d get that far-away look in her eyes, and . . .
It had been nearly three years since Molly had last seen the bastard. In all that time, he hadn’t so much as sent her a postcard.
Of course, she should talk. Postcards from Max were also under the zero column in the file marked “in short supply.”
But three years of pining was ridiculous. Shoot, one year was bad enough—and Gina had passed that particularly dark anniversary months ago. It was definitely time to stop hoping for things that would never be. It was absolutely time to stop wallowing in What-ifs-ville and move the heck on.
Maybe one of the men coming in on this afternoon’s bus would be Mr. Wonderful. Maybe he’d meet Gina, fall head over heels in love, and volunteer to stay in camp for the rest of her time here.
It wasn’t completely impossible. Miracles sometimes happened.
Of course, if the busload of volunteers all turned out to be elderly, or monks, or—the most likely possibility—elderly monks, then maybe it was time to reconsider that offer from Paul Kibathi Jimmo, who wasn’t completely kidding when he told Father Ben he’d trade four pregnant goats in exchange for Gina’s hand in marriage.
Paul was an outrageously good-looking, well-educated, and extremely kind young man who’d won a scholarship to Purdue University in Indiana. He’d returned to Kenya halfway through his junior year when his older brother died, probably of AIDS, although they didn’t speak of it. He’d been needed to run his family’s farm.
Which was located another hundred miles out in the wilderness. Gina couldn’t know for certain, but she would be willing to bet the entire contents of her bank account, plus her parents’ house on Long Island, that Paul’s kitchen was without a microwave.
It was, quite possibly, without a roof.
Not quite Gina’s style, even without taking into consideration the fact that Paul was already married to a Kenyan woman named Ruth.
“What’s-her-name can stay in our tent,” Molly told Gina now, as she checked Winnie’s pulse, lifting the sheet to check the bandage over the girl’s hideously inflamed wound.
Gina had to squint, looking out through her eyelashes, praying that . . . No, it wasn’t bleeding through, thank God. Of course, that wasn’t saying all that much since Gina had helped Sister Maura change it a mere hour or so ago. Still, out here, even the smallest of blessings was counted and appreciated with full fervor.
Molly looked up at Gina. “What was her name?”
“Leslie Pollard,” Gina told her. “She’s British. She’s probably eighty years old and will expect tea upon arrival.” As opposed to a sleeping bag on a rotting tent floor. “Even if we could find an extra cot, we’d never fit it into—”
“We can hot bunk,” Molly said, moving on to Narari, as Gina helped little Patrice take a sip of water through lips that were cracked and dry. “You and me. One of us will be here with the girls all night anyway. Although . . . Are we absolutely sure Leslie’s not a man?”
God, what a thought. But Leslie
was
one of those names that could swing both ways. “The message from AAI referred to her as
Ms.
Leslie Pollard,” Gina reported. “So unless they’ve got it wrong . . .”
“Which isn’t entirely impossible,” Molly pointed out. She soothed Narari with a hand against her damp forehead. “Shhh, sweetheart, shhh. Lie still. You’re with friends now.”
But Narari was in pain. Her wound had reopened, too. There was so much blood.
“Nurse!” Molly shouted, and the sister came running.
It took a healthy dose of morphine to calm the girl down.
Gina had to go outside for air while Molly helped Sister Maria-Margarit reapply the bandage.
Not that the air out there was any less hot and heavy. Still, being outside the confines of the hospital gave the illusion of relief.
Gina sat on the bench that was right by the door—probably placed there for weak-kneed people.
Her mother, a trauma nurse, would smile to see her sitting there. But she’d hug Gina, too, and say what she always said. “The ER’s not for everyone.”
What was she doing here? Gina wondered that every single day.
It wasn’t more than a few minutes before the screen door opened with a creak and Molly stepped outside. “You all right?”
“Compared to Narari . . .” Gina laughed as she wiped her eyes. She hadn’t even realized she was crying. “Yeah.” She shook her head. “No.” She looked up at Molly. “What kind of parents would do that to their own child?”
“Last year at this time, there were nine of ’em,” Molly told her quietly. “Of course, they weren’t as sick—not like these girls. The knife they used this year must’ve been filthy.” She ruffled Gina’s short hair. “Why don’t you go get the tent ready. Do me a favor, will ya, and put my Hunks of the NYPD calendar into my trunk? I don’t think Lady Leslie will appreciate Mr. February as much as you and I do.”
Gina laughed. Molly could always make her laugh. “When I grow up, I want to be you.”
“Oh, and while you’re in my trunk, find the last of the Earl Grey, will you? Maybe if we go all out with the welcome reception, this one will stay more than a month.”
“Are you sure you don’t need a break?” Gina asked. “Because I could—”
“I’m fine. You’re better at cleaning, anyway,” Molly lied. She opened the screen door and went back inside. “Bake some chocolate chip cookies for our distinguished guest while you’re at it.”
Gina laughed. They ran out of chocolate within forty-eight hours after the arrival of each package from home. She
did
have a few Fig Newtons left. “In your dreams,” she called after Molly.
“Every single night,” Molly called back. “Without fail.”
But Gina knew that wasn’t true. Molly sometimes cried out in her sleep, but it wasn’t for chocolate.
Unless there was a brand of chocolate called
Jones
sold in Molly’s home state of Iowa.
Gina had recently started praying at night.
Dear God, please don’t let me still be dreaming about Max years from now . . .
Of course, when she first left D.C., she’d thought about Max nearly all the time. Now she was down to, oh, only three, four times.
An hour.
Yeah, at this rate, she’d be over him just shy of her ninetieth birthday.
Of course, maybe that was all going to change in just a few hours. Maybe Mr. Wonderful really was on that bus. She’d take one look at him and fall madly in love.
And two months from now, she would be hard pressed to remember Max’s last name.
It wasn’t likely, sure, but it was also not entirely impossible. One thing Gina had learned from her time here was that miracles did sometimes happen.
Although she wasn’t going to sit back and wait for a miracle to come to her. No, if need be, she’d get out there and hunt one down.
She was going to find happiness and meaning to her life, damn it, even if it killed her.
S
ARASOTA
H
OSPITAL
, S
ARASOTA
, F
LORIDA
A
UGUST
1, 2003
T
WENTY
-
TWO
M
ONTHS
A
GO
Max considered dying.
It probably would’ve hurt a whole lot less.
Problem was, every time he opened his eyes, even just a little, he saw Gina looking back at him with such concern on her face.
It was entirely possible that, during the excruciating haze of pain-drenched eternity since he was brought out of surgery, she hadn’t left his side for more than a moment or two.
Unless it was all just a dream, and she wasn’t really there.
But when he couldn’t find the strength to open his eyes, he heard her voice. Talking to him. “Stay with me, Max. Don’t you leave me. I need you to fight . . .”
Sometimes she didn’t talk. Sometimes she cried. Softly, so he wouldn’t hear her.
But he always did. The sound of her crying cut through this fog far more easily than anything else.
Maybe this wasn’t a dream. Maybe it was hell.
Except sometimes he could feel her holding his hand, feel the softness of her lips, her cheek beneath his fingers. Hell would never include such pleasures.
But he couldn’t find his voice to tell her so, couldn’t do more than keep breathing, keep his heart beating.
And instead of dying, he lived. Even though it meant that he had to redefine pain. Because the pain he’d experienced prior to getting shot in the chest didn’t come close to this torture.
But it was a torture that didn’t hurt nearly as much as listening to Gina cry.
Then, one evening, he woke up.
Really woke up. Eyes fully open. Voice able to work. “Gina.” Voice able to work a little too well, because he hadn’t meant to wake her.
But wake her he did. She’d been sleeping, long legs tucked up beneath her, curled up in a chair beside his bed. Now she sat up, pushing her hair back from her face, then reaching for the nurse’s call button. “Max!”
He knew he’d forever remember that moment, even if he lived to be five hundred years old. That look on her face. She lit up from within, yet tears brimmed instantly in her eyes.
It was joy he saw there on her face—a mix of love and hope and sheer shining happiness. It scared the living shit out of him.
How could anyone possibly be that happy?
And yet, somehow he was responsible—simply by saying her name.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, my God! Don’t go back to sleep. Don’t . . .”
“Thirsty,” he said, but she’d gone over to the door.
“Diana! Diana, he’s awake!” She was crying, she was so happy.
It sure beat her crying because she was unhappy, the way she had in his car . . . When? Christ, was it just last night? Gina had been terribly upset, and he’d made the mistake of going with her into her motel room. To talk. Just to talk. Only, after she’d stopped crying, she’d kissed him, and he’d kissed her and . . .
Jesus H. Christ.
What had he gone and done?
Max had fallen asleep after they’d made love—first time in years that he’d gotten a good night’s rest. He remembered that.
Only there he was when he woke up—in Gina’s bed. The one place he swore he’d never go. He remembered that all too clearly, too.
Still, he’d wanted to stay right there. Forever.
So of course he’d run away. As hard and as fast as humanly possible. And he’d hurt her badly in the process and—
Wait a sec.
He may have been woozy and viewing the world through a considerable amount of blear and that still relentless pain, but there were coffee cups and soda cans scattered around this hospital room. A couple of floral arrangements that were looking somewhat worse for wear sat on the few available surfaces. Along with a pile of books and magazines. Not to mention the fact that Gina apparently knew the nursing staff by name . . .