by Nora Roberts
she’s got to be bored out of her mind. We can’t change that, not really.”
“Her life’s never going to be the same, Terry, and we can’t forget that, either. We can’t forget she’s not just the witness, she’s a teenage girl. If learning proper gun safety and operation helps her, then I’m going to see she gets taught. Because the least she deserves is a decent night’s sleep.”
“Crap,” Terry repeated. “Okay, I get it. I do. But …”
“But?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Good, keep doing that. I’m going to try out the line that worked on you on the boss. I want to get clearance to take her into the range.”
“Rub a lamp while you’re at it. That may help.”
John just smiled and, taking out his phone, walked into the next room.
Terry huffed out a breath. After a moment’s consideration, she got out a second Coke, then walked upstairs to Elizabeth’s bedroom. She knocked.
“Come in.”
“Playing with guns always makes me thirsty.” Terry walked over to the bed where Elizabeth sat, handed her the Coke.
“I hope you’re not angry with John. It was my fault.”
“I’m not mad.” Terry sat beside her. “It caught me off guard, that’s all. John told me you’re having nightmares. You’re scared. I can tell you not to be, but the truth is, in your place I’d be scared, too.”
“I couldn’t do anything. In the nightmares, I can’t do anything, either, so he kills me, too. I want to learn how to take care of myself. You won’t always be there. You and John or Bill and Lynda. Or whoever they send. One day, you won’t be there, and I have to know I can take care of myself. My mother won’t go.”
“You don’t know—”
“I do know.” She said it calmly, without emotion, surprised she felt calm and emotionless. “When it comes time for you to relocate me, give me a new identity, she won’t go with me. Her life’s here, her career. I’ll be seventeen soon. I can file for emancipation if I need to. I would get it. When I turn eighteen, I’ll have some money from my trust fund. And more when I’m twenty-one. I can study, and I can work. I can cook a little now. But I can’t defend myself if something happens.”
“You’re smart enough to have done some research on the program. We haven’t lost a witness who’s followed our security guidelines.”
“I’ve followed someone else’s guidelines my entire life, so I’m used to that.”
“Oh, Liz. Hell.”
“That was passive-aggressive,” Elizabeth said with a sigh. “I’m sorry. But the point is, they’ll never stop looking for me. They believe in revenge and restitution. I know you’ll do everything you can to keep them from finding me, but I need to know, if the worst happened, if they did find me, I could fight back.”
“There are more ways to fight back than with a gun.”
“And yet you carry one.”
“Two.” Terry tapped her ankle. “Approved backup weapon. If you want to learn how to shoot, John’s your man. But there are more ways. I could teach you some self-defense. Hand to hand.”
Intrigued, Elizabeth sat back. “Actual fighting?”
“I was thinking more defensive moves, but, yeah, fighting back.”
“I’d like to learn. I’m a good student.”
“We’ll see about that.”
John came to the open door. “Five a.m. Be ready. We’ve got permission to use the range.”
“Thank you. So much.”
“Terry?”
“Five. In the morning. Hell. I’m in.”
THREE TIMES A WEEK before the sun rose, John took her to the basement range. She grew accustomed to the feel of the gun in her hands, the shape, the weight, the recoil. He taught her to aim for body mass, to group her shots, to reload.
When she learned the trial had been delayed, she vented her frustration on the range.
On alternate days, Terry instructed her in self-defense. She learned how to use her opponent’s weight and balance to her advantage, how to break a hold, how to punch from the shoulder.
The nightmares still came, but not every night. And sometimes, in them, she won.
As the first month passed, her old life seemed less hers. She lived in the spare, two-story house with the high security fence, and slept each night with federal marshals on guard.
Lynda lent Elizabeth romance novels, mysteries, horror fiction out of her own collection. While summer burned through to August, Lynda cut Elizabeth’s hair again—with considerable more skill—and showed her how to retouch the roots. On long, quiet evenings, Bill taught her to play poker.
And the time dragged like eternity.
“I’d like to have some money,” she told John.
“You need a loan, kid?”
“No, but thank you. I’d like my own money. I have a savings account, and I want to withdraw some.”
“Taking you to the bank would involve unnecessary risk. If you need something, we’ll get it for you.”
“My mother could withdraw it. It’s like the gun. It’s for security.” She’d thought it through. She had time to think everything through. “When I finally testify, and I’m relocated, I think it’ll happen quickly. I’d like to have money—my own money—when it happens. I want to know I can buy what I need and not feel obligated to ask.”
“How much did you have in mind?”
“Five thousand.”
“That’s a lot of money, Liz.”
“Not really. I’m going to need a new computer, and other supplies. I want to think about tomorrow instead of today. Today just keeps being today.”
“It’s frustrating, I know, having to wait.”
“They’ll delay as long as they can, hoping to find me. Or hoping I’ll lose courage. But they can’t delay forever. I have to think about the rest of my life. Wherever that is, whoever I’ll be. I want to go back to school. I have a college fund that would have to be transferred. But there are other expenses.”
“Let me see what I can do.”
She smiled. “I like when you say that. With my mother, it’s always yes or no. She rarely, if ever, says maybe, because maybe is indecisive. You say you’ll see what you can do, which isn’t maybe, isn’t indecisive. It means you’ll take some action. You’ll try. It’s much better than no, and almost as good as yes.”
“All that.” He hesitated a moment. “You never mention your father. I know he’s not in the picture, but under the circumstances—”
“I don’t know who he is. He was a donor.”
“A donor?”
“Yes. When my mother decided to have a child, to have that experience, she screened numerous donors, weighing their qualifications. Physical attributes, medical history, family history, intellect and so on. She selected the best candidate and arranged to be inseminated.”
She paused, looked down at her hands. “I know how it sounds.”
“Do you?” he murmured.
“I exceeded her expectations, intellectually. My health’s always been excellent. I’m physically strong and sound. But she wasn’t able to bond with me. That part of the process failed. She’s always provided me with the best care, nutrition, shelter, education possible. But she couldn’t love me.”
It made him sick in the gut, in the heart. “The lack’s in her.”
“Yes, it is. And knowing her part of the process failed makes it very difficult for her to feel or show any affection. I thought, for a long time, I was to blame. But I know that’s not true. I knew when she left me. She left me because she could, because I made a choice that allowed her to walk away. I could make her proud of me, proud of what she’d accomplished in me, but I could never make her love me.”
He couldn’t help himself. He drew her against him, stroked her hair until she let out a long breath, leaned on him. “You’ll be all right, Liz.”
“I want to be.”
He met Terry’s eyes over her head, saw the sheen of tears and pity in them. It was good
she’d heard, John thought. Because the kid had two people who cared about her, and would do whatever it took to make sure she was all right.
SERGEI MET WITH HIS BROTHER and nephew, as well as Ilya and one of his most trusted brigadiers. Children splashed in the pool under the watchful eyes of the women while others sat at long picnic tables already spread with a bounty of food. Cold drinks nestled in wide, stainless-steel tubs of ice. On the lawn some of the older children played boccie or volleyball while their music banged out an incessant beat.
Little pleased Sergei more than a loud, crowded party with family and friends. He captained the enormous grill his oldest daughter and son-in-law had given him for his birthday, appreciating this American tradition. His gold Rolex and the crucifix hanging around his neck gleamed in the brutal summer sun, while over his cotton shirt and pants he wore a bright red bib apron that invited everyone to kiss the cook.
As the grill smoked, he turned fat burgers, all-meat franks and long skewers of vegetables brushed with his secret marinade.
“The mother goes to the hospital,” Sergei’s nephew Misha said. “She is there many hours every day, often through the night. She has dinner maybe once a week with the man she sleeps with. Four times each week, she goes to the fancy gym where she has a trainer. She goes to the beauty parlor for her hair, her fingernails. She lives her life like she has no daughter.”
Sergei merely nodded as he transferred the vegetables to a platter.
“I went through her house,” the brigadier told him. “I checked her phone. Calls to the hospital, to her boyfriend, to another doctor, to the salon for her hair. There are none to the police, to the marshals, to the FBI.”
“She must see the girl,” Mikhail insisted. He was more rounded than his brother, and his hair was going white in wide streaks. “She is the mother.” He looked over to the pool, where his own wife sat laughing with their daughter while their grandchildren played in the pool.
“I think they aren’t close.” Ilya sipped at his beer.
“A mother is a mother,” Mikhail insisted. “She would know where her daughter is.”
“We can take her,” Misha suggested. “On her way to the hospital. We can … persuade her to tell us where the girl is.”
“If the mother is a mother, she will not tell.” Sergei began arranging burgers on another platter. “She will die before. If she is not such a mother, and my information is she is not, she may not know. We take her, they move the girl, add more guards. So, we watch the mother who is not such a mother.”
“In the house,” the brigadier said, “there’s nothing of the daughter’s outside the bedroom. And there’s not much there. What is, is boxed. Like storage.”
“So you see.” Sergei nodded. “I have a different way, one that ends this and leaves nothing of us behind. Tell Yakov to be patient a little longer, Misha. The next time we have a party, it will be to celebrate his return. But now”—he lifted the platter, stacked with burgers and dogs—“we eat.”
WHEN THE SUMMER DRAGGED ON, Elizabeth reminded herself that if she were home, she would have given in—most likely—and would be enduring the summer program at the hospital. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have done anything all that different from what she did now.
Study, read. Except now she listened to music, watched movies on DVD or television. Through summer reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she believed she’d begun to learn contemporary slang.
When she was able to go back to college, she might know more of the language, might fit in better.
To continue her quest for security, she went to the practice range. She’d learned self-defense and poker.
Nothing could bring Julie back, and playing what-if was a useless process. It made more sense to look at the advantages of her summer confinement.
She would never be a surgeon.
At some point, she’d take on a new identity, a new life, and find some way to make the best of it. She could study whatever she wanted. She had a feeling joining the FBI was no longer an option, but she didn’t ask. It might have been foolish, but not knowing a definitive answer left a sliver of hope.
She embraced the routine, grew comfortable with it.
Her birthday didn’t change routine. It just meant that today she was seventeen. She didn’t feel any different, or look any different. This year there would be no birthday dinner—prime rib with roasted vegetables followed by carrot cake—or any possibility of the car her mother had promised. Contingent on her academic achievements and deportment, of course.
It was just another day, one day closer to her court appearance and what she thought of as freedom.
As neither Terry nor John mentioned her birthday, she assumed they’d forgotten. After all, why should they remember? She gave herself the gift of a day off from studying, and decided she’d make a special dinner—not prime rib—as a personal celebration.
It rained, drenching and thunderous. She told herself it made the kitchen only homier. She considered baking a cake, but that seemed self-serving. And she hadn’t yet tried her hand at real baking. Preparing spaghetti and meatballs from scratch seemed challenging enough.
“God, that smells fabulous.” Terry paused in the center of the kitchen, inhaled deeply. “You almost make me think about learning how to make something besides mac and cheese.”
“I like doing it, especially when it’s something new. I’ve never made meatballs. They were fun.”
“We all have our own fun.”
“I can put some of the sauce and meatballs in a container for you to take home. You’d just have to add the pasta. I made a lot.”
“Well, Lynda called in sick, so you’ll have Bill and Steve Keegan. I bet they can pack it away.”
“Oh. I’m sorry Lynda’s not well.” Routine, Elizabeth thought. It always gave her a jolt when it changed on her. “Do you know Marshal Keegan?”
“Not really. John knows him a little. He’s got five years in, Liz. Don’t worry.”
“No, I won’t. It just takes me a little time to get used to new people, I guess. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to read after dinner, and probably go to bed early.”
“On your birthday?”
“Oh.” Elizabeth flushed a little. “I wasn’t sure you knew.”
“You have no secrets here.” On a laugh, Terry moved over to take another sniff of the sauce. “I get you like to read, but can’t you come up with anything more fun on your birthday?”
“Not really.”
“Then you need some help.” She gave Elizabeth a pat on the shoulder before she walked out.
Reading was fun, Elizabeth reminded herself. She checked the time, noting that the change of shift was coming up soon. The sauce could simmer until Bill and this new deputy wanted to eat, but she really had made a lot, so she’d put some in containers for John and Terry.
Like a reverse birthday gift, she decided.
“Help’s arrived.”
Elizabeth turned from reaching high into a cupboard for lidded containers.
Terry stood grinning with a box wrapped in shiny pink paper with a big white bow trailing ribbons. Beside her, John held a small gift bag and a white bakery box.
“You … you got me gifts.”
“Of course we got you gifts. It’s your birthday. And we got cake.”
“Cake.”
John set the box down on the table, flipped up the lid. “Double-chocolate fudge with buttercream icing.”
“My pick,” Terry informed her. “Happy birthday, Liz.”
“Thank you.” The cake said the same, in fancy pink piping. It had rosebuds and pale green leaves.
“It’s not carrot cake,” she murmured.
“I have a religious objection to any pastry made from a vegetable,” Terry told her.
“It’s very good, really. But this looks much better. This looks … like a real birthday cake. It’s beautiful.”
“We’ll have to save room for it and the ice cream,” John said. “After the birth
day dinner. We were going to get pizza, but you started those meatballs, so we adjusted.”