For Your Eyes Only

by Sandra Antonelli

  The flat of Oscar’s hand slapped against the tabletop. “We’re talking about a quantum physicist, a man who’s a friend of yours, not The Attorney General, Agent Heston.”

  There was no point in being rankled or defensive. Her superior was right; but Willa clung to a shred of hope and the moldering bits of Isabel-Hilary-Barbara-Glenn. “If I had placed friendship before my job, sir, I never would have made a notation, I never would have remembered it like I did, but I did my job. My rationale was, is, sir, human error does occur from time to time. I think we should take that into consideration before we call someone a criminal or accuse him or her of treason or espionage. We get tired. We get preoccupied. We get sick. We’re fallible. Why need we get up in arms over a lapse in concentration? If you want my opinion, one mishandled document is nothing compared to the hundreds Farley mishandled. That’s where we need to keep the spotlight.”

  Willa felt every eye in the room on her. The pressure was as crushing as being at the bottom of the sea.

  Kinsale had rested his foot on the seat she’d vacated earlier. Willa straightened and settled her hands on the faux leather back. She waited for the axe to fall, the snake to bite, the handcuffs to come out, for Oscar to direct Mitchell and Adams to take her into custody and arrest Dominic. Flattery and fear had set her ego on a superhero power trip, yet no matter how she’d tried to direct things, there had never been a way she could save Dominic, just as there had never been a way she could have saved Miles.

  She was going to go to prison.

  Dominic was going to go to prison.

  Or she’d go to prison and he’d avoid jail time, but be pulled through the wringer, vilified, and still be called a terrorist. Which was probably even worse. People in prison were often forgotten, whereas terrorists gained infamy. He’d be hounded for the rest of his life.

  Oscar shifted in his chair. When he began speaking his accent was absent, but the twang settled in as he relaxed. “I’m not exactly happy that you didn’t report Brennan, Agent Heston. I’m inclined to agree that incident was nothing, but your judgment sixteen years ago was piss-poor. You should have reported it, addressed it outright instead of making a simple notation, you should have made a more substantial notation—besides the one with all the pretty colors you kept in your head. Ordinarily, I’d haul your butt in front of the disciplinary board, and you’d prob’ly lose your job and your pension over this, maybe even face prosecution, but that’s ordinarily, and this here isn’t exactly ordinary and neither is the work you do. That was then. This is now. I’m also inclined to agree we focus on Farley, like you suggested, Willa. I think that’s where the meat is, the most cost-effective meat. Since 9/11 it’s been about weeding out terrorist threats. Since the Global Financial Crisis it’s been about weedin’ out terror and savin’ money. Any of yew think we need to bring in anyone associated with that document Brennan mishandled and maybe make somethin’ of it? It’s your call. To me it’s a waste of time. Did you find anything new on Brennan, Agent Dokowski?”

  His fingers in the shape of an O, Dokowski said, “Nada. There’s no trail to anything, except that one document.”

  Oscar reached for his iPad and notebook and rose. “Overall, I’d say I’m pleased with the outcome, but I am disappointed no one saw fit to supply this meetin’ with coffee. Let’s make our next round table discussion Tuesday, nine ay em sharp. And there better be doughnuts or a nice expensive box of chocolates.”

  And that was it. In three seconds, discussion shifted from mishandled classified information, criminal prosecution, to boxes of Godiva chocolate.

  Disbelief, Willa discovered, was carbonated. Her feet began to fizz. The sensation was not unlike having them submerged in in a vat of soda water. The fizz traveled up her calves, to her knees, her thighs and kept on going until it reached her chest and laughter bubbled out of her mouth.

  “Detective.” Oscar’s gaze shifted over her shoulder and he jerked his chin. “I reckon yew ought to take her home to bed, but have that bump on her head checked out again first.”

  Willa spun on her fizzy heels in time to see John push open the door and slip into the hallway, the closing hinge hissing like a snake.

  Bag of chips in hand, Jared Adams, Lord of Junk-food, climbed into the passenger side of the silver Chrysler and saluted Agent Heston, his fingers coated with reddish BBQ potato chip dust. Mitchell knew, when he slid in behind the wheel, the inside of the car would be mesquite-scented.

  Willa—Agent Heston—looked up at him. “How about we make it nine-thirty tomorrow morning, Tom?” she said, giving her head a roll. She looked exhausted, bedraggled—and as attractive as ever.

  “Nine-thirty’s fine. Ten’s even better.” He moved to open the driver’s door, and hesitated. The idea had settled in the back of his mind at the start of the week, when she’d said something about being made a stool pigeon, but he didn’t follow the path of that notion. He hadn’t followed the other notion that struck him when Brennan showed up at her apartment either, because he’d seen the way she’d looked at the detective, but that first thing… Mitchell shoved his hands in his pockets. “You were hoping Dokowski or Kinsale wouldn’t find that bit on Brennan, but you knew it would come out, didn’t you?”

  Her mouth moved from side to side and she looked down at the pavement lit by the orange light of the parking area, embarrassed. “Yes,” she said. “I had hoped. It was inconsequential, and I knew it would make its way to the surface. Eventually.”

  Mitchell wasn’t sure what to make of that ‘eventually.’ “Were you trying to protect Brennan or cover your own ass?”

  “I was doing my job, and I saw pursuing Dominic as a waste of time.”

  “Then why didn’t you mention it outright, get it out of the way at the start?”

  “It would have been established the incident was unintentional, but it would have made Dominic the center of the investigation and destroyed his life. And I would not have been able to do my job.”

  For a moment Mitchell mulled that over, played with a coin in his pocket, and decided she had a valid point. “You’re right. It would have turned into a circus, and then the focus would have been on you, but you were prepared for that. You said if this investigation went belly up, you’d be the one to blame, the one to take the fall because you didn’t follow procedure. How were you so sure?”

  ”I know Oscar.” She rubbed her temples. “I told you. He didn’t choose me for this investigation by throwing darts. He could have put you as lead, but my husband had died, I had visited a psychologist, I was on reserve status. However capable, however well I did my job, those things made me a perfect patsy if anything went wrong. You could say I perpetrated a cover-up, or that my methods were unorthodox, or that I was not in my right mind. There were so many ways this could have gone, but I did my job. That’s the bottom line.” Her hands dropped to her sides.

  “But what made you so sure there wasn’t another incident? What made you think there wasn’t something else Brennan mishandled?”

  “I know Dominic.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? No … wait. Don’t answer that. I get it.” Mitchell rolled the coin between his fingers. “You don’t know me. Not that well, anyway. Would you have taken him down if Oscar had said to?”

  Willa nodded.

  That one little gesture blew Mitchell away. He wondered if he’d ever be able to make the choice between private and professional, if he’d risk his job the way she had—or if he could ever arrest someone he cared about, someone he was close to. “I think … I’m impressed.”

  Willa lifted her head, shaking it, and exhaling. “Don’t be,” she said, hair obscuring one eye.

  Mitchell withdrew his hands from his pockets. He reached out and lifted pale, purplish strands from her pretty face. “Are you in love with the detective?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, shit. I have quite the crush on you, Willa. So does Adams. It’s not a Farley kind of crush, but it’s a crush all the same. For a
while there I thought maybe it was mutual, that you felt it too, that maybe when this thing was over we could get together. Boy, did I get that wrong.”

  Willa blinked a few times and bit her top lip for a moment. “You never said anything, Tom.”

  “Sure I did. You just didn’t notice, or you thought I knew you were talking about Tilbrook. Your mind was on the job and mine was on your— I chastised Jerry for it, but I’m no different. Look, I was out of line with you and the whole Farley thing, but a crush can make a man act like an idiot.” Mitchell swiped a hand over his mouth. “Dammit, I like you. I want you to be happy. I’m hoping you work things out with him, if that’s what you want, but if you and the detective don’t work out…”

  “You’re really a very sweet man, Tom. Not what you want to hear, but…”

  “Oh, hell, don’t worry. I can keep this professional between us. I may like you, but I can guarantee I’ll never send you muffins or two hundred bucks worth of chocolate.” Before he did something asinine, like kiss her, Mitchell got in the car and closed the door on his colleague’s soft chuckle and the deflated balloon of his own teenage crush.

  Willa’s nervous tension collapsed in on itself as she watched Thomas Mitchell drive off in his nondescript sedan, towards the moon peeking through thick clouds above the Jemez Mountains. She’d see him again in the morning. By then her stomach would have traveled back from the soles of her still fizzing feet. By then Jackie Grafton would be released and know the horrible fate of her boyfriend. By then the team would begin compiling evidence and building a case against Donald Farley, and his half-brother, Gordon Ivers.

  Safe. Dominic was safe, only she hadn’t saved him.

  Farley had.

  There had never really been a way to save Dominic, but the point was he wasn’t going to be arrested or prosecuted for anything. Security measures at the Lab would be reviewed and tightened. There’d be stories in the news, and an inquiry that would call her to report. Willa knew she was finished with the FBI, and that didn’t matter.

  It was a job she’d been ready to leave.

  Shattered, on the point of collapse, she wondered if she’d be better off walking home because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sit down and not fall asleep at the wheel. She leaned against the front end of Alicia’s car, too weary to move, too spent to cry.

  Tiny flakes of snow began to fall. The wind picked up and a cold chill shot through her tired bones. She watched flurries drift down. Tiny crystals of ice caught by a frosty breeze danced in an amber glow of streetlight. Content to die of hypothermia, she followed the snow that landed upon the bloodstains on her cheerful pink shoes until she caught sight of John exiting the Justice Center.

  He was like sunlight. His warmth reached out to her as he approached. She’d never know the comfort of his heat again. Without him, she was going to freeze for the rest of her life.

  It was funny, she’d been a blank canvas for so long, existing, plodding along day by day. She never expected to care about anything or anyone and now that she did, she wondered how she could get back to a small patch of not caring, just so that losing John didn’t hurt quite so much.

  The one consolation in this was Alicia. She had Alicia back. She had a family.

  With a mix of conflicting emotions she sighed heavily when he stopped and plopped against the hood of his Subaru. She’d forgotten he’d parked next to her.

  Without looking at her, John stuffed his hands in his pockets. Car keys jingled inside the fabric. He sighed as she had, but the sound was more of a long-suffering half-groan. “What the hell was that telling me to leave the room shit?” he said shaking his head.

  The breath caught in her chest. “You talkin’ to me?”

  “Yeah, De Niro, I’m talkin’ to you.”

  “I thought you were angry.”

  “I am angry. I’m angry you shut me down in there by flexing your big fat FBI muscle, but I got over the other angry, that whole jealous thing pretty damn quick. Being scared shitless for someone has that effect. I see a man trying to stab you with a fork and I got over being mad. Then, when I got over being mad and scared shitless, I got scared shitless all over again because of your fall-on-the-sword mentality. Hoo-Boy. You were ready go to jail,” he said, “weren’t you? You thought you and Dominic were going to go to jail.”

  “You thought so too?”

  “I thought so too.”

  “You see why, don’t you? I owed him. He got me out of one kind of prison. I had to make sure he didn’t wind up the other.”

  “Whatever the cost.”

  “Yes. And there was nothing you could do. I knew you were about to try to intervene in some way and I had to shut you down before you made it worse or implicated yourself. I know you love being a cop. I couldn’t let you give that up.”

  “So you had to save me too?”

  Her throat was tight and she told herself her eyes stung because of the cold, not because she was crying. “Why didn’t you have me arrested earlier?”

  The keys jingled again in his pocket. “Why do you think, Willa?”

  Willa let her eyelids drop. Fat tears squeezed out. If she hadn’t been leaning against the car she would have swayed on her feet. Her eyes opened and she looked at John. He was looking right back at her. “He’s your friend too,” she said.

  “Right. That’s why. That’s why I was so scared.” He nodded, mouth a flat line. “He’s my friend. He’s my friend and I didn’t want either one of you to wind up in a federal correctional institution.”

  Snowflakes settled on his corduroy barn jacket. The flakes were orange instead of white. The snow beginning to accumulate on the ground was peach colored. Willa stared at the pale gingery dust and snuffled. “What would you have done if that had happened?”

  “Visited you in prison.”

  She laughed, a short, sharp crack of air.

  “Of course, I would have married you first.”

  Up came her head. “What?”

  John stepped sideways, withdrew a hand from his pocket, touched a finger to her chin, and closed her mouth. “Yes, my Queen of Walking Disaster. I want to marry you. I figured that out when you were trying take a bullet no one fired. I couldn’t lose you.”

  Her mouth dropped open again. Tears dripped off her jaw. “I thought we were through. I used you. I lied to you.”

  “No you didn’t.” He shook his head and shrugged. “You just didn’t tell me everything. You couldn’t tell me everything. And I still want to marry you.”

  “But you told me to fuck off.”

  “Your point being?”

  “The fuck off part.”

  He leaned against the side of the hatchback, right next to her. “What, and you thought that meant I didn’t love you?” John straightened, brushed the snow from his hair. “Boy howdy, you’re something. You told your sister to fuck off and you told Dominic to fuck off, didn’t you?”

  Willa nodded. Her face was cold and wet and being pelted by lacy bits of ice.

  “Alicia told you to fuck off, right?”

  “Yeah,” she sniffed.

  “You still love them, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” she sniveled.

  Head cocked to one side, he rolled his index finger in a sideways circle. “So you see where I’m goin’ with this?”

  “No.”

  “You’re exhausted, aren’t you? You’re running on fumes of fumes.”

  “I can’t think.” Tears fell freely. She pressed both palms to her skull, flattening lavender hair that looked pink in the orange lights of the parking lot. “I can’t anything.”

  “Well, that’s obvious. I’m the one doped up on painkillers and you’re the one who can’t comprehend three little words. So maybe I better be direct.” He turned towards her, fully. “I love you. I loved you when I was angry. I loved you when I told you to fuck off, and I love you now. I never stopped loving you. I was mad at you and mad for you, and when you stumbled into Farley’s house covered in blood I wen
t mad. I wanted to kill him. I almost killed Gordon. Not killing him was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I love you so much I nearly killed a man. I had him down on his knees, in the woods, begging for his life as he asked me to look in my heart. ‘What heart,’ I said, and then, as I was about to pull the trigger, I figured one of us in prison would have been enough… Are you buying any of this?”

  Her palms slid down her face trying to wipe away the cascade of salty wetness. Sniffling, her hands fell to her sides. “Only the you love me part. The rest of it sounds like a scene from some gangster movie about the Irish Mob, and your accent … your accent was … actually pretty good.”

  “Well, thank God for that. Come here.” He reached for her, yanked her close. It made his arm ache, pulled on his fresh stitches, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care that he was facing more physical therapy and another bout of medical leave. He’d found what he’d never known he’d been looking for all his life and held it tightly, he held her tightly, his nose buried in hair he couldn’t wait to see white again. She shook as she sobbed, and he felt his own eyes burn. “Jesus, Queenie,” he said, the words feeling too fat for his constricted throat. “You scared the hell out of me. I pushed you into that pit with Farley to keep you safe, but there wasn’t anything I could do to shove you out of the way of the other pit. You were ready to go to prison. And there was nothing I could do about it but stand in that damn doorway. Don’t ever do that to me again.”

  The wind blew snow around them, but it felt like a summer storm heavy with lightning. A hair-raising jolt surged along Willa’s spine. A moment ago she’d been on the path of catatonia and self-loathing. Now, she was a power generator ready to explode with energy and emotion. “I like it so much better when you call me Queenie,” she said, voice breaking.

  “You saved him. You know that, don’t you? You saved Dominic.”