I know that him betraying her didn’t give her cancer, but on some level, I can’t help but think it took the fight out of her. He was supposed to be the love of her life, and his love turned out to be hollow. I can’t forgive him for that.”
“What about Michel?” Jason asked. “Why did it not work out with him? Did he remind you of your father too much?”
She gave a quiet laugh. “You’re good. Yes, that was probably part of it. Life with Michel looked an awful lot like the life my parents had, and look how that turned out. That’s probably unfair, but it’s how I felt. Besides, I wanted something else out of life.”
“What?”
“If I figure it out, I’ll let you know,” Abbey replied.
“You obviously don’t care about getting a big job,” Jason went on. “You had a shot at top magazines, and you turned them down. And yet you don’t strike me as someone who’s afraid of risks.”
“I’m not.”
“You won’t quit your job, but you hate standing still. You stay in Quebec, but you don’t do anything at home except sleep.”
“Maybe I like being an enigma.”
“Or maybe you’re like a skydiver,” Jason said.
“How so?”
“You love the idea of jumping. You can’t wait to feel that freedom as you fall. You’re excited by the thrill of cheating death. You can’t believe there’s anything more boring than a life spent on the ground, and you’re sure that once you take that first step, it’s going to be the most incredible experience ever.”
“But?” she asked.
“But that first step is scary.”
Abbey turned his head toward her and found his mouth in the darkness. As they kissed, her hands worked on his clothes, undressing him quickly and urgently. He helped her, shrugging off his shirt, kicking off his pants. She found the skin of his chest, and her fingertips traced over old wounds and scars like an explorer. Her lips were on his face, his shoulders, his neck. When he was naked, like her, she took his hand and pulled him on top of her, and her body rose up to meet him and guide him inside her.
“First steps are always scary,” she whispered.
*
NASH Rollins pulled open the rear door of the stretch limousine parked in front of the New York apartment building where they’d found Benoit’s body. He looked both ways up and down the street, then climbed into the back and shut the door behind him. He shifted painfully in the seat and folded up his walking cane. Through the smoked windows, he saw the flashing lights of a dozen police cars.
“Good evening, Nash,” Miles Priest said.
“Hello, Miles.”
The CEO’s hangdog face looked longer and sadder than usual. “You have my sympathy about Benoit. He was a good man.”
“Yes, he was.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“Bourne shot him. I should have seen it coming. He knew we’d see the video feed from the safe house, knew we’d send someone after him. He staked out an apartment across the street and waited for Benoit. He took him out through the window. This is war. Bourne’s declared war against us. Which means Medusa has, too.”
Rollins heard himself spitting out the words. He’d actually questioned his judgment about Bourne’s innocence, but Cain had now erased those doubts for good. Rollins’s anger was like a fire, but he had to purge his emotions. He wanted nothing in his brain now but cold calculations.
“Just to be clear, are we quite sure it was Bourne?” Priest asked.
“He left a fingerprint on the sniper rifle.”
“That seems rather careless of him.”
“It wasn’t careless,” Rollins snapped. “It was deliberate. He was sending me and Shaw a message. He wants us to know that he was the one who killed Benoit. Just like he did with Congresswoman Ortiz.”
“He fooled all of us, Nash. Scott convinced me that Bourne was the right man for the job. We made a mistake.”
Rollins shook his head. “The director and I both warned Scott to find someone else. I told him that Bourne wasn’t the same man anymore. But he let his history with him get in the way of his judgment.”
“Do you have any idea where Bourne is headed next?” Priest asked.
“No. We’re tapped into police databases, but he knows we’ll be looking for him. That’s why I called you, Miles. I’d like your people looking, too. Put some of those damn computers and databases to work to help me.”
“I imagine Bourne is too smart to be found that way,” Priest replied.
“Maybe so,