They all knew, this whole time, and they simply played house until her memory came back. All of them knowing she would leave without a proper goodbye.
Olivia looked at Neil’s note again.
All that sacrifice of time and safety . . . knowing she would vanish.
She stared out the window at the setting sun, blinking as that information processed.
Leo.
She fought back tears just picturing him.
Mr. FBI . . . sleeping with an assassin.
By now he knows. And to think they were both talking about the possibility of her being some kind of glamorous double agent. A spy for the good team. A 007 type that would be celebrated in secret circles.
She finished her wine and pressed the button for the attendant.
What a fool.
Both of them.
They should never have started anything.
“What can I get for you?”
Olivia picked up her empty glass. “You don’t happen to have a bigger glass back there?” she asked.
The attendant shook her head and smiled. “I’ll come back around and keep it full.”
For seven years no one had come for her. She heard rumors herself, that she was dead. A rumor Geoff Pohl circulated to keep face with those who paid him. A missing operative was a dead operative. She had no doubt the man had put a price on her head. Which was why he was dead.
She reached for the notch on her chest where the bullet had gone in.
The face of the gunman, his voice . . . his name echoed.
Someone from her past knew she was alive. The question was, How many others did with him?
Her wine arrived.
Olivia folded up the letter from Neil, her intention to burn it at the first opportunity. While names weren’t implicated, she wouldn’t keep it for sentiment.
No . . . she had a job to do.
Because when killers try to kill their own kind, they know the score.
It was time to even it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Brackett sat across the desk from him, leaning back in his desk chair, a pen twirling in his fingertips.
“Domestic violence.”
“That’s what she said.” Leo wore a suit for the first time in two months. He didn’t know what pinched more, the tie . . . or the shoes. Both reminded him that if he wanted to keep his job, he’d have to deliver this story to his boss and make it believable. “She was trying to get away from him, made it to Vegas. She’d only been there a couple of days. Wore a wig so he wouldn’t recognize her.”
“Did she say he was the one who shot her?” Fitz sat to Leo’s right, her low-heeled shoe tapping on air as she digested Leo’s information.
“No. But she believed he was responsible one way or another.”
“She didn’t tell you her name?”
“No. We told her we could help her, get her someplace safe. I thought she was turning to our way of thinking. I was about to call in, snow dumped, and the power went out. Without the uplink Neil set up, phone calls don’t work.”
“Where were you?” Fitz asked.
“Outside of Durango, Colorado. Mountain cabin. A big cabin. Neil has some seriously deep pockets.” Leo laced a chuckle into his narrative.
Brackett dropped his feet from where they were resting on the edge of his desk and sat forward, tossed his pen aside. “Two months and the shooter wasn’t aiming at you.”
“My access was limited up there to search out anything. No one down here found a link. Neil’s people, they were looking. Is there anything new, something to suggest Janie wasn’t the target?”
“Janie?”
“That’s what we called her. Jane Doe . . . Janie.”
“Ewhh.”
“It worked.” He wasn’t going to mention Olivia. Not that she would be in any of their databases.
“Nothing new. Mykonos was transferred to his new home. His attorneys are trying to get him placed in a Martha Stewart facility, but so far that hasn’t happened. Navi spent some time in New York before returning to Russia,” Fitz reported. “Interviews with the jurors and attorneys didn’t implicate anything.”
Leo already knew that.
“I’m going to assume the victim is starting her new life . . . wherever that is?”
“That’s what has been reported to me,” Brackett told him.
“So where is Janie now?” Fitz asked.
“I have no idea.” Leo pushed the image of Olivia out of his head and put the cardboard cutout image of “Janie” there in her place. He did not need his boss, or partner, clueing in to his feelings. “She took advantage of the power outage, drove the