exit, should she need one, was ready to go before taking care of her nighttime ritual and climbing into the hotel bed.
Winding down had become an obsession.
She took her computer and keystroked her way into the path that would show her Leo.
The man had his computer up and online every night. She watched him as he buzzed around his kitchen going back and forth to his computer. Every once in a while, she’d hear him mumbling her name. “C’mon, Olivia . . . would it kill you to say hi?”
She knew he couldn’t see her.
But seeing him, hearing him . . . was a comfort.
Only this time, his computer wasn’t on. After two attempts, she realized it was useless.
Maybe he was working late?
She closed her laptop and pushed it to the other side of the bed. Leo’s side. And if she opened her eyes in the middle of the night, she’d reconnect and look again.
When exhaustion finally took hold and she drifted off to sleep, she reached a hand out, touching the cold edges of her laptop, envisioning Leo.
Her eyes cracked open exactly four hours later and she moaned. Mornings were cruel at the pace she was maintaining.
She checked Leo’s feed.
Nothing. It was only nine in the evening in LA.
Strange.
It took her an hour to leave her room and slip down to the café across from the hotel and order a coffee and hot cereal. It was still early, but the place was filling up.
She felt a strange connection and peacefulness listening to most of the customers speaking German. For a moment she remembered a time one year after leaving Richter. She’d gotten past the crushing shock of her employment and had started looking for ways out. At twenty-two she’d sat in a café like this one, in Germany, but she could have been anywhere. She’d look around and find the smiling faces of families and friends, all moving about their lives, and she’d ache. Young people her age would sit in a booth beside her, talking about their night at a pub, a party, or a play. They’d see her and strike up a conversation. And at that time Olivia wasn’t worried someone was trying to kill her. So she would talk and even went out with a group on occasion.
Then she’d get a call.
You’re going to Prague. I need you in Moscow. There’s a situation in Costa Rica. Not every case ended up behind the barrel of a gun. Sometimes she needed to get closer. On the rare occasion, the assignment only involved gaining information. In those times, acts she had to perform didn’t kill others, but they did burn away at her soul.
Eventually she’d sit in a café, like the one she was in now, and not engage. She’d put earbuds in and pretend to listen to music so no one would approach her. After an assignment, she’d get as far away from where it took place, find a bar, and use the first man she could to try and drown out the images in her head.
That was until Amelia.
AJ’s sister and Olivia’s ex-roommate at Richter showed up like a ray of goddamn sunshine in South Africa.
Amelia was there on a work assignment . . . legitimate work . . . and they met in a café. Olivia had no choice but to engage. For hours they talked. Amelia told her about her job, her new condo, her lack of a boyfriend. Olivia told her she’d been around the world, sipped that champagne with gorgeous men and slept with them all . . . even the married ones. A gross exaggeration, but it was what Amelia wanted to hear.
The day rolled into drinks until Amelia started asking hard questions.
By morning Amelia knew the truth. At least the CliffsNotes version of all the ugly. Having a friend was not a risk Olivia wanted to take. Not with Amelia’s life on the line.
Olivia had gone to South Africa without Pohl knowing. She sat on a pier daily with the contact phone in her hand, having every desire in the world to throw the thing away.
Amelia was the tipping point.
They stood on the pier together as the cell phone sunk to the bottom of the sea. Next to waking up every day, ripping up Pohl’s contract meant putting a bounty on her head.
It was months later that Olivia felt comfortable reaching out to Amelia. They’d put cameras in her condo and Amelia had been the one to teach Olivia how