Chapter Forty-Six

NICK HAD ALWAYS liked being on watch. The stillness. The silence. The slow pouring of one minute into next, hour into hour, a cup filling with time. He leaned on the windowsill of Effie’s room, the best room for surveillance of the inn’s driveway, porch, and garage. Effie lay sleeping in the bed, curled toward him, her cup filling with restful hours until she took over the watch again.

Almost everyone in the house assumed Effie was ex-military, but Nick knew better. He could tell because she didn’t fall asleep the military way: the time-efficient, mechanical shutting down they taught at boot camp. He’d heard fifteen minutes or more of her tossing and turning, trying to fall asleep, while he’d scanned the property through the rifle scope. Nick’s guess was that Effie was probably in a WITSEC situation of some sort.

Bill tapped a knuckle gently on the door before entering, though it was open. Effie didn’t move. Nick smiled in the dark as he took in his friend’s striped pajama bottoms.

“Don’t be jealous,” Bill sighed. “You could head to Walmart and get a pair of your own.”

“Or I could ask my grandpa if he’s got spares,” Nick said and went back to the rifle scope.

“All this stuff with Norman Driver,” Bill said. “And there hasn’t been a chance to talk about you.” He recounted his and Susan’s experience at Dorrich’s apartment, the shot in the bathroom wall. Nick told him about the failed attempt to find Master’s sister, Danielle, in Providence.

Bill stood pondering, watching the still blue night through the window. “If I was Rick Master and I thought someone was coming for me, I’d tell everyone I knew and loved to keep a low profile. Blow out of town for a few weeks.”

“It was worth a try, though,” Nick said.

“Yeah. Worth a try.” Bill yawned. “Maybe tomorrow we can cajole Susan into using her FBI contacts again to see if Master has any properties in his or a relative’s name that we don’t know about.”

“It is tomorrow,” Nick said after glancing at his watch.

“Oh, right.”

“Go to bed, man,” Nick said. His friend went to the door, paused, looking toward the stairs to the attic. His and Susan’s room. Nick felt a pang of jealousy, and maybe Bill sensed it, because he looked back and jutted his chin at Nick playfully.

“Where’s Breecher?”

“I dropped her at her motel over in Essex,” Nick said, refusing to bite.

“Somethin’ there, maybe?” Bill asked. Nick could see his smile even in the shadow of the hall.

“You tryin’ to make my watch feel longer or shorter?” Nick asked. Bill conceded and disappeared, but the damage was done. Nick’s thoughts turned to his former teammate, and the smell of her body on watch in Afghanistan. He’d never got used to the smell of other men. The desert wind and days hauling equipment without hope of a shower or clean uniforms. Breecher always smelled good. Even when she smelled bad, she smelled good.

His fingers moved on their own. He took up his phone and texted, deliberately ignoring the consequences.

Lonely night without u.

Nick scolded himself immediately. He had come on too strong. Breecher had been in his life since 2010, and with one text, he saw himself destroying everything they’d ever experienced together. The triumph and trauma of war, their terrible shared sin, the return and the devastating plunge into uncertainty back in the US. Could one awkward text push her away, after all that? He started and deleted a series of replies.

That wasn’t meant to sound…

It’s just being around you after all this time reminds me of…

Sorry, I’m just saying…

With terror in his heart, he watched as three bubbles on the screen indicated she was writing back.

Her text appeared, and he smiled.

Be right over,it said.

Breecher arrived as he was handing his watch back over to Bill. Blessed timing, so he didn’t have to explain, excuse, deal with stealthy smiles. He let her in the back door to the kitchen and led her silently to his bedroom. She was sliding her hands up under his shirt before he’d even shut the door behind them.

He knew her. Every inch of her body. He’d seen her bathing in a river in a ravaged village. He’d heard her crying in the tent in exhaustion and pain. He knew what she was like when she trembled and fought and laughed. But in his bed she was a complete stranger to him. New and exhilarating. He couldn’t tell what was happening behind her eyes as she held him, what thoughts traveled through her mind in the warm, tired moments afterward.

She was asleep beside him, one of her legs twisted around his, when he reached over to grab his phone from the nightstand where it lay beside hers. He was thinking he’d screenshot the “Be right over” text. A shrink had told him once that good moments saved, recalled, relived, could be momentary oases in his troubled ruminations.

The phone buzzed as he touched it. Breecher’s screen lit up as a text came through to her phone at the exact same time.

It was Master.

You’ll regret this. Danielle was my sister. She had nothing to do with this. You’re dead. Both of you: dead.

Nick felt a pang of terror rock through his body. He reached over, lifted Breecher’s phone, saw the identical message written on her screen. He picked up his phone and googled Danielle Master’s name. Breecher must have sensed the tension in him, because she woke and rolled over sharply.

“What-what-what?”

“It’s him. It’s Master.”

“What’s he say?”

Nick passed her phone over and watched her reading the text. He felt the alarms begin to sound inside his brain, louder and louder as the seconds passed.

“What does that mean?” Breecher asked.

“You tell me what it means,” Nick said. “You said when you left me in the car in Providence that you walked around the block and saw no sign of Danielle Master.”

Breecher frowned at him.

“And that was true,” she said. Her tone was hard.

Nick showed her his screen. The news headline that was the most recent match for Danielle Master’s name.

HOMELESS WOMAN SLAIN IN PROVIDENCE, POLICE CALLING FOR INFORMATION

“Says here that she was found murdered in an alleyway last night,” Nick said. “Happened around six. Two blocks away from the Chapel Street shelter.”

“Jesus,” Breecher said. She took the phone from him and scrolled the story. Nick watched her eyes. They weren’t reading. Just looking at the story on the screen.

“What… what are you saying?” Breecher’s voice was rising, her eyes narrowing. “That I left you last night, went and killed Danielle, and then came back to you at the bar and told you I’d found nothing? That you think I… killed a person… and then went and had dinner with you?”

“Don’t give me that,” Nick said. “Don’t pretend you didn’t kill guys over there and then sleep like a baby right afterward.”

“Nick, this is crazy,” Breecher said. “What are you saying? That this is me? That this… this whole thing. It’s me?”

“Maybe,” Nick said, his mind reeling. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe it was you,” Breecher said quietly. Nick had to push aside the fury and confusion storming in his mind to look at her, to listen to her.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you say you have these episodes.” She shrugged. “You blank out. Do weird things you can’t remember doing. Maybe when I walked away from you at the car, you went for a walk. You found Danielle and you killed her.”

Nick’s jaw was locked tight. The sheets squeaked as he twisted them in his fists.

“Maybe you went to see Dorrich,” Breecher went on. “And he told you something that made you snap. How do I know?”

“Get out,” he said.

“Nick, don’t do this. I’m just saying, we can question this thing to death. But that doesn’t help us.” She reached for him. “We need to stick together. We—”

“Get. Out.”

Breecher waited. Nick didn’t budge. In time she gathered her things and pulled her clothes on. He watched her slip out the bedroom door into the darkness.