Saturday, March 13, 2021

Washington, DC

I sat with pencil poised over the blank answer sheet, battling the double vision that threatened to make my writing illegible. After a few minutes, or maybe a few seconds, I realized no one was providing me with an answer to write. I looked up from the paper and saw my four companions watching me expectantly.

“You guys think I know?” I asked.

It was a dismal realization, but not the end of the world. After all, bar trivia at the Hamilton in Washington, DC wasn’t exactly the Paris Peace Conference. Thinking this, I zeroed in on Sharen directly across the table from me. She’d pulled “Paris Peace Conference” out of the hat in the last round, so why not this?

“Fear of being happy,” I prompted. She shrugged. My ears began to subconsciously seek out telling whispers from nearby tables in the packed bar. No one was blabbing.

Dominique Danes, my neighbor in life if not at our booth, startled everyone by smacking Sharen on the arm and urgently, silently, motioning with both hands for me to pass her the pencil and paper. I complied, taking the opportunity to sip at my fourth—fifth?—something-th martini. If I played it right, Dom would keep the answer sheet and I’d be off the hook. I had no idea how I’d been elected the smart one in the group, anyway.

While Dom scribbled, erasing and correcting a couple times, I gazed serenely around at the bar in general and my four companions specifically. Speaking of being happy. The atmosphere was drunkenly exuberant, I was among friends, and as far as I knew, no one wanted to kill me.

One short week had passed since FBI Agent James Camposanto and I had returned to Washington, DC after no less an accomplishment than rescuing a lost Renaissance masterpiece, Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man, from a hidden estate in Argentina. The painting was back in Poland now, where a welcome-back exhibition was in the early planning stages. We did that. For all the fuck ups and cataclysms and downright unconscionable behavior that got us there, we did it.

Three days ago, I’d returned to my long-forsaken Krav Maga class, which ended in an invite to bar trivia. I’d asked Dom to join me, even though she knew none of my classmates, because she was the only person with whom I could imagine enjoying a night out. My three classmates were nice enough, but I only remembered Sharen’s name because her job as an OPM Accountant was the inspiration for a long ago lie that no longer mattered. I couldn’t even remember the other two people’s names.

Dom once again smacked Sharen, who didn’t seem to mind the attention at all, and yanked me out of my reverie. She slid the paper back to me (dammit), where I silently mouthed, “Cherophobia.”

“I’m ninety percent sure that’s it,” Dom explained when I looked back at her. She took a drink of her scotch—God, I love a woman who drinks scotch—and amended, “one hundred percent. How I know, I don’t know, but I know.”

“Good enough for me,” announced the woman to Sharen’s right, whose name might have started with a K. She grabbed the answer sheet and took it to the emcee, sashaying just enough that the man sitting to my right became unnaturally still as he appreciated the view.

Sharen and Dom were getting along like peanut butter and jelly, and intuition told me my other two classmates would be leaving together. They were cute. K Something and M Something. They’d met at class, and the two had been orbiting one another like satellites for as long as I was aware of them.

You’d think being a fifth wheel would upset the apple cart of contentment I had going, but it only made me more comfortable. Once our team was finished spectacularly losing trivia, I’d find my way back to Jim’s house in Arlington, Virginia where rested my dog, Dude and my Jim, whatever he was.

James Camposanto. If he were the answer to a trivia question, that question would probably be, “Who the hell does this guy think he is?” A mastermind. A shockingly compatible sex partner. The reason my life was neither boring nor comfortable. The gleeful control freak who’d had the absolute gall to suggest the clothes I wore tonight might be too skimpy. Because the weather may turn, he’d insisted. But he’d had that spark in his eye, and I knew he’d only said it to provoke me. It had worked, which meant I’d been a few minutes late to trivia.

Lost in the pursuant memories, I scoffed aloud, “Fear of being happy. How is that even possible?”

“It’s when you think something bad is about to happen because you can’t be happy forever,” Dom sagely explained. “Take you, for instance.”

“Me?” I squeaked.

“Yeah, you, Space Force. You just had to sit at the end of the booth facing the door. What’d you think is gonna happen that you need to be guarding the door?”

M Something piped up in my defense. “No one thinks something is going to happen. Doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

“Oh okay mhm,” Dom mumbled. “So you didn’t snap up that seat to be next to our girl Anna. You just wanted to be on deck in queso emergency.” I distinctly heard her say “queso.” Maybe I’d had a bit too vodka much.

M Something glanced unwillingly at me, then caught K Something’s eye as she meandered back to us through the crowd. “I plead the fifth,” he concluded.

While we waited for the scores from the last round to be announced, Sharen and Dom folded together into a whispered conversation while M and K made awkward small talk across the table. I sat back and enjoyed the entertainment, sipping at martini number who the hell knew and wondering how I was going to get from DC to Arlington without ending up in a ditch.

Jim had dropped me off, insisting he’d be happy to come get me no matter how late I stayed out; but he was probably asleep by now, and I didn’t want to wake him up. I could ride the Orange Line almost all the way to Jim’s house, but I’d still have to walk about a mile, and I really didn’t care to.

I decided to take an Uber, recalling my mostly unused salary as an FBI Intelligence Analyst that had been piling up for months and months. Might as well spend some of it. I opened the app on my phone, then glanced toward the door, wondering errantly if it had started raining again.

My curiosity could not have been timed worse, because I locked eyes with a man walking into the bar. Automatic embarrassment shifted quickly to recognition. I knew him, and he knew me, and he wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t even supposed to be on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Was I seeing things?

Too drunk to look away, I stared brazenly at the familiar face with a mixture of puzzlement and discomfort. He matched my gaze for what felt like an eternity, then settled into a seat at the bar with clear line-of-sight to me, took off his coat, and ordered a drink. I tried to ignore him, part of me hoping I was seeing things, that he’d disappear if I played it cool.

For a few minutes I feigned interest in the others’ conversation, but soon my eyes drifted back to the bar. The man was still there, dammit. He’d received a pint of beer and was, unfortunately, solid and real enough to pick it up and drink it.

I watched him sip comfortably at his beer and only snapped out of it when the emcee turned down the music to announce the winners. Our team took the round, but we didn’t even place in the overall scores.

“Anna, why don’t you go claim our prize?” Sharen suggested. “You look like you could use a free beer.”

“Yeah, Anna, let’s see the ass that launched a thousand ships,” Dom put in, causing Sharen to erupt with laughter.

I was too focused on the man at the bar to appreciate her assessment, but I did slide out of my seat. Knowing I wouldn’t be back, I dropped some cash on the table and waved a half-hearted farewell to my confused companions.

“Say hi to Jim for me,” Dom called after me.

At the name, the man at the bar glanced up and saw me walking toward him. As I passed his seat, I heard his mostly-empty glass clink as he sat it down and knew I had about eight seconds to form some kind of plan. Eight hours wouldn’t have been enough, not in my state of advanced inebriation. I turned a corner, reached the door to the women’s restroom, stopped, and turned around.

David Marchand stopped in front of me, too close, his face passing in and out of focus in the poor lighting as I tried to decide if I’d become the kind of person who saw things when she drank too much vodka.

David couldn’t be there. He was the youngest brother of Marcel Marchand, a French crime boss whose clutches I’d escaped back in December in London. David may have helped me escape, but that didn’t mean I was happy to see him.

“I’m sorry to surprise you like this, Anna,” he said in a low voice, his accent more apparent than ever in the sea of American conversations providing background noise. “Are you all right?”

“I’m very drunk. Very, very, very.”

“I can see that. However, I need to talk to you and it can’t wait.” He pushed open the door to the family restroom and waved me inside.

“Ew,” I complained. “Can’t we go outside?”

“Oui, if that suits you better.”

He offered me his arm and I sputtered with laughter, demurring, until I took a wrong step and nearly broke my ankle. I grabbed his arm and mumbled, “Friends are gonna think you just picked me up.”

“They can’t be dumb enough to make such an obvious error in judgment.”

“You’re a funny little French guy, you know that?”

He waited until we were outside on the sidewalk to reply, “I worry you might not be able to understand what I’m saying in your current state.”

“No, no, being drunk makes me normal smart.”

“You are flirting with alcohol poisoning.”

“I flirt with everything. Just say what you came here to say.”

He started to, but before he could get the first word out his gaze shifted to a spot over my right shoulder. I turned around, not even considering whether that was his intention, and found myself looking up at all six feet, seven inches of James Camposanto.

I backed up, dizzy with indignation and liquor, and saw my dog, Dude, tethered to Jim’s right hand by a slackened leash. Dude’s tail began to wag as soon as I noticed him, but I was too surprised to greet him properly.

“Did you follow me here?” I demanded of Jim.

“I was at your apartment and wondered why you hadn’t called yet.” He smiled at me and then looked over my head, narrowing his eyes at David to ask, “Is this guy bothering you?”

Over my own fit of laughter at this, I heard David ask, “Are you James Camposanto?”

“Jim, Jim,” I gasped, turning again and backing into Jim’s non-dog side for support. “This is David Marchand. This is Marcel’s baby brother. He helped me escape from the house with all the dogs!” Of course, Jim already knew this, as he’d masterminded said escape; but again, I was very drunk.

Since I was shoulder-to-shoulder with Jim, I felt him tense up. David took a half-step back.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” David preempted. “I need your help.”

Jim’s arm slipped protectively around my waist anyway. I rested my head on his shoulder, as it seemed to have suddenly doubled in weight, and closed my eyes as Jim asked, “With?”

My eyes popped open at David’s low answer of, “Luke.”

Luke Jackson. Had it really been less than a month since we said goodbye in Chile? The intervening weeks had seen Jim lavish me with affection and distractions, all to the heal the wounds caused by his own Machiavellian hand. Luke was out of my life and out on his ass. His former boss, David’s brother Marcel, wouldn’t take him back. Luke was supposed to find safe harbor in Italy with a new benefactor, but if Jim knew whether he’d made it there safely, he wasn’t telling me.

It seemed to me that Jim took at least ten minutes to answer, “Luke who?”

“Don’t be a dick, Jim,” I snapped. “What happened?”

“Anna,” Jim said sharply, fingers digging into my side. “Maybe it’s best if you don’t talk right now.”

“Ugh. You’re so bossy.”

“Let’s go to Anna’s apartment,” he bossed, adding most reluctantly, “If that’s okay with you, Anna.”

“It’s closer,” I agreed. “Why’d you bring Dude? Not that I’m complaining.”

Jim didn’t answer, but as we fell into step on the sidewalk heading toward my apartment on Dupont Circle, David asked, “This is your dog, Anna?”

“That’s my boy.”

“He’s magnificent. The largest Alsatian shepherd I’ve ever seen.”

“I like you, David. How’s Penelope doing?”

“She grows less like a Malinois and more like a person each day.”

“Next time you see her, please inform her that I love her.”

David chuckled, and I thought I heard Jim force a reluctant breath of laughter. I knew I’d be getting a lecture soon enough, some shit about being careful and whatnot. The 10-minute walk helped me sober up enough to realize it was way too cold outside for the 10-minute walk, and I was shivering miserably by the time the three of us and Dude slipped into the warm shelter of my apartment building’s lobby. Jim, comfortable in his light jacket, was kind enough not to say, “I told you so.”

We climbed into an elevator, I swiped my key card to get us moving, and Jim judged the time was right to ask David, “So what does Luke want? What happened to him?”

“I don’t know what happened. He won’t tell me. Marcel sent me to Atlanta to take care of some business at our international office. I then traveled to Denver to meet Luke, at Luke’s request, and we rented a car and drove down to Alquer—Alqubur—uh—”

“Albuquerque,” I supplied.

“Yes, New Mexico. He wanted to speak to you but was wary of contacting you directly, so he sent me. He mentioned a leak at the FBI.”

“So he wants to chat,” Jim concluded. “Why couldn’t he come here himself?”

Jim’s carefully-worded question elicited information without giving it, unlike what I wanted to ask David (“Did Paolo find out he didn’t kill Marisol?”). I decided to follow Jim’s advice and shut up, though my feathers were still a little ruffled about it.

Before David could answer, the elevator doors opened on my floor and we filed out, not speaking again until I’d locked my apartment door behind us. I invited the men to make themselves comfortable on the sofa while I took a quick detour to the bathroom, calling, “Don’t talk, I don’t want to miss anything!”

I hurriedly did my business, washed my hands, and returned to the living room to plop down on the floor, leaning against Jim’s long legs.

“As to why Luke didn’t come here himself. He doesn’t know who to trust,” David explained. “He thinks Marcel wants to kill him, and he might not be wrong about that.

“He told me Marcel asked him to kill Fernando and Marisol Serna on Paolo Barbato’s request, then to kill Barbato himself. I have no idea why Marcel would ask for this, but for Luke it was a way back in after helping Anna escape.

“Luke told me he planned to seek refuge with Paolo in Italy rather than returning to Marcel in London, but he no longer believed it was safe to do so.”

“So why not go back to Marcel?” Jim asked. “Bridge too burned?”

“I haven’t discussed any of this with Marcel, obviously. I’m not an imbecile.”

If it was clear to me that David was losing patience with us, it must have been clear to Jim, but he pressed, “If Luke’s so worried about a leak, he can get over it. We stop the leaks we want to stop. If he wants to talk, he knows how to reach me.”

“Why do I feel I have wasted my time coming here?”

Jim didn’t answer. I squirmed uncomfortably, wondering if he were going to ignore David’s news. When I couldn’t keep it in any longer, I asked, “What are you going to do, Jim? You can’t do nothing.”

“I guess it can’t hurt to humor him,” he answered, plainly unhappy about it. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” David admitted. “Probably still in Al—uh—New Mexico. He told me Anna would be able to find him.”

Jim asked something that made so little sense to me I didn’t even hear real words. That convinced me I was going to be missing the rest of this conversation. I excused myself to the kitchen to make coffee, brought three steaming mugs back to the living room, and tried my best to tune in. After the tenth time I nodded off and almost struck my head on the coffee table, Jim sent me to bed with a bottle of water and a trashcan.

* * *

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