“You’re asking me to trust a man I don’t know, have never met.”
“I know it, and don’t think for a minute I don’t know how much that asks. If you can’t do it, we’ll find another way.”
She turned to the window again. Her gardens were doing so well. Her life had been so smooth, really, for the last year. And yet nothing had really grown until she’d opened the door to Brooks.
“Would you trust him with your life?”
“I would be. You’re my life now.”
“Oh, God, you say that and I feel I’d wither away if I lost what I’ve found with you. You make me want to risk the quiet, Brooks, and I thought the quiet was all I ever wanted.”
“You can’t keep running, Abigail.” Taking her shoulders, he turned her around to face him. “You can’t keep shutting yourself up, shutting yourself down.”
“I thought I could, but no, I can’t. Not now. How would you do it?”
“Drive to Little Rock. We couldn’t risk a phone call or an e-mail. It has to be face-to-face, not only so we don’t leave a trail but because Anson’s a face-to-face type. I could be there in under two hours, get this started, be back before morning.”
“Tonight?”
“What’s the point in putting it off? There’s a PI I guarantee is working on his laptop right now, scratching at that surface. We’ve got the advantage, why waste it?” He got tohis feet. “You take your laptop or that iPad of yours. Do your research on the captain on the way. If you’re not satisfied, we turn around, come back.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“Always. But in this case I want him to see you, hear you. I want you to tell him the way you told me. You’re scared. I don’t blame you.” He took her arms. “You want to take more time, to analyze, to calculate, work out details. But that’s not what you did when you got out of that safe house. It’s not what you did in New York when they chased after you. You went with instinct, and you beat them.”
“I’m going to take my alternate identification, and cash. My go bag. If this goes wrong, I can’t come back here.”
“If it goes wrong, I’ll go with you.”
“I know you mean that now—”
“Now’s where we are. You take whatever you think you need.”
“I want to take Bert.”
Now he smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
* * *
He drove her car. Neighbors wouldn’t think much about an SUV in Anson’s driveway, but they’d remember a Bickford police cruiser if a badge asked somewhere down the line.
While he drove, Bert did what dogs did in cars, hung his head out the back window with a dopey grin on his face, and Abigail worked on her laptop.
“Your Captain Anson has an excellent record.”
“He’s a good cop.”
Advantage or disadvantage? Abigail wondered.
“If he agrees to help, will you know if he’s telling the truth?”
“Yes. Trust me.”
“I am.” She looked out the side window at the blur of landscape. “More than I have anyone else in a dozen years. If this goes through, and others believe me, it would lead toarrests, trials, my testimony. And there could be repercussions. You have to understand that.”
“We could go on the way things are, let it alone. And both of us—I think both of us—would never feel quite okay with it. Safer, but not quite okay.”
“Safe’s been enough for a long time now.” She looked back at him, still in wonder how one person could change everything. “It’s not now. Still, it won’t be enough to hurt the Volkov organization, to just damage it. To be okay and safe, we have to destroy it.”
