“He’ll work harder for the convictions not knowing.”
“Besides you, only Captain Anson, Garrison and the assistant director, and the FBI doctor who pronounced Elizabeth dead know how it was done. It’s enough to trust. It’s more than I’ve trusted most of my life.”
Because he needed to touch her, keep touching her, he brought her hand to his lips. “Are you sorry she’s gone?”
“No. She did what she needed to do, and could leave content with that. Now I have one last thing to do for her.”
Abigail opened her laptop. “I passed Garrison a flash drive with copies of everything on the Volkovs. Their financials, their communications, addresses, names, operations. Now, for Elizabeth, for Julie, for Terry, for John, I’m going to take it all away from them.”
She sent the e-mail to Ilya, using his current mistress’s address, with a sexy little text mirroring those Abigail had accessed from the past.
The attachment wouldn’t register. That, she thought with considerable pride, was only part of its beauty.
“How long will it take to work?”
“It’ll start the minute he opens the e-mail. I estimate about seventy-two hours before everything’s corrupted, but that corruption will begin immediately.”
She sighed. “Do you know what I’d like? I’d like to open a bottle of champagne when we get home. I have one, and this feels like exactly the right occasion.”
“We’ll do that, and I’ve got something to add to it.”
“What?”
“A surprise.”
“What sort of surprise?”
“The kind that’s a surprise.”
“I don’t know if I like surprises. I’d rather…Oh, look. He’s opened the e-mail already.” Satisfied, she closed the laptop. “A surprise, then.”
Epilogue
He wanted to take thechampagne up to her spot overlooking the hills.
“Like a picnic? Should I pack some food?”
“Champagne’s enough. Come on, Bert.”
“He listens to you, follows you. I think he likes to because you sneak him food from the table when you think I’m not looking.”
“Busted.”
She laughed and took his hand. “I like holding your hand when we walk. I like so many things. I like being free. I’m free because of you.”
“No, not because of me.”
“You’re right, that’s not accurate. I’m free because of us. That’s better.”
“You’re still wearing a gun.”
“It may take a little time for that.”
“It may take me a while to aim one again.”
“Brooks.”
“It’s done. It worked, so I can tell you, putting you in those crosshairs was the hardest thing I ever did. Even knowing the why, the how, it was like dying.”
