“Thanks,” I say.
“Be careful out there, okay? Even with a cop on your butt, be careful.”
“Got it,” I say. “You bet.”
Chapter 21
Zane is two cars back, trailing me. As I pull into my drive, he pulls into the same spot where I found him when I left the house. I’m happy to be left alone and need time to think before the all-powerful FBI arrive.
My happiness is quickly zapped. A black Lincoln Navigator claims part of the driveway in front. Standing outside their vehicle, Alderson wears a pleasant smile, and Greene her usual earnest indifference. She removes her sunglasses as if to take a better look at me in the daylight.
Clouds have moved over the sun, dimming the early-day glare and casting an enormous blanket of shade over the mountain slopes. Greene’s hazel-green eyes take on the color of yellow moss in the diffused sunlight. Alderson keeps his Ray-Bans on.
“Johnny-on-the-spot,” I say.
“You have ’em?” Greene asks, holding out a hand like we’re engaging in some drug deal.
“In my purse.”
I fetch the earrings and hold them out in my palm. The clouds slide by and the bright sun makes the silver sparkle and the sapphires deepen to near black. “No use in dusting them,” I say. “My prints were all over them to begin with, and so are my friend’s. I’m certain they haven’t left this purse since I used it almost nine months ago, when I forgot it at Fiona’s.”
Greene holds out a baggie from her blazer pocket, and I slip the earrings inside. She studies them through the plastic for a second before handing them to Alderson.
He gives them a long look before tucking them into his shirt pocket, but not before throwing a wide-eyed look to Greene that says I’m screwed.
“We’re going to need the full name of your friend and everyone she lives with.” Greene’s face is solemn. “And we need to talk more. Can we go in?”
“I have groceries.” I walk back to my car, open the trunk, and grab two large canvas bags stuffed to the brim. A red-tailed hawk sails above the field to the north, hunting mice. I feel the agents’ eyes on me, watching my every move.
“Need some help?” Alderson asks.
“I got it, but you can close the trunk for me.” I take one last look at the circling hawk and inhale the faint, sweet scent of prairie hay wafting from the fields, brown from the past summer’s heat.
Inside, I have no patience for pleasantries. I turn to them, my arms folded. “What would you like to talk about?”
“We’d like to sit down,” Greene says. “If that’s okay.”
“I’m fine right here.”
Greene sighs but doesn’t respond. She isn’t going to confront my obstinacy, which I take as a bad sign.
I transfer bananas and apples to a white ceramic fruit bowl on my counter. I don’t want to be a jerk, but I can’t seem to help it. To let everything proceed entirely on their terms hints of surrender.
“Have you come up with those names we need?” Greene asks.
She’s referring to the list of people with a possible reason to want to harm me. “I’ll grab it for you in a sec.”
Alderson leans casually against the counter, his arms across his chest. He’s rolled his crisply ironed sleeves up. Greene stands dead center between the U-shape of my counters.
“Before I get it,” I say. “Has anyone else contacted the FBI? Who thinks they might be the one?”
“There’s a woman in Texas we’re checking out. She looks a lot like the sketch. And a lot like you.” Greene scrolls through photos on her phone and holds it out for me. “But she doesn’t have the earrings.”
The woman does resemble me, more than any of the others I’ve seen so far online, more than Jennifer Garner, more than the woman from Oregon who confessed she had an affair while her husband lay sick in the cabin of their sailboat.
This stranger resembles me more than Jess does, which I find surreal. It’s oddly comforting to know there’s someone else out there. “Does she own any earrings that might be somewhat similar?” I hand the phone back to Greene.
“I mean, she has lots of danglies, but nothing precisely like the ones in the sketch.”
