Liza tossed her shoulders back and walked to the end of the bar. She accepted a beer from one of Kate’s sisters-in-law and pecked one of the brothers on the cheek.
A minute later, she glanced over her shoulder to see if Roger was still there. He stood, trying to let his anger sift away. She was a star in their world, yes, but the way she treated him, as if he were some commoner, as if he weren’t someone, was inexcusable.
Finally, Roger turned and left the bar. The cobblestone streets of St. Marabel were slick. It must have rained. Roger put his hands in his pockets and headed for his hotel. He’d been able to clear most of his emotions and leave them at the pub—he’d left behind his desire and his momentary lack of control. But he was still carrying one emotion with him. His anger. He was having a very hard time getting rid of that.
10
Chicago, Illinois
L iza Kingsley crossed LaSalle Street at Madison and entered one of the block’s smaller buildings, which bore brass plates by the entrance. Nine of those plates proclaimed the names of local law firms. The other plate read simply, Presario Pharmaceuticals.
“Morning, Ed,” she called to the security guard, as she did every morning she came to the office.
“Morning, miss.”
Liza walked to the elevator and got in with two lawyer types who hit the button for a firm called Toffer and Brodley. She nodded at them and smiled.
“Hey,” one guy said to her, allowing his eyes to linger on her face. Those eyes had also darted down Liza’s body when she stepped inside the elevator. He probably thought she hadn’t noticed. She had.
Liza wore a sleek, black pantsuit, as she did many days at work, but today she’d added a low-cut, salmon-colored silk blouse. Something about seeing Kate and Michael at their wedding last week had made her think that it was about time she found someone to date. Or at least someone to sleep with. She’d spent her weekend deciding that it had been entirely too long.
“How was your weekend?” the guy asked Liza, as if they knew each other.
She turned to face the lawyers. The one who had spoken wore khakis and a blue button-down shirt that matched his eyes precisely. He had brown hair, cut short—typical lawyer fashion—but he had a wicked grin. Liza knew his type. Full of confidence. Full of bravado. Full of himself. And usually very good in bed.
“A little lonely,” she answered.
His grin deepened. “Yeah, me too.”
They stood, their eyes not leaving the other’s face.
“So you work at Presario Pharmaceuticals, huh?”
She nodded.
“What kind of pharmaceuticals do you specialize in?”
The elevator dinged and the door opened to the spacious, ivory-painted foyer of Toffer and Brodley. The other lawyer got out and took off down the hallway.
Her guy stood in front of the doors so they couldn’t close. “I’m Rich Macklin,” he said, holding out his hand.
She shook it. “Liza Kingsley.”
“I’m from Boston, but I work out of this office part-time. Maybe I’ll stop up at Presario and say hi someday.”
“Oh, no, don’t do that.”
His cocky grin faded.
“It’s a zoo, and the receptionist can never find anybody.” She rolled her eyes at the imagined craziness of her office.
He pulled a card out of his pocket. “Well, then, call me when you’re heading downstairs for a coffee sometime, okay? Or whenever. My cell phone number is on there, too.”
“Sure,” she said, taking it from him, liking the tiny race of her pulse.
Even though the number for her floor was already lit, she hit it again. “I’ll see you then.”
“Yeah, I’ll see you.” He gave her that grin again and stepped back.
Liza held Rich Macklin’s card as the elevator climbed. She liked the feel of it—light but with sharp edges. She stepped out when the elevator reached her floor. A large, glass block sign hung in the foyer with heavy, steel letters spelling out Presario Pharmaceuticals. Below that were two visitors’ chairs with an end table between them and a single black phone atop the table.
Liza lifted the phone, which was a STU-III, a secure telephone device designed to take audio signals, mix them digitally into a serial data stream and encrypt the voice. She rattled off a series of letters and numbers. “X68BTY233BR5Y780.”
A door in the side wall, barely perceptible, clicked twice. Liza pushed it open and entered a hallway with thick beige carpeting, the kind that might be seen in Rich Macklin’s law office downstairs. But the offices here weren’t filled with open doors and chatting lawyers. Every door was locked. No sound filtered into the hall.
Liza walked to her office door and held her thumb to the fingerprint pad. When prompted, she punched a different series of numbers and letters into the keypad. She stepped into her office. Its plain white walls surrounded a scruffy but beloved pine desk that had been handed down from her father. Her only adornments were an Oriental rug—plum and olive green—that she’d picked up in China, and two pictures frames, an oval one showing her and Kate at college graduation and one of her family taken in the mid-eighties. In it, her father stood behind Liza, Colby and her mom, his arms stretched out, trying to encircle them. She still thought of her dad that way—trying to hold all of them close, keep all of them safe. It was hard to believe she and her mom were the only ones left.
The phone on the desk made a single buzzing sound. Liza picked it up and held it to her ear without a word.
“Good morning, Liza,” said a female voice.
The voice belonged to a woman who was one of the analysts for the Trust. Her job was to monitor and interpret world events and to notify Trust operatives, like Liza, when those events might be of the slightest interest. But there was usually no “good morning” or “how are you doing” involved in these discussions. Why the formality? Liza wondered.
“Morning,” Liza replied cautiously.
“A small plane went down at the Moscow airport about half an hour ago.”
Liza furrowed her brow, still confused. “Was it carrying any cargo?” Moscow was one of the few Russian cities where Presario actually sold product.
“No.”
“Casualties?”
“Seven. The crew. Four passengers.”
“Anyone we know?”
There was a pause. An odd, surreal pause when the walls of her office seemed to close in one minute and then expand like a balloon the next. Liza swallowed hard. She closed her eyes and opened them.
“Aleksei Ivanov,” the woman answered.
Liza let her weight fall against the chair behind her. She felt as if a cannon had been shot at her insides. “Aleksei?”
Why was she having such a reaction? She hadn’t laid eyes on him in a few years. She sat immobilized then, unable to speak.
But Liza knew why—because Aleksei was different than anyone she had ever known or would ever allow herself to know.
She could imagine him as clearly as the first time they’d met in Rio. She could see those deep green eyes that went from shrewd to laughing in a split second, the perpetually mussed sand-colored hair, the thin, worn leather jacket. And those reporter’s notebooks he was always carrying around. He tried to get her to carry them, too. “For memory,” he said, tapping her gently on the forehead, his