“Oh no,” Maya said, shaking her head. Frodo was licking her tears, but she barely felt it. “No, no.”
“I’m sorry. Believe me, I know how shocking this can be. Do you know her?”
“Yes. But . . . I don’t understand.”
“She was shot. She was with the dog . . . Yours?”
“Yes. She was walking him for me. I had a date. Who didn’t even show up. But . . . why? Why would anyone shoot Ali?”
“At the moment, we think a mugging. I’m so sorry. Take a minute, and we’ll have a few questions for you, okay?”
Maya tried to answer, but she was crying too hard. She thought, I shouldn’t have asked you. You’d be fine now, none of this would have happened, it’s my fault.
She realized with relief tinged by shame that if she hadn’t asked, probably she herself would be the one on the sidewalk.
I don’t care if it would have been me. It should have been me.
And then a crystal-clear shard of a thought cut through her confusion and grief: It was supposed to be me.
She didn’t know where the thought came from. She couldn’t have articulated the basis.
All she knew was that she had to call Tom.
chapter
thirty-eight
RAIN
It was past midnight and they were back in Delilah’s apartment. Rain was at the laptop. He’d read the secure-site update from Larison. And he’d seen more fallout on the news: Schrader, mysteriously released from prison; three men killed in the Seattle Four Seasons; QAnon protests sprouting in major cities all over the States. He needed to go. But there were no flights until morning.
It was strange to imagine them all doing something without him. He’d wound up as the group’s de facto leader twice before. It wasn’t a role he had asked for, or one for which he considered himself well suited. But at the same time, the thought of them operating alone was . . . worrisome. Was he just flattering himself? Or looking for an excuse to get back in the game?
“Just so you know,” Larison had said, “Dox thought about bringing you in at the outset. But it sounds like you’ve persuaded him you’re serious about being retired. So you can blame this on me. I’m not as solicitous. Plus I don’t really believe you. Look at me, I live in paradise with someone I love. This is the kind of thing I do for a vacation. I don’t think you’re so different.”
Rain had thought about protesting, but then didn’t. What would it have accomplished? Beyond which, he was afraid Larison could be right. And that protesting would prove it.
He looked over at Delilah. She was sitting on the couch on the other side of the room, pretending to read. It was strange to have to coordinate on something like this. There had been a time in his life when there was no need to compromise, when he had lived alone, aloof, apart. But when he looked back on that time now, he realized all of it was itself a giant compromise, one that, while protecting his body, had been steadily suffocating his soul.
He started to say something, then stopped. She’d stymied all his earlier efforts to discuss it with an impenetrable wall of It’s fine. He didn’t blame her. She was done with Mossad. Done with the life. So as fond as she was of Dox, she resented the big sniper for refusing to get out as she had. And even more, she resented Livia, who in her mind had once before pulled Dox, and therefore all of them, into her war against child abusers.
But as he sat silently in front of the laptop considering his options, apparently she couldn’t abide the silence any longer. She closed her book and walked over. “All right, tell me. Is this coming from Livia?”
Well, at least they were talking. Though the silence suddenly felt safer.