The Witness

better in the air. I sat on a chair and fell asleep. And the voices woke me.”
    “You’re cold.” Because she’d started to shiver, Brooks put an arm around her shoulders.
    “I was cold that night, with the breeze off the water, or the sickness, or—with what happened next. This feels the same. I’d like to walk back. It may be easier to tell you when we’re walking.”
    “Okay.”
    “I planned to put a bench here, something organic. Something that looks like it just grew here. I like the view, and it’s so quiet, with just the stream gurgling and the birds. See how Bert likes to play in the water? It feels like it’s all mine. Silly.”
    “It’s not.”
    Silly, she repeated in her head.
    “That night, I looked through the glass of the sliding doors, and I saw two men with Alexi. I didn’t see Julie. They were speaking Russian at first, but I’d studied Russian. I like languages, and I have an aptitude for them. I understood. The man, his name was Korotkii. Yakov Korotkii accused Alexi of taking money from the family. They argued, and at first Alexi was very arrogant. But that didn’t last. They said he’d informed to the police because he’d been arrested for drugs. The other man, he was big, forced Alexi to his knees, and Alexi became afraid. He tried to bargain, to threaten, then to beg. Would you hold my hand?”
    He took it, squeezed gently. “Stop when you need to stop.”
    “It needs to be finished. Korotkii shot him once, then twice at the temple. He shot him the way you might start your car or put on your shirt. An ordinary thing. Then Julie came out. She wasn’t dressed, she’d been sick. She barely spoke, barely saw, and Korotkii shot her, like a reflex, like you swat at a gnat. God. God.”
    “Here, now, lean on me.” He released her hand but only to wrap an arm around her, tuck her in as they walked.
    “He was angry, though, Korotkii, because he hadn’t known she was there, because his information hadn’t included her. Or me. They didn’t know about me, huddled outside the sliding door, frozen. Just frozen.”
    She shouldn’t have come outside, Abigail thought. Her legs didn’t feel steady, and her stomach had begun to churn. She wished she could sit, wished she couldn’t—still—see and hear and feel it all so clearly.
    “That’s enough now,” Brooks murmured. “Let’s get you back inside.”
    “Ilya came. He’d kissed me, my first. He was so beautiful, and he’d kissed me and made me feel like I was real. I don’t think I’d ever felt quite real. Except when I’d bought the jeans and the hoodie, then when I dyed my hair. Then when Ilya Volkov kissed me.
    “That’s not relevant.”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “He came in, and he was angry. Not that his cousin had been murdered, but because Korotkii was supposed to assassinate Alexi the next night. And I knew the man, the first man who’d kissed me, would kill me. He knew I was there, and they’d find me and kill me. He cursed Alexi, he kicked him, and kicked him. He was already dead, but Ilya was so angry, he kicked him.
    “I saw that in Justin Blake last night. I saw what I saw in Ilya in him. It’s more terrifying than any weapon.”
    She smelled her garden now, just a hint of it—spice and sweet—on the air. It comforted as much as Brooks’s arm around her.
    “So I ran. I’d taken off my new shoes, but I didn’t think of that. I ran without paying attention to where. Just blind terror, running, sure they’d catch me and kill me because I’d defied my mother, done what I wanted to do, and Julie was dead. She was just eighteen.”
    “All right. It’s all right now.”
    “It’s not all right, and not all. It’s not nearly all. I fell, and my purse flew out of my hand. I didn’t even know I still had it. My phone was in my purse. I called the police. They came, the police, and found me. I told them what happened. I talked to two detectives. They were kind to me, Detectives Griffith and Riley. They helped me.”
    “Okay, give me your keys.”
    “My keys?”
    “We’ll go inside now. I need your keys.”
    She fished them out, handed them to him. “They took me to a house, a safe house. They stayed with me, and then John came. Deputy U.S. Marshal John Barrow, and Deputy U.S. Marshal Theresa Norton. You’re like him, like John. Patient, insightful and kind.”
    “We’re going to sit down. I’m going to start a fire, make you some tea.”
    “It’s too late in the season for a