The Witness

then.”
    “She’s contacted her superior by now.”
    “Ten minutes after Anson left, she came out, got in her car. Again, he can’t swear she didn’t make the tail, but he followed her to the assistant director’s house. Anson called to let us know right after she went inside. He’s on the move. Didn’t figure it’d be smart to sit on the house.”
    “They know I’m still alive now. They know I’m
tvoi drug.
”
    “Both of those things are in your favor from their point of view.”
    “Logically.” She breathed deep. “There’s no turning back now.”
    “For either of us.”
    “I want to work, at least another hour or two.”
    “Okay, but don’t push it too hard. We’ve got a barbecue tomorrow.”
    “Oh, but—”
    “It’s easy, and it’s normal, and it’s a break I figure both of us can use. A couple hours away from all this.” He stroked a hand down her hair. “It’ll be fine, Abigail. Trust me. And we’ve got news. We’re engaged.”
    “Oh, God.”
    On a laugh, he gave a tug on the hair he’d just stroked. “My family’s going to do handsprings, I expect. I’ve got to take care of getting you a ring,” he added.
    “Shouldn’t you wait to tell them? If something goes wrong …”
    “We’re going to make sure nothing does.” He kissed her lightly. “Don’t work too late.”
    Work, she thought, when he left her alone. At least there she knew what she was doing, what she was up against. No turning back, she reminded herself, as she sat at her station. For either of them, from any of it.
    And still she felt more confident at the prospect of taking on the Russian Mafia than she did attending a backyard barbecue.

27
     
    S HE JOLTED OUT OF THE DREAM AND INTO THE DARK .
    Not gunfire, she realized, but thunder. Not an explosion but bursts of lightning.
    Just a storm, she thought. Just wind and rain.
    “Bad dream?” Brooks murmured, and reached through the dark for her hand.
    “The storm woke me.” But she slid out of bed, restless with it, to walk to the window. Wanting the rush of cool air, she opened it wide, let the wind sweep over her skin, through her hair.
    “I did dream.” Through another sizzle of lightning, she watched the whip and sway of trees. “You asked before if I had nightmares or flashbacks. I didn’t really answer. I don’t often, as much as I did, and the dreams are more a replaying than a nightmare.”
    “Isn’t that the same thing?”
    “I suppose it is, basically.”
    She stood where she was, the wind a gush of cool, the sky a black egg cracked by jagged snaps of lightning.
    He waited for her to tell him, she knew. He owned such patience, but unlike her mother’s, his offered kindness.
    “I’m in my bedroom at the safe house. It’s my birthday. I’m happy. I’ve just put on the earrings and the sweater John and Terry gave me as gifts. And in the dream I think, as I did then, how pretty they are. I think I’ll wear them, for the good, strong feelings they give me, when I testify. Then I hear the gunshots.”
    She left the window wide as she turned around to see him sitting up in bed, watching her.
    Kindness, she thought again. She hoped she never took his innate kindness for granted.
    “It happens very slowly in the dream, though it didn’t happen slowly. I remember everything, every detail, every sound, every movement. If I had the skill, I could draw it, scene by scene, and replay it like an animated film.”
    “It’s hard on you to remember that clearly.”
    “I …” She hadn’t thought of that. “I suppose it is. It was storming, like tonight. Thunder, lightning, wind, rain. The first shot startled me. Made my pulse skip, but I didn’t fully believe it was a gunshot. Then the others, and there could be no mistake. I’m very frightened, very unsure, but I rush out to find John. But in this dream tonight, it wasn’t John who pushed me back into the bedroom, who stumbled in behind me, already dying, blood running out of him, soaking the shirt I pressed to the wound. It wasn’t John. It was you.”
    “It’s not hard to figure out.” She could see him in a snap of lightning, too, his eyes clear and calm on hers. “Not hard to put in its place.”
    “No, it’s not. Stress, emotions, my going over and over all those events. What I felt for John and Terry, but particularly John, was a kind of love. I think, now that I understand such things better, I had a crush on him. Innocent, nonsexual, but powerful in its way. He