The Witness

to me?” Brooks asked her.
    “You’re the only brat I see in my front yard.” When he was close enough, she grabbed his ear, pulled him in. “Thank you.” Then she laid her head on Brooks’s shoulder and cried a little. “Love finds a way. I didn’t think I had it in me to do this again, feel this again. But love finds a way.”
    She sniffled, straightened. “I’m going to take him around back, show him where he’s supposed to do his business. Y’all can get his stuff out of the car.”
    “What made you bring her a puppy?” Loren asked.
    “Actually, somebody put the idea in my head, and I ran with it.”
    “It’s a good run. Let’s get his gear.”
    “I thought he should have his own, so it wouldn’t seem like a replacement. So I got it all,” Brooks said as they started unloading. “Toys, bed, chew bones, leash, collar, bowls, puppy chow. Got these papers. He has to see the vet for the rest of his shots and the—” He made snipping motions with his fingers. “I’ll take the copy back to Petie tomorrow.”
    “We’ll take care of it. This means the world to her, and to me. I’ve missed having a dog. I bet he perks up old Chuck, too.”
    “Might at least get that cat off the couch a couple times a day.”
    “Might. Your mama’s going to be busy with that pup for a while. How about I toss some burgers on the grill?”
    “I say—hell,” he said when his radio squawked. “Chief Gleason.”
    “Hey, Brooks, are you down at your folks’ yet?”
    “Yeah, right in the yard,” he told Alma.
    “Mrs. Willowby’s reporting an intruder again.”
    “Okay, I’m two minutes away. I’ll take it.”
    When he clicked off, he shrugged. “Old Mrs. Willowby reports an intruder about once a week. The house settles, the faucet drips, the sun shines the wrong way on the window, they’re coming for her. I’ll have to stay for weak tea and stale cookies after I go through the house.”
    “Then we’ll wait to throw the burgers on.”
    “That’d be great. Shouldn’t take but about thirty minutes.”
    “We’re not going anywhere.”
    O NCE OR TWICE A WEEK , when her workload allowed for the time, Abigail gave a few hours an evening to personal business. In the normalcourse of things, she paid any bills that weren’t on auto-payments as they came in, did her online shopping as the need—or sometimes just the whim—demanded. She followed the news, a handful of blogs on a weekly or daily basis, and even allowed a certain amount of time each day for games.
    Since she’d designed and programmed one and hoped to do more one day, she felt she needed to keep abreast with current trends and technology.
    But once or twice a week, she went hacking.
    She checked on her mother by hacking into bank accounts, brokerage accounts, the hospital work schedule.
    She knew Dr. Susan L. Fitch planned to take a three-week vacation in May to tour Provence. She knew which hotels Susan had booked, which private charter service she and her companion of the last several months—one Walter P. Fennington III—would use.
    She knew quite a bit about her mother’s life, activities, finances.
    They had neither seen each other nor spoken since the night Susan had left her with Terry and John at the first safe house in Chicago.
    But she checked, off and on, out of curiosity, and to reassure herself the Volkovs had taken no reprisals in that area.
    Why would they? Abigail wondered. They had moles in law enforcement. And those moles knew Susan Fitch knew nothing, cared to know nothing about the daughter she’d so meticulously conceived, then walked away from.
    She checked on John’s family. She hoped he’d be happy his wife had remarried eight years after his death. He’d be happy his children were well and apparently happy. She knew where they lived, worked, attended school. Just as she knew Terry’s parents had moved to Sarasota.
    She’d programmed an auto-search so any mention in any media outlet of the Volkovs popped on her computer. She followed them carefully. Ilya was engaged; a fall wedding was planned. His fiancée was from awealthy family with ties to another
bratva.
She considered it as a kind of merger, though she imagined Ilya was pleased enough, as the woman was very beautiful.
    Hacking into Ilya’s computers regularly took more effort, more time and a great deal of research. But she didn’t mind. On every visit, she copied and downloaded all of his files, e-mails, stored them, reviewed all the sites he