The Witness

morning news.
    She stood at the counter, stirring what he hoped was pancake batter in a dark blue bowl.
    “Morning.”
    “Good morning. I made coffee.”
    “I smelled it in my sleep. You don’t snore.”
    “I told you I—” She broke off when his lips met hers.
    “Just verifying,” he said, as he picked up one of the mugs she’d set out. “I borrowed a squirt of toothpaste.” He poured his coffee, and hers, watched her gaze lift to his. “Do you want to tell me why you have a Sig in your toothpaste drawer?”
    “No. I have a license.”
    “I know, I checked. You have several licenses. Got sugar? Oh, yeah, right here.” He dipped the spoon she’d put beside the mug in the sugar bowl, added two generous servings. “I could keep checking, this and that and the other. I’m good at digging. But I won’t. I won’t do any more checking unless I tell you so first.”
    “You won’t check as long as I have sex with you.”
    His eyes burned green with hints of molten gold as he lowered the mug. “Don’t insult both of us. I won’t check because I won’t go behind your back, because we’re—whatever we are at this point. I’d like to sleepwith you again, but that’s not a condition. I want to keep seeing you because we enjoy each other, in and out of bed. Is that accurate?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t like to lie. Not that I haven’t and won’t in the line. But outside the job, I don’t lie. I won’t lie to you, Abigail, and checking on you without you knowing seems like kin to a lie.”
    “Why should I believe you?”
    “That’s up to you. All I can do is tell you. This is damn good coffee, and not just because I didn’t have to make it myself. Pancakes?”
    “Yes.”
    “Now you look even prettier than you did ten seconds ago. Am I going to find another gun when I get out dishes and such to set the table?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re the most interesting woman of my acquaintance.” He opened the cupboard where he’d seen her take out plates for pizza.
    “I thought you’d just stop.”
    “Stop what?”
    “Once we had sex, I thought you’d stop wanting to be here, stop wondering.”
    He opened the drawer for flatware, noted the Glock. “You might have forgotten, but the earth stopped moving.” He set out the flatware as she ladled batter onto her griddle. “It’s not just sex, Abigail. It’d be easier if it were. But there’s … something. I don’t know what the hell it is yet, but there’s something. So, we ride it out, see what happens.”
    “I don’t know how to
do
that. I told you.”
    He picked up his coffee again, stepped over to kiss her on the cheek. “It looks to me like you’re doing it just fine. Where’s the syrup?”

 
    What is character but the determination of incident?
    What is incident but the illustration of character?
    H ENRY J AMES

14
     
    W AKING UP WITH B ROOKS, MAKING BREAKFAST, SIMPLY DEAL ing with the jolt in her routine, threw Abigail off schedule. He’d taken his time with breakfast. He always seemed to have something to talk about, and keeping up jumbled her thoughts out of order. By the time he’d left, she was more than an hour behind on her plans for the day, not to mention the time she’d lost the night before.
    Now instead of arriving at the market as soon as it opened, she needed to complete her research and documentation of the Volkovs’ Chicago–to–Atlantic City money-laundering operation. If she didn’t get the data to her FBI connection within the next two days, they’d miss the month’s major delivery.
    These things took time, she thought, as she settled down to work. Time to gather, to decrypt, to correlate, to send. Her information had to be pure and absolutely accurate.
    And maybe this time something would stick to Ilya. Maybe this time he’d pay. Or at least, as before, she’d have caused him trouble, frustration, money and men.
    In her fantasies her work brought the Volkovs to ruin, exposed them,stripped them clean. Korotkii, Ilya—all of them—spent the rest of their lives in prison. Keegan and Cosgrove were discovered, disgraced and convicted.
    And when she let those fantasies spin out, somehow they all knew she was responsible for making them pay.
    Still, it wasn’t enough. Julie would always be dead at eighteen. John and Terry would always be murdered trying to keep her safe.
    It was better to be realistic, and to do what she could whenever she could to chip away at their profits, their routines, their