“I need my phone first.”
“I don’t have it,” he says. He leans back, blinks, runs his hand through his hair. “Your” — he stops, searches the air for the word — “extraction — it was not easy. Do you remember the crash?”
She nods.
“A bullet grazed your upper back. Wait, are you in pain? I should have asked you that first.”
“I’m fine,” she says.
“The old Ferrari didn’t have seat belts and luckily, I guess, your windshield was shot out. So you didn’t slam into it on impact. You rolled down a ravine. That’s what saved you. You were hard to reach. Ragoravich’s men couldn’t get to you right away. They figured the exposure would kill you anyway. You have frostnip, by the way — you’re lucky it wasn’t full-on frostbite. That will hurt for a while. Point is, they saw no point in rushing to you. The ravine is tricky in the snow. That gave us time to get there.” He looks off, his eyes welling up. “Do you remember an SUV chasing you?”
She nods.
“There were two men in it. They’re both dead.”
Silence.
“So I don’t know where your phone is. In that Ferrari, I guess. Maybe in that ravine, I don’t know. It’s not important. We can get you another. If you’re too tired to answer questions—”
“I’m not.”
“You had my emergency phone number,” Charles says.
“Yes.”
“Only one way: Marc gave it to you before he died.”
That wasn’t the way, of course, but it would be too much to explain the griefbot right now.
“And if he gave you the number, then you know you can trust me.”
She doesn’t know that, but it makes sense. And what choice does she have? She doesn’t even know where she is. She only knows that Marc had warned her that Ragoravich or Brovski would try to kill her, that they had indeed tried, and that someone, probably Charles Lockwood, had saved her.
So why not? She had to trust someone.
“I was hired to do plastic surgery,” Maggie says.
Charles Lockwood frowns at that answer. “On?”
“Oleg and a young woman named Nadia.”
“That’s the mistress I saw you talking to?”
She nods.
“So how did they end up hiring you?”
She explains in spurts about Evan Barlow, about Nadia’s breast augmentation, about the facial surgeries on Oleg Ragoravich, about Ragoravich disappearing from his recovery room, about the sudden panic, about the attempt on her life. She doesn’t go into the griefbot. As she speaks, exhaustion wedges its way into her bloodstream and spreads. It takes everything she has to stay awake.
“You know it’s not a coincidence,” Lockwood says. “You being hired for this job.”
She does now, doesn’t she?
“Who are you?” she asks.
“My name is Charles Lockwood. Just as I said.”
“Are you CIA?”
“Let’s just say something like that.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re safe,” he says. “And to answer your next question, you’ve been here two days.”
Two days. Her head drops back on the pillow. She wants to ask a million more questions, wants to stay awake, but her eyes are starting to flutter closed.
“I want to know...” She stops speaking.
“You will. I’ll tell you everything soon. But one last thing for now.”
Her eyes are closed now.
In the dark, she hears his voice: “Where is Trace Packer?”
“Bangladesh maybe,” she tells him.
“No, he’s not. Trace is missing, Maggie. We think he may have intentionally gone off the grid.”
“I don’t understand.”
And then, as Maggie sinks under, hoping to head back to that dream in the vineyard, she could swear she hears Charles Lockwood say something that makes absolutely no sense: “We think Trace is trying to find your husband.”
Maggie doesn’t see Charles Lockwood the next time she wakes up. Or the time after that. She is being looked after by two women in hospital scrubs. The women are kind and quiet. Maggie feels her strength returning. She asks them questions — where am I? where is Charles Lockwood? — but they give her a lot of tight smiles and no answers. She is soon able to get out of bed, walk around. Her recovery may seem remarkable, but her injuries ended up being more superficial than serious. There is some pain near her shoulder where the bullet grazed, and her head aches from the aftermath of a concussion.
But she also feels antsy and ready to go.
That night, when Maggie wakes up in her dark hospital-like room, she senses someone is with her. Her eyes adjust enough to see the silhouette, and then the face comes into focus. It’s Charles Lockwood. He stares at the wall.
She speaks first. “Why did you say Trace is trying to find Marc?”
He doesn’t move.
“Marc is dead,” she says.
“I know.” Charles Lockwood leans back in the chair. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why did you?”
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I want some answers. Like I want them now.”
He nods. Her eyes are adjusting. She can make out his face now. The gloss and polish she’d seen at Ragoravich’s have been wiped away. There are lines etched on his face. His hair has a touch of gray. He looks weathered, worn.
“There’s a lot to tell you,” he says. “I also don’t know how much you know already. I don’t know how much you knew at the time or how much you figured out later.” He turns to her. “Do you know who Eric Hoffer is?”
“No.”
“An American philosopher. He has this quote I love: ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.’” He smiles. “Good, right?”
She doesn’t reply.
“Corruption starts small,” he continues. “My uncle was a pastor. He had this pious parishioner, a sweet widow, to handle the church’s budget. Mrs. Tingley. She devoted her life to that congregation. She worked long hours. One night, when she stayed late yet again, she got hungry and wanted to get a sandwich. She’d forgotten her wallet at home. That’s what she said. Who knows, right? Anyway, Mrs. Tingley ordered a sandwich from the local sandwich shop and used some of the petty cash from that week’s tithing to pay for it. No big deal. Easily justified. Then she did it again. Then she ordered two sandwiches and brought one home for her son. That’s it. Just an extra sandwich. Ten years later, the parish realized Mrs. Tingley had embezzled almost half a million dollars.”
“I assume there’s a point to this story,” Maggie says.
“There is. And I think you know what it is.”
“Why don’t you just tell me?”
“You were the pretty face of WorldCures Alliance. Sorry, I know you’re more. But the media loved you. The combat surgeon. Devoted her life to helping the poor in dangerous hot spots. You’re pretty and telegenic and yeah, that shouldn’t matter, but we both know it does.” He pulls his chair closer. “Why did you end up leaving WorldCures?”
“My mother was sick. I came home to be with her.”
He tries to give her a probing look. “That’s all?”
Silence.
“What else happened, Maggie?”
“Do you go by Charlie or Chuck, or should I call you Charles?”
“Most people call me Charles.”
“Great. Let’s not worry about me, Charles, okay? Tell me what’s going on.”
“Fair enough,” he says with a nod. “You know about the Kasselton Foundation.”
“Of course.”
“But you never worked with them directly?”
“No, never.”
“They were WorldCures’ biggest donor.”
“I think so, yes.”
“So here’s how it plays out. One day, the Kasselton Foundation gets in touch with a new charity desperately seeking funding. In this case, WorldCures Alliance. Maybe they called you. Maybe they called Marc or Trace.”