“The situation was dangerous, sure, but the invaders let the medical staff live.”
Maggie swallows. “Except for Marc.”
“Yes,” Nadia says. “He’s the only one they killed.”
“You have a theory why?”
Nadia nods. “I think someone sold Marc out.”
She lifts her head to look at Maggie now. Nadia’s eyes are on fire, hot with anger, full of hostility even.
“And I think that someone was you, Maggie.”
Maggie doesn’t even know how to respond to Nadia’s words, so she goes with the most obvious:
“You think I had something to do with my husband’s murder?”
Nadia stays quiet for a beat, but for Maggie, the pieces are slowly starting to, if not come together, at least fall out of the box and onto the table.
“Is that why you asked specifically for me to do your surgery? You wanted to get me alone. At that house. All those weird conversations, Oleg’s ball, the hints something was wrong. And then, boom, the tattoo.” How had Maggie not seen it? “You were trying to mess with my mind.”
Nadia finally speaks. “Yes.”
“You were hoping — Jesus, what were you hoping for?”
“That you’d slip up,” Nadia says. “That you’d reveal the truth.”
“The truth that I, what? That I would...” She can’t even say it.
Nadia doesn’t reply.
“Why the hell would you think I had something to do with...?” Maggie still can’t articulate the thought.
Killing Marc?
Nadia stands as though she’s about to leave. Uh-uh, no way, Maggie thinks. She blocks her path.
“You don’t just lay down an accusation like that and walk away.”
“I’m not walking away.”
“What then?”
Nothing from Nadia.
Maggie gets up in her face. “I lost the man that I loved,” she says.
And Nadia replies, “So did I.”
Silence.
“What are you talking about?”
Maggie almost takes a step back. She shakes her head. No way. No way.
“Wait, if you’re trying to say that you and Marc...”
“No,” Nadia says.
Maggie stops. “What then?”
Maggie looks Nadia over as though looking for a clue — and finds one. She hadn’t focused on it before, but once Maggie’s eyes latch on to it, she can’t wrest her gaze away.
Nadia is wearing a ring on her left hand.
She hadn’t been wearing it in Russia, that’s for certain. But she’s wearing it now. Maggie slowly reaches out for Nadia’s hand. Nadia pulls back at first, but then she lets her.
It’s a square-shaped emerald.
The one from that faded photograph in Trace’s apartment.
The same one Trace had clutched at his mother’s funeral.
Oh, damn.
Those puzzle pieces on the table? They start to shift into place.
Maggie meets Nadia’s eyes. “You and Trace...?” Her voice drifts away.
Nadia nods.
Maggie closes her eyes.
“Trace is missing,” Nadia says. “Do you know where he is?”
Oh man, she should have seen this. Maybe not immediately. Not when she first got to Ragoravich’s or even when she met Nadia — but as soon as Maggie realized that Nadia was, in fact, Salima, she should have figured it out.
“We’re in love,” Nadia says.
More pieces drop into place.
“Where is he?” Nadia asks.
“I don’t know.”
“You claim he went to Bangladesh,” Nadia says.
“Whoa, I don’t claim anything. That’s what Trace told me.”
“Told you how?”
“On the phone. He called me. After Marc was murdered. He’d thought about coming back to the States. Pay his respects. That kind of thing. He wanted to make sure I was okay.”
“Were you?”
“Okay? No, of course not. But he couldn’t help with that. No one could. But Trace, well, he wasn’t the best with death or grieving. Have you seen that side of him?”
“Yes,” Nadia says.
“Then you know.”
“It hurts him too much. Other people’s pain. He has to deflect, channel it into something more constructive.”
That isn’t it, but Maggie sees no reason to go into that right now.
Nadia asks, “When did you last communicate with Trace?”
“When I was in his apartment the day before I came to Russia.”
“Why were you in his apartment?”
“Because that’s what we used to do. Trace asked me to look in on his place if I was in town. A long time ago, Marc and I lived in that building too.”
“And you talked to Trace a week or so ago?”
“Texted.”
“A text can be faked.”
“What?”
“It could have been anyone on the other end. What did your text to him say?”
Okay, Maggie thinks, that’s enough. “It said none of your goddamn business. Let me ask you the same thing: When was the last time you talked to Trace?”
“Here. In Dubai. Five months ago. The day you called him.”
Maggie frowns. “I didn’t call Trace five months ago.”
“That’s what he told me.” A tear runs down Nadia’s cheek. “He was upset. He said he was going to fly to Baltimore. That he had to see you in person.”
Maggie shakes her head.
“I went with him to the airport,” Nadia says. “I kissed him goodbye at Terminal 1. I watched him walk through security...” Nadia stops and looks away. “And that’s it. Trace never came back. He never called me again. He just... vanished.”
Silence.
“What did you say when you called him?” Nadia asks.
“I didn’t call him, Nadia.”
“And what happened when you met with him in Baltimore?”
“I didn’t meet with him in Baltimore.”
“So Trace was lying to me?”
Maggie doesn’t know how to answer that.
Nadia lifts her hand and points to the emerald ring. “He proposed, you know.”
“I had no idea.”
“We were going to get married.”
It made no sense. It made perfect sense.
Trace had always professed to be a confirmed bachelor, that he wasn’t built for long-term relationships, and his past actions more than bore that out. So had Nadia changed him?
Could be.
Nadia made for a pretty amazing package. Maybe Trace had fallen for real this time. He gave her his mother’s ring, for crying out loud. Maggie couldn’t get over that. Trace’s mother’s ring on Nadia’s finger.
Wow.
So maybe, in that way at least, Trace had changed. What do they say in finance? Past performance is not an indicator of future results.
“Then suddenly,” Nadia continues, “after Trace goes to see you—”
“He didn’t see me, Nadia—”
“—my fiancé vanishes and supposedly ran off to help people in Bangladesh or somewhere else too remote to reach him. Not one word to me. Not a goodbye. Not a breakup. Nothing. Don’t you find that strange?”
Maggie doesn’t reply.
“And no one knows any details about his whereabouts. If he’s working for a relief organization, no one can tell me which one. No one sees him or communicates with him. Meanwhile the last place he said he was going was, well, to visit you. So I start to wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“You left WorldCures—”
“My mother—”
“I know. She was ill. But come on, Maggie. You left WorldCures. You had some idea of what was going on. Let’s not pretend.”
That accusation again. What’s the old joke her father used to tell? “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.” Had she intentionally looked away from the finances? Probably. And yes, she knew that Marc and Trace were risk-takers, that they were pushing boundaries, that they were frustrated by the normal protocols that slowed down medical advancements. They wanted to speed up their progress, ends-justify-the-means kind of guys, and when those two were both together, when you blended Marc’s and Trace’s passion, the result bordered on the toxic.