“What’s she look like? Start with that.”
“She’s blond. Pretty. A little shorter than you.” He appeared to be considering the question. “She looks fragile, but she can’t be, all the time she spends in the field.”
“Hair?”
“Short, kind of choppy.” He smiled. “Not like stylish choppy, like Livy Bach’s.” He named a fellow agent who was always at the top of the style game. “Just…choppy. As if she did it herself in the field. Which she probably did.”
“Eyes?”
“Blue.” He responded without hesitation, making his cousin smile.
“Well, who does she look like?” Mia asked. “Does she resemble anyone we know?”
“She just looks like herself.”
“What else do you know about her?”
“I don’t know a whole lot else.” He shrugged. “Except that she spends a lot of time in the Middle East. Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan. She was cataloguing some digs or something.”
“Isn’t that dangerous for a woman in that part of the world these days?”
“From what I’ve learned about her, she’s well respected. She’s considered an expert in several fields of interest, I do know that. And she’s written a lot, been published, has lectured at some of the major universities here and in other countries.”
“Where did you hear all that?”
“From Magda. She and her husband own the villa-and knows her pretty well.” He turned and grinned. “And from the Internet.”
“You did an Internet search on her? You must be interested.” Her eyes twinkled. “What else did you find out about her?”
“Mother’s an anthropologist, father’s an archaeologist, as is one of her brothers. Oh, and her grandfather was as well. He was famous, discovered some ancient lost city.”
“Sounds like quite a gal. Have you made your interest known?”
He shook his head. “There really hasn’t been an opportunity. But one of these days…”
“How do you know she isn’t involved with someone else?”
“Magda would have told me. She’s always trying to fix us up.”
“Why don’t you let her?”
“The time hasn’t been right.”
“Don’t you ever get lonely?” Mia asked.
When he didn’t answer, she said, “I do.”
“I guess that explains the line-up of wine bottles near the back door.”
“Those are from the entire time I’ve lived here,” she told him, “and they’re still sitting there because this house is so far out in the fucking sticks no one’s even heard of recyling.”
“Just seems like a lot of wine for one small person.” He turned and she raised the glass of seltzer to him in salute. Seeing it, he said, “So, would you want a little lemon with that?”
She laughed and held out the glass. He cut a small wedge from the lemon and dropped it in.
“Before you ask,” she said, “yes, I was starting to depend on the wine to help relax me at night. Too much so. I thought maybe I should try to cut back, you know. Before I had a problem and couldn’t cut back on my own.”
“Can you?”
She nodded. “Yeah. But I think if I waited much longer…maybe not.”
“Demons? Ghosts.”
She nodded. “A little of both.”
“Want to tell me about them?”
“You already know about them.” She leaned on the counter. “You know their names.”
“Let them go, Mia.” His face tightened. “Brendan’s in hell, where he belongs. Let him stay there. And Dylan, well, there’s nothing anyone can do to bring him back. We all have to move on, get past it. You, me, Annie…”
“Does it bother you, that she married someone else, Con?”
“The idea of it did, until I got to know Evan. He loves her. It isn’t her fault that she didn’t get to marry Dylan and live happily ever after. She’s a good person and one of my best friends. She deserves to be happy. So no, it doesn’t bother me. At least, not anymore.”
He wrapped up the unused onions and returned them to the refrigerator.
“You have to stop hiding behind dead bodies, Mia.”
“What does that mean?” Mia frowned.
“That means, stop using your work as an excuse for not having a life.” He turned to face her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Stop punishing yourself for what Brendan did. You were not your brother’s keeper, kiddo.”
“You’re a good one to talk.” She put the glass down on the counter and crossed her arms over her chest.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t think I don’t know why you keep running all the time, Con. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you volunteer for every dangerous assignment that comes along.”
“I’ve been trained for it.” He went back to work on the fish. “And I do it better than just about anyone else.”
“Don’t you ever ask yourself why?”
“No.”
Mia studied his back, and recognized the tension in the muscles of his neck. He’d been the intended target that night, and his brother had died instead of him. Surely his burden of guilt was greater than hers. If she could learn to work her way out of hers, perhaps in time he could as well.
She decided to let it go.
“I’m having dinner with Andy and his new girlfriend next week.”
“Andy has a new girlfriend?”
“Dorsey Collins, you know her? She’s terrific. She’s with the Bureau. They’re IN LOVE.” Mia smiled. “Maybe you can join us if you’re still here.”
“I’d love to,” he told her. “If I’m still here.”
“So when did you become such a gourmet?”
“When I started traveling so much. Now when I’m home, I want to stay home. I want to be comfortable and well-fed. If I want to eat well at home, I have to do it myself.”
“Yeah, well, if you were serious about being comfortable, you could have bought some furniture that had a little spring to the cushions.”
Mia leaned past him to the counter and turned down the radio. She’d left it on when she’d gone upstairs to shower.
“Now, maybe we can talk without shouting.” She leaned on the counter and sliced a cracker through the cream cheese on the plate, careful to scoop up a little of the hot pepper jelly before popping it into her mouth.
“Whoa, that’s a little spicier than you usually…” She stopped mid-sentence. Connor had turned around, and was tilting his head as if listening to something, a look of concerned curiosity on his face. “What is it?”
“The alarm’s been tripped.” He stood stock still, listening.
“I didn’t set an alarm,” she whispered.
“I did. It’s a sensor and it’s always on unless I disable it.”
“Great. When were you going to tell me? What if I’d tripped it?”
“You wouldn’t have. Unless, of course, you were trying to break in through one of the basement windows.” He lifted his jacket and took out a small, lethal looking handgun.
“Connor, I don’t hear anything.”
“I imagine you don’t.” He opened the basement door silently, and descended.
Mia ran up the steps as quickly and as quietly as she could, grabbed her own Sig Sauer from her purse, and came back down. She stood at the top of the steps, listening.
She was about to call his name when she heard glass shatter. She ran down the steps and stopped at the bottom to get her bearings.
Connor stood at the window that faced the driveway, broken glass at his feet.
“Get John Mancini on the phone,” he told her. “It looks like we’ve had a visitor…”
He looked over his shoulder to meet her eyes. “But I don’t know if he was looking for me, or looking for you…”
“Who’d be looking for me?” She frowned.
“I don’t know. But I do know that only three people know I’m here in the country, and two of them are in this room.”
“The third being John.”
“Right. So give him a call, and tell him we need a little backup here ASAP.”
He started up the steps.
“Where are you going?” She paused in mid-dial.
“I’m just going to take a look around outside.” He grabbed a large flashlight from an old wooden workbench and headed up the stairs. “You need to think about what it is you’re working on right now, and why someone might want to take you out of the game.”