Makepeace did not know this, of course, and although the knowledge of the FBI man's manipulation might have armed him for another round of argument, all he heard was the flat commitment in her voice and the affectionate use of his nickname. He looked into his mug for a while, then, rose to brew another of his endless cups of Earl Grey.
"You don't have to go immediately? It's usually a drop-everything rush when Agent McCarthy shows up."
"Two weeks won't matter one way or another—or if they do, then the thing was moving too fast for me to interfere with anyway. I'll finish up the quarter, hand in my grades. I will tell the students there's an extra ten points for getting their final projects in on the Monday. That should help."
"But you don't think you'll be finished with this… what do you call it, anyway?" His burst of mild irritation would be another man's fury.
"Case, investigation, mess, disaster, bit of primal chaos—whatever you like. No, it'll take at least two or three months."
"You will be back by September, though?"
"I hope so, but it's best not to count on me."
"God, Anne. I don't know what to say,"
" 'Good luck,' maybe?"
"I will pray for you every day."
Anne had to smile. "Antony, when will you learn that professors of religion are not supposed to actually believe in it?"
"When you learn to enjoy Earl Grey tea, I suppose. But seriously, Anne. You can't allow them to use you forever. And they will if you permit it, you know that. Do it this time if you must, but tell them it's the last."
"When I can't face it any more, Antony, they'll be the first to know."
Makepeace had to be satisfied with that. The talk turned to mundane matters, of replacement lecturers for one of the classes and the probable cancellation of the other, arranging for Antony to take over her three graduate thesis projects, the choice between leave-without-pay or trying for a last-minute paid sabbatical. Finally, Anne made a move toward gathering her things.
"Come home for dinner," Makepeace offered suddenly. "Maria would love to see you."
"I can't, Antony. I have to get home for the dogs."
"Another night, then. Before you go."
"I'd love to." She put on her coat and pulled a pair of gloves out of the pocket, and then she looked up with a faint trace of mischief in her eyes. "Oh, and I should warn you, rumors may start up when I fail to appear next quarter. Glen and his policewoman made quite an impression on some of the students. They'll probably work it up into an arrest for drug smuggling or white slavery."
"Agent McCarthy is fairly unmistakable, isn't he? I can't imagine him doing undercover work."
She heard a clear note of rather catty pride that she should be better at the wicked and dangerous job he so disapproved of than the hateful man who dragged her into it, but she hid her amusement. "He's actually not bad at it, given time to grow his hair out a bit."
Makepeace shot a glance at Anne's own thick hair, but did not say anything. He let her go and prepared to leave himself.
It was only much later that evening, as he sat in front of a dying fire brooding over their conversation, that it struck him there might be a second, darker meaning to Anne's not being able to face it any more.
For two days Agent McCarthy and Inspector Farmer cooled their heels, Farmer impatiently, McCarthy with the resignation of a man who had done this before. On Thursday afternoon, McCarthy was seated on a park bench, his arms spread out along its back and his face lifted to the weak sun, while Gillian Farmer paced up and down on the gravel pathways between rows of brutally pruned roses. As chance would have it, she was at the farthest point in her circuit when McCarthy's cellular phone chirped in his pocket, and she did not hear it. She saw it in his hand, however, the moment she turned, and broke into a trot in her eagerness to get back to him.
It was a very brief conversation; McCarthy was folding the telephone before she reached the bench. He stood, putting the phone back in his pocket.
"Was that her?"
"It was."
"Christ. About time."
McCarthy glanced at her sharply, but he did not speak until they were in the car and on the freeway out of town.
"Anne doesn't have to do this, you know. She's under no obligation; she doesn't even take a salary beyond expenses."
"So why does she?" Farmer demanded, still impatient. Three days was far too long, and her department had begun pressing for her return after the second.
"Eighteen years ago, Anne Waverly's seven-year-old daughter and thirty-one-year-old husband died in a mass suicide in northern Texas. The child drank a glass of cyanide-laced fruit juice, probably given to her by her father. You may have heard about it—they called it Ezekiel's Farm—but it was in the news for only a couple of days because there was a plane crash and then some enormous political scandal just after they were found that knocked them off the front pages. A lot of comparisons were made to the People's Temple suicide in Guyana two years before, and I suppose their reasons were much the same although there were only forty-seven people instead of nine hundred and some. The bodies were not found for nearly a week. In early summer. You can imagine what they looked like."
Gillian grimaced; she had been a cop long enough to know.
"Anne herself was a member of the group, but she had begun to question the methods and beliefs of the community. Her doubts were serious enough for her to take a leave of absence, as it were to go away and think about things for a few days. She left the child, Abby, with her husband. Three days later the leader Ezekiel had a final revelation, and broke out the cyanide."
"Christ."
He added in an unemotional voice, "Anne believes that her departure triggered the suicides. It is quite possible that she is right."
They drove in silence for a long time, until Gillian stirred and asked, "So this is, what, some kind of penance? Or revenge?"
"Neither, as far as I can tell. I believe it's her own form of suicide."
"You mean she goes into these situations with a death wish? Jesus, McCarthy, how could you possibly allow—"
"Not a death wish, no. She's sensible and cautious, and she does her part very, very well. She goes in, she looks around, she comes out and tells us what the community looks like and gives us her opinion concerning its internal stability. It's just that on a very deep level, she's made her peace with death, and she doesn't really care if she comes home or not. A lot of people who do long-term undercover work have it to some degree, and with Anne it's never interfered with getting the job done. Up to now, that is."
"What do you mean?"
"Probably nothing. It's just that her reaction to me this time was different. She was angry."
"Pretty normal reaction, I'd say."
"That's exactly it. She seems to have gotten used to the idea of living again."
Their rental car had problems with the first section of Anne Waverly's road, but at the end of it—up the rutted gravel track, through the gate, and around a mile or more of narrow twists and turns—she was waiting for them. She watched them get out of the car, saw the woman, Farmer, look around her with a sudden delight in the dappled sun and the clean silence that followed the laboring engine sounds of the last ten minutes, and waited with neither movement nor expression while her guests metaphorically brushed off the dust of their journey and came toward her.