Accompanying Alice (35 page)

She shook her head. Somehow...

It
occurred to her out of the morbid blue that if she were married to him she’d probably have to learn how to lie all the time about who he was, where he was and what he did.

He’s an insurance investigator,
she imagined herself saying.
He works for Lloyd’s. They keep him traveling a lot.

And the fact of the matter was that even she, his wife, wouldn’t know who he was, where he was, or what he did the majority of the time. Not specifically. She wouldn’t be allowed to ask him any of those questions, wouldn’t be able to share that part of his life. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be allowed to tell her. She’d have to learn to live with a man who could never be entirely forthright with her, one who might sometimes bring his hidden life to bed with him, who flirted with death on a daily basis and survived because he was good at it. A man who might have to be gone for days, weeks or months at a stretch without even being able to call first and tell her he was going. A man who could die in some anonymous place without even his supervisors knowing for sure he was gone.

She closed her eyes and clenched her laced fingers around one another. She’d never asked him what it was like for him “out there”—hadn’t thought of it really. Hadn’t wanted to know maybe. The way she’d found him had seemed explanation enough. But now she remembered the news stories, the slew of books on the dangers of undercover work, the television
series and
movie
s
and
docudramas about the customs agent who’d been tortured and killed in Mexico. She’d been fascinated by the intrigue, but of course movies, nonfiction books and even the news never seemed real. Nothing seemed real unless you lived it. And if she couldn’t even ride anything more rigorous than the
f
erris wheel
at Cedar Point without getting motion sickness
, how the hell would she survive a life with Gabriel? No matter how she felt about him.

Sick as it made her feel, it was good to think about these
things now, she decided, while she still had a chance of kicking him out of her system. Before she had time to get too attached to thinking about him. Remembering him. Wanting him.

Needing him.

When she finally got home from the rehearsal dinner, she didn’t sleep at all that night.

*

Gabriel stared unseeingly through the pane of glass that separated him from the squad room. All he could see was the look on Lillian Markum’s face when he’d arrested her husband, the hatred in his thirteen year old goddaughter’s eyes when he’d been forced to handcuff her father in front of her last night. Silas Markum had betrayed him, but Gabriel felt as if he’d been the one to take the bite of the Judas apple. The fruit left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he wished he could spit it out.

He scrubbed a hand across his aching eyes and found the
wound
, now
little more than
a scab, over his temple. Body, mind and soul, everything hurt. He’d been up for thirty hours. He needed a shower, a shave and some food. He felt like hell. If that damn Scully didn’t get in here to finish debriefing him soon, Gabriel was pretty sure he wouldn’t think twice about pitching Jack’s desk chair through his window just to see if that wouldn’t get Jack’s attention.

He turned his back on the window when his supervisor finally headed for the office, beaming.

“Hey, Book, we got him! Four counts first degree murder, three counts conspiracy to commit murder, six counts conspiracy to deliver narcotics, two counts actual delivery, embezzlement—”

“I’m out, Jack,” Gabriel said flatly.

Jack Scully stared in disbelief at the most dedicated and successful undercover agent he’d ever worked with, and moved behind his desk. “Come on, Book,” he soothed,
“We all know Si was your friend, but don’t go off the deep end over this.”

“This is not the deep end, Jack,” Gabriel snapped. “This is the damn shallow part of the pool you keep throwin’ me into headfirst.”

Scully spread his hands generously in front of him, automatically doing what he was paid to do well: placate his agents. “C’
m
on, Book, you had a hard night, but we’ve all been screwed by people we think are friends. Don’t mean nothin’, right? Don’t let it get you. Go someplace, get some rest. You did a good job. It was worth it. Few weeks this’ll be a bad dream. Give it time.”

Gabriel flattened his hands on Scully’s desk and leaned over them. “In a few weeks,” he said, “I’ll be sitting in the witness box talking to the prosecution and looking at Catherine Markum listening to Uncle Book tell the world what a piece of scum her father is.” He laughed shortly. “No, Jack, trust me, it’s not worth it anymore. I’m sick of being lied to and cheated and stabbed in the back by people who’re paid to tell me what to do and who I gotta trust before I even get onto the street. No.” He straightened. “You do whatever paperwork you have to do to get me out. I’ll clean up my files, stick around long enough to close out whatever’s pending, but that’s it. No more game.”

“You’re serious.”

“Dead.”

Scully sucked air through his teeth, letting it squeak against the roof of his mouth. “Awful sudden,” he said. “You think about this?”

Gabriel stuck his hands in his pockets and turned his back on Scully to look through the inside office window again. “Long enough.” In the window’s reflection he watched Scully rub his chin, thinking. It looked like hard work.

“How long since you’ve had a vacation?” Scully asked suddenly. “Two years? Three? You’ve been logging a lot of hours. Why don’t you take some time off, think about it. No, no—” he pointed a couple of fingers at Gabriel’s snort of disgust “—hear me out. You take some vacation—back vacation, as much time as you need—and let things cool down. Clear it with the prosecutor, apprise him of where you’ll be, but that’s all the contact you keep with us. Kick back and clear your head. Think about it. I think you’ll find this stuff’s in your blood, and you can’t live without it. You’ll be back.”

Gabriel faced him grimly. “You pay me for it, I’ll take the vacation. But I’ve got better things to do with my life. I won’t be back, Jack. Guaranteed.”

*

Saturday dawned, bright and picturesque, with robins and sparrows chirping outside Alice’s window, and turtledoves cooing above it on the telephone lines. June swept its dew-fresh morning breeze through her open window to tickle the shades, making them flap gently at her. Alice opened one eye and glared at the world, then turned over and pulled the pillow firmly over her head. Of all the things she didn’t need right now, a bright, sunshiny
all the world’s in a good mood except you
day was right up there among the least of them. What she did need was about twelve hours sleep, fewer dreams about Gabriel and a less heartless conscience.

Friday, if she recalled correctly, had been an absolute bitch. No sleep and no Gabriel Thursday night had left her moody and broody—and somewhat of a pain for Becky to shop with. Fortunately her daughter had been far too engrossed in her search for the perfect fashion statement to make at the wedding to pay much attention to her mother. Alice had unwisely used the six hours they spent shopping to remember how readily Gabriel had responded to every crisis
she’d
faced in the preceding four days. How patient he’d been with Mamie’s boys. How he’d done whatever he’d done with Michael. How quickly he’d gotten someone to accompany Allyn around Colorado Springs until she was safely on her way home. His generosity when they’d made love.

And she’d considered holding something as inconsequential as his life threatening profession against him. What a humbug she was! Why, it had been that very life threatening profession that had brought him into her life in the first place. It wasn’t the possibility but the actuality that counted.

Right?

With a snort of disgust at herself and her fickleness, Alice switched ends of the bed, hoping to escape the birds’ singing without having to close the window. But the birds were having none of it. Neither was her head. It poked and prodded her unmercifully.
If he’s gone for good
, it asked her,
will you be happy? Isn’t some of the best worth a little of the worst? What do you want, Alice? An excuse to stay the same staid old reasonably unfulfilled person you are?

No, she thought, that isn’t what I want at all.

Then dare to be great
, that niggling little demon inside her urged.
Come on, Allie, dare. Who knows, maybe it’s all academic anyway. Maybe he’s not coming back. Maybe you’ll never see him again. Maybe—

“Shut up!” Alice snapped aloud and sat up, spilling her pillow onto the floor. The glaringly familiar room seemed to stare at her, beckon her examination. Blue carpet, matching bedclothes, homogenized white walls...

She looked at the walls, and the years melded around her.

Sundays spent in the kitchen fixing pot roasts, chickens, turkeys and potatoes, carrying out a tradition of Sunday dinners only her daughters had seen. Evenings spent alone in front of the television set, sighing over the tube’s bad boy heroes. Sticking her head through the girls’ bedroom door after the evening news to listen to them breathe. Taking only fantasies with her when she headed off to bed.

Daytimes spent at the bookstore answering hesitant, revealing, too poignant questions about the latest
How To
bestsellers posed by people who seemed to confuse the local bookstore manager with their bartenders or their shrinks. Afternoons spent unloading and shelving books, building a career on the sale of someone else’s adventures, wishing they were her own.

Stirred together as they were, the years became time spent looking forward to, and preparing for, a someday she’d never expected to see; a never-never that was suddenly near. An opportunity that had been here. And gone.

What was it Allyn had so churlishly advised her a few days ago?
Ah, Ma,
get a life...

Not so simple, Alice thought. Easy to find a life, hard to hold on to it. Harder still to hold on to whoever came with it. Hard to know if the tribulations were worth it until you tried. Faith, she thought, I’ve got to have faith in me and in him.

She chewed her lip fearfully for an instant. All her life she’d wanted something extra. All her life she’d dreamed of something just a little more. Reality was the safety net she’d clung to for years; it had never become what she dreamed. Until Gabriel. She would never, she realized suddenly, have a greater adventure than this past week with Gabriel.

Unless she somehow finagled a future with the man.

What did you do, she thought with a sigh, when your reality suddenly exceeded your dreams?

Take a deep breath, she thought wryly, as her father used to say, and punt. Whatever happened after that, at least you’d taken your best shot at the goal.

*

She dressed carefully, slowly, full of nerves and anticipation. She dressed neither for Grace, nor to impress the thirty-three year old nudge-nudge, wink-wink Skip who was once again slated to accompany her down the aisle. She dressed for herself, as a reminder of Gabriel, to take a stab
at a tiny dream she hoped it wasn’t too petty to have. Just once she’d like to command attention, have all eyes on her
—
however briefly. Just once she wanted to be knock-’em-dead beautiful, instead of plain old dress-for-propriety-but-not-for-show Alice.

She dressed for Gabriel and an optimistic
maybe. Maybe
was a word with so many possibilities behind it, such a hopeful, do anything word.
Maybe
he thought about her once in a while.
Maybe
he pictured her.
Maybe
he dreamed about her.