Going Rogue (14 page)

But not much.

“Oh, you know,” I said, clinking my coffee cup against his before I took a sip out of the leaky lid. “Just take the A train for approximately four years, and then you’re here! It’s so easy.”

Angelo smirked at me. “There’s a song about that, you know.”

“About riding the subway for four years?”

“No, about taking the A train. By Duke Ellington, a wonderful jazz pianist.” He shook his head when I stared at him blankly. “Oh, dear. I shall make you a mix. We’ve been neglecting your musical education.”

“You want to make me a mix?” I repeated, incredulous. “Don’t you think we’re a little, you know,
busy
right now? Also, when did you learn to make a mix?”

“Maggie, love, it’s the twenty-first century. Technology does not go backward, so it’s best to keep up. And there’s always time for a song or two. Now,” he said, brushing some invisible dirt off the arm of his suit. “Let’s discuss last night.”

“Fiasco,” I replied. “And cuckoo clocks. There, that’s my summary.”

“I am very sorry for the lack of correct information,” Angelo said with a sigh. “That was my fault. There was a small crack in the system but it’s been fixed now.”

I gave him the side-eye. “You didn’t dump anyone’s body into the Hudson River, did you?”

“Of course not, Maggie. Not in this suit.” He winked at me and I laughed for what felt like the first time in days. “See? Life is not as bad as you think it is.”

“You talked to my parents, didn’t you?”

Angelo nodded, running his thumb around the lip of his cup. “They are …
concerned
. But I reassured them that things are fine.”

“Really? Could you reassure me, too?”

“Why don’t
you
reassure
me
? Tell me about everything last night. Start from the very first cuckoo.”

So I took a deep breath and launched into my story of Dominic Arment and his bizarre collections and heavy cologne and annoying humming habit. “There’s an egg, though,” I said. “It’s one of the Fabergés. I think it is, anyway. I don’t know, I just think it’s really important.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. It sort of stood out to me. Like it had a secret.”

Angelo smiled knowingly. “What’s the first rule of being a spy?” he asked in a singsong sort of way.

“Listen,” I answered. “And I listened to that egg for two and a half hours. Well, so to speak. I mean, the egg wasn’t exactly talking to me, that would be delusional. But there’s something with it.”

“Do you think it’s a real Fabergé? There are some eggs that haven’t been accounted for. Eight, I believe.”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe? Or maybe it’s a fake? I need to get back into that house and figure it out, Angelo. Like, soon. Today. Tonight.”

“We’ll find a time. But why don’t you tell me what happened afterward?”

I glanced out at the small courtyard, at how green the leaves on the trees were against the beige stone of the walls.
“This must be really pretty in the fall,” I murmured. “We should come back here. If we’re still
here,
I mean.”

Angelo sat next to me, always a port in the storm, always hearing what I wasn’t saying. “It is quite difficult to do this job when you love people,” he said softly. “Don’t you think?”

I nodded and swallowed against the lump forming in my throat. “How do you do it?” I asked him. “I mean, you do all this and you still love people, right? Like my parents and me?”

“Very, very much so.”

“Then how do you do it?”

Angelo thought a minute, looking out across the park. It was unlike him to not have an answer at hand. “I suppose,” he said after a minute, “that I do it
because
I love you. And your parents. And others. The world that we see, Maggie, sometimes it’s quite dark and depressing. We meet terrible people all the time.”

“But then we bring them down.”

“Exactly my point, love. We make the world better. When you love people, you want the world to be a beautiful place for them. If you’re lucky enough, you can make their world better just by standing next to them. And if you’re very, very lucky, you can work with the people you love to improve things. You’re in it together.”

“And sometimes … ?” I asked, prodding him to give the answer that I didn’t want to hear.

Angelo smiled ruefully. “And sometimes you make their world better by traveling far away to save it.”

“Do you think Jesse’s world will be better if I travel far away?”

“Ah, I should have known,” Angelo said. “You and Jesse had a fight, I take it?”

I nodded. “It was really bad. I think we broke up. I missed dinner with him and his mom and then he was upset that I couldn’t tell him why I was so late.”

“That’s to be expected.”

I thought for a moment. “This is why spies don’t have friends, isn’t it? Because of things like this?”

“Sometimes, yes. And sometimes friends can be the very thing that saves you. You never know. If I recall correctly, Roux can land quite a punch. Perhaps she saved all of us that day.”

I smiled despite myself. “She’ll be the first to tell you that, too.”

“Yes, I can imagine,” Angelo said. “Maggie, what’s done is done. You made choices that weren’t for the best when you involved Roux and Jesse and now you must live with the consequences of your decisions. If they’re mad at you for not giving them all the information—”

“I’m doing it to keep them safe, though!”

“I know, and I don’t disagree with your decision. But they have the right to be upset, too. You can control many things, my love, but you cannot control how people feel.”

I nodded. If my parents had said that to me, I probably would’ve gone all defensive and ballistic, but Angelo always talked to me like an adult. That was just one reason why I loved him so much. “But what if …” I had a hard time
even forming the words in my mouth. “What if one of the consequences is that Roux or Jesse gets hurt?”

“Listen to me.” Angelo set down his coffee cup and grasped my arms, guiding me to look at him. “Listen to me very, very carefully.
I will never let anything happen to Roux or Jesse
. Is that clear?”

I nodded, surprised by the force of his words. “I know,” I told him, and I realized with a start that I
did
know that. Angelo would move heaven and earth to keep me, my friends, and my family safe.

I just hoped that I could do the same.

We sat together in silence for a while, watching the tourists and student groups mill around us. “You do remember where we put important things, yes?” Angelo asked.

A chill went through my shoulders and down my ribs as I looked at him. We hadn’t talked about that in years. “Yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t forget something like that.”

“All right. Now remember this address.” He rattled off an address to me in French. “Do you have it?”

“Of course.” I imagined writing it across my brain, tattooing it onto my thoughts and making it a permanent part of me. “But why—?”

“If you ever need to leave, they will keep you safe.”

“Wait, wha—?”

Angelo looked down at me and for once, his face was so serious that I knew not to ask any more questions. “Okay,” I said instead. “I’ve got it. Don’t worry, I’ve got it.”

“Excellent. And how is progress coming along with your lock?”

“Ugh.”

“That well, I take it.”

“It’s fine, I just can’t get the final lock. I’m losing a lot of sleep over this, Angelo.”

“You’ll be able to open it when you need it most,” he said. “Trust me on that.” He patted my knee, then picked up his espresso, then set it down again. “You know, darling, there are a lot of people who are upset with us. And there are certain people not very happy with
you
.”

I thought of Dominic Arment, of everyone in the Collective who was trying to sully my family’s good name. “Well, I’m not very happy with certain people,” I replied. “And you can tell them I said so.”

Angelo smiled a little. “Duly noted. But we
do
have allies. You must remember that.”

I waited until a couple walked past us before speaking again. “I thought I saw someone following Jesse and me the other day. A man.”

Angelo nodded. “Yes, that’s very possible.”

“I knew it!” I said. “Was he a good guy or a bad guy?”

“Funny how you can’t tell just by looking at them,” Angelo said, then nudged my shoulder when I rolled my eyes at him. “Not every bad guy has the same motives, but either way, I’m not sure, darling. Perhaps he was a little bit of both. Or maybe he was just lost. It’s best not to lose our heads wondering about the maybes and what ifs.”

“Says the man who just mentioned our secret hiding space and then had me memorize a mysterious Paris address.”

“How do you know it was in Paris?”

“Because you hate the suburbs.”

Angelo laughed this time. “Fair play. So let’s go back to this mysterious Fabergé egg, the one that talks to you.”

“I need to see it again,” I told him. “I can’t stop thinking about it. The only problem is that I don’t have anything to compare it to. It’s not like I’ve ever seen a real one. Do you know where we can get one?”

“I might,” Angelo said. “But unfortunately they are all an ocean or two away.”

“Well, there has to be an exhibit somewhere or maybe a—”

And suddenly it hit me. I knew someone who had a Fabergé egg. Or at least, someone who said she did.

“Oh my God,” I said. “
Roux
.”

“Harold!” Roux’s voice came beaming down the intercom system. “Harold, you shining sun of a man!”

I gripped the granite top of the front desk in Roux’s building, my impatience already mounting. Roux’s doorman, the long-suffering Harold, barely blinked at me in response.

“Harold, you know it just makes my day when you buzz me. Did you know that? Because you should. Know that, I mean.”

“A girl by the name of Maggie is here to see you, Miss Green.” Harold’s voice stayed calm and monotone.

“Really?” I asked him. “
A girl by the name of Maggie
? You’ve known me for a
year
. Why can’t you just let me go up?”

“Maggie!” Roux’s voice sounded positively gleeful. “Magga Ragga!”

“I hate that nickname,” I told her. “Will you please just let me in?”

“Harold, it’s Maggie! Did you know that things got
super weird between us but we’re friends again? Gotta keep up with current events, Harold. Things change every minute around here.”

“Roux—” I tried to interrupt.

“Except you, Harold.” Roux was on a roll now. “You should never change, Harold. Never, okay? Unless you want to change for the better, I mean. Then you can change. But I would still mourn the man you were and—”

Oh my God.

“Roux!” I shouted into the intercom. “Will you just let this poor man drink his coffee and send me up already? Good Lord!”

There was a brief pause.

“Maggie sounds stressed, Harold. Does she look stressed?”

Harold eyed me. I eyed him right back.

“Oh, never mind. Let her come up, Harold. We’ll do some deep breathing exercises together. It’s good for the mind
and
the soul.”

“Go on up,” Harold said to me, gesturing toward the ornate elevator.

“
Thank
you.” I could still hear Roux rattling on about the positive effects of yoga even as the doors shut.

The doors opened again at the fourteenth floor, and I hurried out and stalked to Roux’s front door, banging on it until she opened it.

“Where’s your egg?” I demanded, storming in past her.

“My what?” She grinned. “I was right, you do look stressed. Are you upset about Jesse?”

Wait. What?

“How did you know about that?” I asked her. “Did he call you? What did he say?”

She shook her head. “No, he didn’t call. It’s online. This girl Sara saw the two of you fighting last night, and she put it on her Facebook page. Did you really flip him off?”

I winced and ran my hand over my face. “No, of course not. It’s a long story,” I told her.

“I’ve got nothing but time and a sympathetic ear,” she said. “And a drawerful of delivery menus. I mean,
obviously
.”

“Roux.” I took a huge, deep breath. “Just stop for a minute, okay?”

“Stop what? Oooh, that was a good cleansing breath. You look relaxed already.”

“Where’s your Fabergé egg?”

Roux froze, her smile slowly slipping off her face.

“Remember?” I said. “When we were breaking into Colton’s apartment last year, you said that you got a Fabergé egg for your sixteenth birthday. Were you kidding about that? Because if you were, you need to tell me right now.”

I had seen Roux elated, furious, drunk, crying from heartbreak, and determined, but I had never seen that look on her face before. She suddenly looked like an adult, someone who could weigh her options rather than act impulsively, and I wondered if that’s how I looked when I was working, too.

“I wasn’t kidding,” she said. “I was serious.”

I took another deep breath. At this rate, I was going to either be completely relaxed or hyperventilating on the floor. “Can I see it? Please? It’s important.”

Roux went and flipped the deadbolt lock on her front door, then beckoned me upstairs. “C’mon, follow me.”

I don’t think I had ever seen her be that quiet before, that composed, and the penthouse only seemed to echo her silence. The rooms felt cold as we headed to the stairs, all marble floors and crystal chandeliers, and I wondered if that’s why Roux was so loud all the time. Living in relative silence by yourself would be eerie after a while. You would need to stab at it every now and then.

We went into her bedroom, and I followed Roux into her huge walk-in closet. My parents and I once lived in an apartment in Stockholm that was roughly the same size as this closet, and that wasn’t even accounting for Roux’s massive shoe wall.

“It’s over here,” Roux said, and she knelt down and shoved a few pairs of jeans out of the way and pulled back the thick carpet, revealing a strong floor safe. “I know
you
could probably break into it,” she said with a little bit of apology in her voice. “I made my dad have it installed after I met you.”