Chapter Five
Maji turned the motorcycle off the road and into the Benedetti drive, slowing to cruise up the long, straight path lined with Italian cypress. She frowned at the empty guard booth and open gates at the entrance. Well, that would change soon.
She took a good look at the property’s layout for the first time. Angelo’s family home off a path to the left, the Big House up the hill and back farther. Maji couldn’t see behind it, but knew from Angelo’s stories about the long sweeping lawn down to the boathouse on the shore of Long Island Sound. Somewhere off to the sides, hidden by the leafed-out deciduous trees, were eight-foot walls with security cameras. When Angelo said the House that Death Built, he meant the estate collectively. She could see why he called it a picturesque prison.
Maji cut the electric motor by the garage and propped the bike on its stand. She swung off the saddle and stripped off her gloves and helmet. The license plate holder on the sparkly, low-slung Corvette nearby caught her eye. My Vette makes your girl wet. She snorted.
The front door clicked shut, and the Vette’s owner sauntered over. She took in his receding hairline, an excess of product giving what was left an unnatural sheen. He looked Maji over. “I heard Ang had a new girl over last night. No offense, but you’re not his usual type.” With a smirk and a nod to her bike, he added, “Nice ride.”
Maji ignored the double entendre and gestured to his car. “Yours?”
“Got a V-8 with six hundred horses. Zero-to-sixty in four seconds,” he stated proudly. “Wanna ride?”
“Oh, I don’t think I could handle that,” she responded, with a trace of a polite smile.
“How many CCs your bike got?” he persisted.
“None,” she began, only to be interrupted by the jangle of his cell phone. He turned away without so much as a wave good-bye and began berating someone on the other end. With a slam of the driver’s door and a squeal of tires, he was gone.
Maji raised her fist to knock on the front door, but it opened before she could tap it.
“Ay!” Frank greeted her. He looked around. “Where’s the U-Haul?”
“What?”
“Lesbians, second date. What are you, new?” His eyes twinkled.
“Last night was not a date,” she snapped. “Where’s Angelo?”
Maji found Angelo down at the boathouse, which looked smaller than she had imagined. It was wide enough to hold two boats, with tall, open-raftered eaves for stowing boat gear, and a roll-up door, open now to let in the afternoon sun. Angelo was sitting on the platform on the far side, dangling his feet in the water that filled the empty slip.
“Who’s the asshole up at your house?” Seeing Angelo’s look, she narrowed the field for him. “Early-to-mid thirties, ex-jock, wannabe gangster clothes, hair slightly receding. Oh, and a Vette that makes my girl wonder what he’s compensating for.”
“Ah, Ricky. Ricky Octopus. Rickiopoulos. The Rickster. Married to my cousin Sienna, thinks he’s the capo in training.”
“Will I be seeing more of him?”
“Oh yeah.”
Maji shifted on the platform next to Angelo. “Can’t wait to meet the rest of them. Oh, I heard we’re dating again. Why don’t you ever believe me when I break up with you?”
“Benedettis are stubborn. We don’t let go of a good thing.” He took her hand and gave her a syrupy look. “Will you be mine, sweetheart?”
“Depends. This time you promise to treat me right?”
“Don’t I always? Ow!” He rubbed his shoulder.
Angelo and Maji walked back up from the boathouse hand in hand.
“You look good as new, babe. How you doing, really?”
“Tip-top.” Physically, anyway. “Lean and mean.”
“I noticed this morning. Should I be worried?”
Maji tensed. “No. You should stick to your own lane for a fucking change.”
“You are my lane, babe.”
She stopped and looked up at him. “Then you should have been there last night, stopped me from repeating my mistakes.”
“Whoa. Don’t go comparing Rose with Iris. They are nothing alike.”
“Thank God. But still, do you know how hard it’s going to be to keep my distance from Rose now? We both need me to be a professional.”
“So, I’m sorry. It does kinda suck to be you. She must have really got to you, that you told her your name right off.”
She pulled away from him. “Not right off. After Mona and Bubbles and the police called me by my name. ’Cause why shouldn’t they? They know who I am.”
“Good soldier always has a Plan B. We’ll make it work.”
“Ang, even your hacking skills can’t make me two people in one place.”
He caught her hand, and she glared at him. Anyone watching from a distance, or on the estate’s surveillance cameras, would have thought they witnessed a lover’s quarrel. “So we just have to keep my family and your friends separate. Ain’t like they move in the same circles.”
A few months ago, Maji hadn’t wanted to be herself, under any name. She wasn’t who she’d always thought she was—that person wouldn’t hurt people like she had in Fallujah. But then in Spain she’d saved a life again and resolved to come home. Where she might figure out how to live with herself, despite everything. Damn Ava for leaving her.
“Hey,” Angelo said, giving her a quick hug before slipping one arm around her shoulder. “We do have your back. And you’re an ace at improvising—look how great you did last night.”
“My Russian was rusty, and it slowed me down. Rose could’ve gotten hurt.” She tucked her hand into the back pocket of his pants and they started up the hill again. “Speaking of which, what do Rose and Frank think your little project is?”
“Turning state’s evidence—informing for the Feds. True enough, and Rose gets it. She’s the only one in the family who really understands how I feel about the family business. Knew that before she knew I was gay, and always kept both to herself.”
“So she’s trustworthy. But she’s still a civilian.”
“And she’s like a sister to me. She gets a few days to say good-bye to her family before I blow this place up. I owe her that much.”
Maji didn’t like it any more than she ever liked having civilians involved in an op. But it was his call. “And Frank? How much do you trust him?”
“With my life. And he’s on a CI agreement with the FBI, too. Don’t tell Rose—she’s worried enough about me.”
“So you’ve got him scared silent? Can’t rat on you without getting himself killed.” Not Angelo’s favorite ploy, but he’d resorted to it before.
“No, it’s not like that. He really wants to help. This guy, he’d take a bullet for me or Rose.”
“Sooner we get her to a safe house, less likely it’ll come to that. I guess I should thank you for introducing us, even if you did fuck it up.”
He laughed. “I knew you’d love her. She’s beyond fabulous. And I really needed for the two of you to meet, to know that you would have each other when I’m gone.”
Angelo’s tone scared her more than his words. Operators might go off grid for a bit, when things got too hot, but they didn’t start new lives under WITSEC. “Gone how?”
“Look at my ear. The one they broke.” He brushed his curls away and leaned toward her.
“What’s to see?” There was no visible scar, no bruising where she’d last seen blood.
“Cochlear implant. Nobody here knows. But I’m washed out for fieldwork. And besides, I burned myself in Fallujah, huh?”
She nodded. “For Khodorov. Is he really worth it?”
“Khodorov’s not just one target, Ri. He’s a gateway. And I’m willing to gamble it all on him. But when I’m done here, I’m done. I’ve got to be good and gone. No ties, not even to you.”
Maji hugged him and wrapped her arm around his waist, inviting his arm over her shoulder for the rest of their walk. She thought of him leaving everyone behind for a life alone, in hiding. His house, the home of his childhood, came into sight. “Fuck you, Ang.”
He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I love you, too, babe.”
As Maji and Angelo entered the kitchen from the pool area, Rose walked in from the dining room. She smiled upon seeing Maji. “Welcome back. Ri.”
Maji took in the bare feet and drying curls, the causal elegance of white shorts and a gauzy silk blouse. She allowed herself the most fleeting of fantasies, an unformed vision of spending days by the pool and nights upstairs with this woman. Who needs to get the hell out of Dodge, she reminded herself.
Rose looked uncertainly between Maji and Angelo. “You are staying? Ang says you’ve been his cover before. You two have a plan, right, to keep him safe?”
Maji worked consciously to keep her face blank. Angelo was going to break her heart, the asshole.
“She’s staying,” Angelo said. “You’re under her protection until you get on that plane to Peru. But as far as anyone else knows, Ri’s just the girl of my dreams.”
Rose nodded seriously. “And I only want you to be happy, of course.”
Maji relaxed. Rose was bright, and honestly devoted to Angelo, that was clear. Maybe for just a few days…
“I’ll be so convincing, no one will know who’s really with whom.”
Dammit. She’s still a civilian—what did you expect? Maji pulled herself to her full height and looked Rose coldly in the eye. “There is only one story. If you’re in, you live it,” she drilled. “If you slip out of your role, someone will see, and there will be casualties. I am not your girlfriend. This is not a game. Are we clear?”
Rose looked as if Maji had slapped her, but she spoke with her usual poise. “Quite.”
Maji looked at Angelo, who had followed the exchange with quiet interest. He nodded once.
Maji exhaled, stood down a notch, but still didn’t smile. “Here’s how it works. I advise you to go to a safe house, now. But if you stay, you stay under my protection. You go where I go, you do what I do, you follow my directions without discussion.”
“Well.”
“Can you live with that?”
Rose looked at Maji steadily. “I’m a grown-up. I can do as I’m told, whether I like it or not.”
Maji nodded and walked past them without further comment. She grabbed her duffel and took the stairs two at a time.
Rose looked after her, then turned to Angelo. “Does she hate me?”
“No, hon,” he answered softly. “But she’s good and pissed at me, and right about the stakes, too. If you change your mind, wanna catch the next flight out, nobody’d blame you.”
“I’m all in,” she responded, crossing her arms. “Now what?”
An hour after sunset, Maji told Rose to set an alarm for six a.m. Rose looked up from her copy of Vandana Shiva’s Monocultures of the Mind. “Oh six hundred? Yes, ma’am.”
Maji didn’t laugh, or even smile. As she started to turn away, Rose reached out and touched her arm. “I hope I won’t be underfoot. At your dojo, I mean. I’ll bring a book, entertain myself.”
“Don’t bank on that,” Maji replied, with a flicker of a smile. “You’re in training now.”
Rose went to bed shortly after Maji left the room, then woke with a start. She couldn’t think what had disturbed her; but she scanned the outline of furniture shapes in the near dark of her room, ready to cry out if anything moved. Then she heard a sound, a murmuring voice outside her door. As quietly as she could, she slid out of bed and padded toward the sound. She pulled up short, realizing the voice was inside her room, at the base of the door itself. She froze, listening, ready to whirl and dash for the window.
Her eyes adjusting to the scant light through the curtains, she peered at the figure curled up on the floor. Maji. When she’d said she would be right by the door, Rose had assumed Maji meant outside, in the hall.
With just a sheet covering her middle, and a pillow under her head, Maji twitched and mumbled with some urgency, strands of hair loosed from her braid falling across her face. Rose knelt on one knee and reached out to brush the hair back. When her hand was nearly to Maji’s face, however, Maji snapped awake, grabbing her wrist and pulling her forward. Rose fell, while Maji scooted backward and away, catching her before she hit the floor.
“Jesus!” Rose floundered to roll over and sit up.
“Sorry,” Maji mumbled, brushing the hair from her own face.
“You were dreaming.” Rose spoke haltingly, her heart pounding. More than anything, she wanted to kiss that face before it lost its soft, unguarded look. Instead, she said, “You can’t be comfortable down here. Why don’t you take half the bed?”
Maji’s eyes glowed in the dimness just inches away. “No, thanks,” she said softly. “Better this way.” She slid back down to the floor and rolled with her back to Rose, the pillow clutched under her head.