Need to Know (14 page)

“Not going to do it?” Matt says. Even in the darkness, I can see the surprise on his face. It morphs, before my eyes, into something else. Frustration, I think. “You can't just…not do it.”

“Maybe I can.” I stand up and walk back into the house, as much to escape him as to escape the rain. I sound more confident than I feel. The fact of the matter is, I have no idea if I can. Or
how
I can. Refuse Yury's order, but stay out of jail. Stay with my kids. But I don't want him telling me I can't.

He follows, closes the door behind us, shutting out the sound of the rain. “They'll get you sent away.”

I say nothing, head for the stairs, up into our bedroom.
Not if I fight back,
I think. But I don't say it out loud. I know what it would be met with. A scoff. Like it's impossible. Like I don't have a choice.

Well, maybe I do. Maybe I
can
fight.

Maybe I'm stronger than he thinks.

WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE
of an argument the day Luke almost died. I can't remember exactly what it was about—something frivolous, organic fruit maybe, the fact that the grocery bill was too high. We were in the garage. I'd unstrapped Luke, lifted him out of the car and set him down, grabbed a shopping bag from the trunk. Matt was lifting the infant car seat out of the car, Ella tucked safely inside, fast asleep. Neither of us noticed that Luke had wheeled his new bike out of the garage, out to the top of the driveway. That he'd climbed on, angled the handlebars toward the street.

I heard it before I saw it, the bike moving toward the street. Training wheels against concrete. I spun toward the sound. There he was, holding on tight, bike picking up speed. And something else, too—a car coming down the street toward our house.

I swear time stopped, for just an instant. I saw it in slow motion, the careening bike, the moving car, both on the same path, the collision that was sure to occur. Luke. My Luke, my heart, my life. I'd never get there in time. The bike was moving too fast. I'd never be able to stop him.

So I screamed. A bloodcurdling cry, a sound so loud, so animal, that to this day I can't believe it came from me. And I started running toward him with a speed I didn't know I had. The sound startled Luke enough that he jerked toward it, twisted his head around toward me, the handlebars turning with him, just enough to unbalance the bike, to send it toppling. He fell to the ground at the bottom of the driveway, hard, the bike landing on top of him, the car whizzing past a fraction of a second later.

And then I was there, scooping him up, kissing his face, his tears, the scrape on his knee. I looked up and Matt was standing over us. He bent down, too, hugged Luke, who was still sobbing over his scraped knee, unaware of just how close he'd come to getting killed. Hugged me, too, because I was still holding on to Luke, wouldn't let him go. I could see the infant car seat on the garage floor, Ella still sleeping peacefully inside.

“Oh my God,” Matt breathed. “That was close.”

I couldn't speak. I felt like I could barely move, couldn't function. All I could do was clutch Luke, like I'd never let him go. If that car had hit him, I would have wanted to die, too. I couldn't have gone on after losing him. I honestly couldn't.

“I saw it, the bike, the car,” Matt said, his voice muffled by the way we were huddled together. “I saw what was going to happen. Saw there was nothing we could do.”

I squeezed Luke even harder. My mind worked to process what Matt said. He saw it about to happen. He saw it, and he did nothing. And I can't fault him; it's not like I thought things through before I screamed. It was instinct.

I had that instinct, the one that saved his life. And I didn't even know it.

I SLEEP THAT NIGHT,
soundly, and I awake filled with a sense of resolve. Conviction that this is the right thing to do. But also conviction, just as strong, that I'm not letting them take me away from my kids. I'm not letting them send me to jail.

I'm brushing my teeth when Matt walks into the bathroom. “Morning,” he says. He catches my eye in the mirror. He looks rested, more so than he should, with all this stress.

I lean down and spit into the sink. “Morning.” Beside me, he reaches for his toothbrush, squeezes toothpaste from the tube. Then he starts brushing, too—vigorously. I watch him in the mirror, and he watches me. He spits, and then turns to me, toothbrush suspended in the air.

“So what now?”

I pause, briefly, then continue brushing, biding my time. What now? I wish I had an answer for that. The fact that I don't chips away at the edges of my resolve. Finally I lean over and spit. “I don't know,” I say, and then turn the water on to rinse my brush. Shift my gaze down. His look is making me uncomfortable.

“I'm telling you, sweetheart, you can't just ignore what they say.”

I set my toothbrush back on the counter, then I walk past him, out of the bathroom, into my closet. I grab a blouse from the rack, then a pair of pants. He's right. Yury knows everything I've done. Disclosing classified information. Deleting the file. Inserting the flash drive. And he has proof. Evidence to convict me. I know that, and he knows that.

The question is, what's he going to do with it?

“I have time,” I say, again with more confidence than I feel. But I do, right? Yury's not going to burn Matt right away. Lose me. He's going to try to convince me to follow his orders. That means I have time.

“Time for what?”

I look down at the buttons, line them up, start to fasten them. “To figure out a plan.” To convince him to leave me alone. I just have no idea how to go about doing that.

Matt comes and stands in the doorway of the closet. His hair's sticking up in the back, like it does when he's just woken up, before he showers. It'd be cute, if not for the expression on his face. Exasperated. “There is no plan, Viv.”

I look back down at the buttons. There has to be a way. Yury has information I don't want getting out there. What if I had information
he
didn't want getting out? “What about a compromise?”

“A compromise?”

“Like, silence in exchange for silence.”

Matt shakes his head, looks incredulous. “What could you possibly have to trade?”

There's only one thing I could come up with that would be valuable enough. I straighten the edges of my blouse, then look up at him. “The name of the ringleader.”

ONCE THE IDEA LODGES
in my head, I latch on. It feels right, like it's the only way out of this mess. And so I go to work, day after day, stay chained to my desk long into each night, searching for the ringleader.

I come up with another algorithm, same idea as the last one, but tweaked slightly. It casts a wider net, hopefully traps anyone who might hold the critical role, overseeing handlers like Yury, receiving orders directly from the SVR.

I run it, cross-reference it against anyone who's ever had contact with Yury, or with Yury's contacts, or even with his contacts' contacts. And I come up with a long list of potential candidates, far too long. I need a way to winnow it down, but until I think of one, until I can figure one out, I research. I build profiles on anyone who might possibly be the ringleader. Pictures, bio data, operational leads.

I've caught Peter watching me a few times, looking confused.
Why now?
he asked once.
I just need to find this guy,
I answered.

I've barely seen the kids in days; I come home long after they're in bed. Sometimes after Matt is, too. He hates it, me working these hours. He hasn't come right out and said it, but I know he thinks this is a futile task. That I should just do what Yury said. But I can't. I won't.

I finally print the research, hundreds of pages of material. I flip through it, look at one angry face after another. One of these guys is the ringleader. And once I figure out who it is, once I can convince Yury that I'm on the brink of exposing the whole network, I can buy his silence.

Trouble is, there's too much information. With a mounting feeling of despair, I continue flipping through the pages. I need some way to narrow it down further, but that's going to take time. And how much time do I have, really? When will Yury expect me to complete the task? When will I get his next envelope? I feel overwhelmed. Frustrated. Afraid. A compromise is my only hope, though, isn't it?

I stick the papers into a file. It's thick and bulging. I place a hand on top of it, sit quietly at my desk. I need something, a way out. Finally I place the file into one of my desk drawers, lock it, and gather my things.

I go home that night more dejected than usual. I expect a dark house, quiet. But there's a light on in the family room. Matt's there, awake, on the couch. The TV is off. His hands are clasped in front of him, and one of his legs is bouncing up and down, a nervous habit of his. I walk over warily.

“What's going on?” I ask.

“Yury's willing to make a deal.”

I stop. “What?”

“He's willing to make a deal.” The leg's bouncing faster now.

I force myself to keep moving forward, to walk into the room, take a seat on the couch. “You talked to him?”

“Yeah.”

I don't know whether to press that point or keep going. I leave it for now. “What kind of deal?”

He's wringing his hands now, and the leg's still bouncing.

“Matt?”

He takes a shuddering breath. “It's the last thing they'll ask you to do.”

I stare at him. He's gone suddenly still.

“You do this, Viv, they destroy those screenshots. The whole file. There'd be no proof of what you did.”

“The last thing,” I say, a statement, not a question.

“Yeah.”

I'm silent for several moments. “Betray my country.”

“Go back to normal life.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Normal?”

He leans forward, toward me. “This is enough to let me retire. Viv, we could be done with them after this.”

I exhale slowly.
Be done with them
. That's all I want. I want them to go away. I want a normal life. I want none of this to exist. When I speak, my voice is barely above a whisper. “They really agreed to that?”

“Yeah.” I can see the excitement on his face, the feeling that he's found a solution, figured this out for us. “We'd have earned it, after that.”

We'd have earned it
. A shudder runs through me.
But at what cost?

And besides, what's to say they'd honor the deal? I know how these people work. I've spent years studying them. They'd come back with something else. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this year. But someday they would. It wouldn't be over. And then they'd
really
have leverage.

He's looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to respond. Waiting for me to agree, to ask what to do next.

“No,” I say. “The answer's still no.”

The black sedan idles outside the school, parallel-parked on a quiet, tree-lined street. Its engine hums softly, barely audible over the rumble of the nearby buses, the happy shrieks and chatter from the arriving children.

“That's him,” Yury says. He takes one hand off the steering wheel, points out the passenger-side window. There's a circular drive there, a line of yellow buses. A low white fence separates school from community.

His passenger, Anatoly, looks down at the arm that's reaching across his chest, then out the window in the direction of the extended finger. He raises a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

“The one in the blue shirt,” Yury says. “Red backpack.”

Anatoly focuses the binoculars until the boy becomes clear. He's standing on the sidewalk, just past the doors of the bus. Bright blue T-shirt and jeans, a backpack that looks almost comically large. He's laughing at something his friend said; the gap where he's missing a tooth is visible.

“A miniature Alexander,” he murmurs.

The boy's speaking now, talking animatedly. His friend's listening, laughing.

“He's here every morning?” Anatoly asks. He looks at the fence closest to the buses, a stone's throw from where the boy stands.

“Every morning.”

Anatoly lowers the binoculars into his lap. Then, unsmiling, unblinking, he continues to watch the boy.