“This is so much harder than I thought it would be,” I said to Dr. Rubenstein during our weekly appointment. I’d been spending Tuesdays through Thursdays in LA for the last several months, so I met with Dr. Rubenstein on Friday mornings when I was in Santa Veneta.
“In what way?” she asked.
“When I proposed this plan to Agent Diaz, I was so focused on seeing Igor behind bars I didn’t really think through what it would be like to have to work for him. I can’t look at him without thinking but for you, Jonah and Amelia would be alive. Do you know what that’s like?”
“Hard, I’m sure.”
“Some days it takes all of my willpower not to just reach across the desk and strangle him.”
Dr. Rubenstein nodded sympathetically.
“Not that I could even if I tried. He probably weighs double what I do, and Sergey is always lurking nearby. And if that’s not bad enough, I feel like a giant fraud too.”
“A fraud?”
“I spend half the week in LA pretending to be someone I’m not, and then I come home and lie to my family about what I’m doing when I’m not with them. I hate lying all the time. I feel awful. And the most frustrating part is I don’t even know if it’s going to work. It’s been three months already, and I still have nothing.”
“Three months isn’t very long for an investigation.”
“I know. Agent Diaz tells me that all the time. He says I need to be patient; that investigations take time.”
“That’s true,” Dr. Rubenstein said. Her daughter-in-law worked for the DEA so she was familiar with the practical aspects of undercover investigations and the toll they can take on an agent’s family.
“I know I’m the one who wanted this, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. The lines are already starting to blur.”
“How so?”
I shifted in my seat. I wasn’t sure exactly how much I was allowed to tell Dr. Rubenstein. Agent Diaz’s blanket admonition that the investigation was confidential and I couldn’t talk about it with anyone was ringing in my ears. But I had never stuck to that completely. My aunt knew some things because I’d told her I asked Agent Diaz to make me a confidential informant before he’d agreed. Plus, on a practical level, I had to tell her why I was suddenly living in LA for half the week.
Dr. Rubenstein also knew some of it because it was her daughter-in-law who had unwittingly revealed that my brother-in-law Jake was a current FBI agent and not a former one. When I’d confronted him, he finally broke down and told me the truth about why Jonah was killed and his own involvement too. As with my aunt, Dr. Rubenstein already knew about some of my activities because I’d discussed it with her before Agent Diaz had agreed to make me a confidential informant. But I still wasn’t sure how much I should tell her now.
“Everything I say in here is confidential, right? You can’t disclose it to anyone.”
“Almost everything,” she said. “If you told me you actually planned to kill Igor, I’d have to alert the police. But if you disclose information about your undercover work for the FBI, that’s confidential.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. This was weighing on me so heavily I really wanted to talk to someone about it. “A surprising amount of what I do for Igor is actually normal legal work. I mean, the invoices and payments are questionable because I know those companies exist only on paper, but even that’s not necessarily illegal. But preparing contracts, reviewing documents, moving assets around, I did all that for legitimate clients when I worked for the firm here in Santa Veneta before I went out on maternity leave.
“And I actually like Mischa. He doesn’t come into the office that often, but when he does, we always have a good time. He takes me with him sometimes to look at art he’s considering for the gallery. Then we usually go out afterwards to eat, or shop, or both. He has a great eye for fashion and he’s funny too. I mean, if his father wasn’t responsible for my family’s murder, and I wasn’t trying to put them all in prison, he and I could actually be friends.”
Dr. Rubenstein nodded. “It’s not uncommon to have warm feelings toward the people you’re investigating. Even agents who are trained to do this kind of work have a hard time with it.”
“I have no warm feelings for Igor. And Sergey’s a pig. But I feel like if Mischa had been born into a different family, he wouldn’t be a criminal. He’s actually a decent human being. I feel bad that he’s going to get caught up in all this.”
“Will he?” she asked. “Couldn’t he testify against his father too?”
I shook my head. “He wouldn’t. He’s too afraid of him. Rightfully so.”
Dr. Rubenstein nodded again.
After a short silence I said, “And it’s not just the job I’m having a hard time with.”
“No?”
“It’s Alex too.”