KEVIN WAS almost at the London Bridge station, having fled the ODI headquarters, when he hesitated. Was he really giving up on Alexandra Primakov so quickly? Had she scared him off? Maybe. Not the warning that she would call the police—that, he now suspected, had been an empty threat, because she wouldn’t want them to ask her any questions either. What scared him was that she knew his name, knew about Rachel and Owen Jakes. Who the hell was she? A lawyer who had helped fund the Massive Brigade, who knew about the inner workings of the FBI with a precision that most inside the Bureau didn’t possess. Yes, that scared him. Anyone who knew that much was to be feared.
He was in a strange city where he didn’t know the rules, dealing with a woman who was miles ahead of him, but to flee when others—Rachel, Ingrid, Clare—depended on him … what was that? Was it rational self-preservation, holding on to his freedom long enough to take the next step in his investigation? Or was he running away from something that would prove crucial to protecting these women? Ben’s last words came to him: “This is your fault.” Back then, his decisions had led to a house full of corpses. What would a mistake cost him now? What was the correct course of action?
When he abruptly turned around on the sidewalk and headed west again, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to do. Was he going to march back into her office and demand answers? Or was he going to lurk outside like a stalker? Would he accost her when she left the building? Or could he manage to track her across this unfamiliar city? San Fran or New Orleans—those were cities in which he could surveil without a problem. But the tangled, crowded streets of London?
He was almost at the crossing for Blackfriars when he looked up and saw her on the other side of the street. Yes—Alexandra Primakov, phone to her ear, walking in the direction he had just come from. He turned on his heel again, bumped into a Pakistani couple, and hurried to keep up. He hung back when she went through the turnstile at London Bridge, then ran so that he wouldn’t lose her. On the steep escalator, he was twenty people behind, and when he leaped onto the car behind hers he wasn’t even sure which direction they were going. By then she’d pocketed her phone and had taken out a second one, on which she typed messages.
It wasn’t until they disembarked at East Croydon that the feeling of unease came over him. Ahead, her light skin stood out among the brown faces all around her, and then they were out on the street and … there: She turned down the little lane he had first visited last night when a Jamaican driver named Elijah brought him here. She stopped in front of Mattie’s door and checked the number with something on her phone. She was getting ready to press the buzzer.
“Ms. Primakov!” he called, jogging up to her.
She looked back, gave him a double take, then cracked a smile. “Mr. Moore. How’d you get behind me?”
“How do you think?”
She raised a brow, then nodded toward the main thoroughfare. “Want to take a stroll?”
Before he could answer, she was walking, and he had to jog. By the time she joined the noisy lunchtime crowd, he had caught up. “Are you going to talk now?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s not my place to tell you anything.”
“Okay…”
“I need to you to verify something first.”
“Shoot.”
She glanced at him again, a wry smile. “You are working with Rachel Proulx, correct?”
He wasn’t sure he should answer, but if he didn’t talk she wouldn’t either. She’d already made that clear. “Yes.”
“She’s not here, though, is she? Back in America?”
This time, he nodded, not wanting to put voice to what he was starting to feel was a failure on his part to hold any cards.
“Right. Tell her that she’s wasting her time worrying about ancient history.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that whatever papers I wrote up in 2009 are of no importance. Tell her to look at July 4 of last year. Tell her to ask who benefited the most.”
Her coyness was beginning to irritate him. “How about this, Alexandra: How about you tell me who benefited?”
She shook her head. “That would be telling you what I know, which would lead to you asking how I know it. I don’t like those kinds of questions.”
They walked on, past a rack of sneakers presided over by another woman from the islands. “How do I know you’re not trying to divert us from the real story?” he asked.
“Good,” she said, smiling. “Now you’re getting the hang of this.”