Twenty-Seven

David, just David,” she said “‘Hollis’s old boyfriend David’ is not actually his legal name so stop saying that. It’s old news.”

“You didn’t tell me about it until the other night, so it’s very new news to me.”

“And you’ve told me about every woman you’ve ever slept with?”

“Yes.”

Hollis took a long look at her husband. “Really?” It took a moment for it to sink in. “Huh.”

“What?”

“If you’ve told me about all the women you’ve been with, then you haven’t been with that many. I mean, I always thought you were more experienced because you were so cute and …” She could see that Finn was blushing. “And, you know, you’re so good at it.”

“I was nineteen when we started dating, Holly, and I was very focused on school. Were you expecting more than a couple of ex-girlfriends? Have you got more than a couple of Davids in your past?”

“Sssh.” Hollis pointed toward the television.

On screen was a wide shot of the Abbey Theatre, and then a close-up of a stretcher being removed. A news anchor spoke over the footage. “A new play at the Abbey Theatre was interrupted tonight by an unexpected death in the audience midway through act two. The man is identified as sixty-three-year-old Patrick Lahey, an artist from Inishmore. His cause of death is unknown, pending an autopsy. Garda are asking for help identifying the doctor at the scene who came to the aide of Mr. Lahey, as they have questions for him. According to witnesses, the doctor is an American man in his early thirties …”

“He was lying. His name, where he’s from,” Hollis said.

“Also, they have a description of me.”

“They said early thirties.”

“I look young for my age.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. If he died of a heart attack, they’re not going to come looking for you.”

Finn muted the television but kept staring at it, even as the presenter moved on to a different story. “I don’t think he did die of a heart attack,” he said after a few minutes. “It just doesn’t explain the blood on his collar.”

“So it was a knife wound?”

“No. It wasn’t a big enough hole for a knife, even a small one.”

“It was barely any blood though. You’ve had more severe cuts from shaving,” she pointed out.

“The blood wasn’t dry, so unless he was shaving during the play, there’s something more to it.”

“Like?”

“Like an injection, right in the vein of his neck.”

Hollis knew that it had to be, but saying it out loud made it real. “So he was definitely murdered?”

Finn nodded just slightly, then took another swig of his beer.

Murder. It was a horrible word, she realized. Horrible but terrifyingly accurate. How could she ever have seen this as a little adventure, a way to re-spark her marriage and feel, if only for a moment, like a woman of mystery? Somewhere that man had people who loved him, who were only now getting the news.

She and Finn had people who loved them, she thought, and if the manuscript was worth killing for once …

She left the thought unfinished and tried to focus again on what they knew.

Finn was staring off into space, but she could guess at what he was thinking. He had said the wound was mid-neck. So while Patrick or Liam, or whoever he was, watched the play, or maybe just before it, someone injected a poison into the carotid artery in the man’s neck. That could create a small amount of blood that could end up on his collar. Whatever the poison was, it led to a death that looked, at least until autopsy, like a heart attack.

“According to the woman seated next to him, he’d been talking to Peter Moodley just before taking his seat,” she said. “I’m not saying it rules out Peter, but if it was an injection, it didn’t happen in the lobby. I don’t think he could have had a poison injected into his artery and then taken a seat to watch a play. It had to happen while he was seated.”

“The problem with that theory is no one noticed if anyone sat next to him, even for a minute. Did you see anyone?”

She shook her head.

“Do you think it’s a coincidence that Liam—I mean, Patrick—ended up sitting in front of us?”

“There were empty seats. He could have chosen his seat because of where we were sitting.”

“Did he come in before or after us?”

“I dashed in just as the play was starting,” Hollis said. “The lights were already dimmed. Did you see him when you took your seat?”

Finn shook his head. “I kept my eyes peeled for you. I didn’t pay attention to anyone else. It must have been just as the lights went out. Perfect timing. It’s dark, but there’s still movement as the stragglers get to their seats. Someone could have slipped in, done the deed, and left before anyone thought to notice.”

“It’s pretty horrible,” Hollis said. Whoever he was, Patrick or Liam, a criminal or an antiques dealer, he was a person they’d just been casually chatting with forty minutes earlier.

“At least we know that’s not how we’ll die.” Finn pointed to the desk, and the single bullet still sitting there. “Do you suppose it’s the same person? Injecting a man in a crowded theater seems so daring, so cold-blooded. Hardly seems like the kind of person who would bother issuing a threat.”

Hollis grabbed her laptop again. It took several annoying minutes to find what she was looking for, but at least she had a plan. “I was going to try and talk you into leaving Ireland, but now I’m not going to persuade. I’m going to insist. The earliest flight leaving for Chicago is at eleven thirty in the morning,” she said. “There’s one for New York at ten. We could go there and get a connecting flight.”

Finn sat up. “I was going to try and talk you into it. And actually I’d like to get out of here sooner than ten.”

“Nothing earlier going to the States,” she said, but kept looking. “We could go to London. The earliest flight is at six twenty. We can call David from some pay phone at Heathrow, fly to Chicago, and put this whole mess behind us.”

“Buy the tickets now so we know we’re on that flight.”

“What if they’re tracking our card?”

“You think they are?”

Hollis didn’t answer the question. She couldn’t. For years after she turned down Langley she imagined what life as a spy would have been like. She’d imagined danger, secrets, and foreign intrigue. She hadn’t imagined being scared out of her wits. She grabbed a desk chair and pushed it under the door knob just in case someone tracking them had keys to the room. It wasn’t wildly high-tech espionage stuff, but it would have to do.

“Let’s just go to the airport in a few hours,” she said. “We can buy tickets to London in cash, and once we’re there we can buy the tickets home.”

“How are we going to get enough cash to buy the tickets if we can’t use credit cards or the debit card?”

“We have bundles of cash. I don’t think David can begrudge us using some of it. And even if the cash has some kind of tracer on it …”

“They do that?”

“Yeah, they do that.” Spying was just like riding a bicycle, she thought, alarmed and amused at the same time. “But even if it does have a tracer, all it will tell them is we used it at the airport, not what plane we took or where it went.”

Just having a plan made her feel more in control. Except for two thousand euros, she put the money back in the green purse and put the purse in her suitcase, surrounded by clothes. The two thousand euros and address book went into the black bag she carried every day. She packed up Finn’s case too, since he seemed lost in thought. They were ready.

Finn lay back against the pillow. “Let’s get some sleep.”

Hollis set the alarm on her phone for three, turned off the lights, and climbed into bed. Both she and Finn were still dressed in the clothes they’d worn to the theater. Neither had mentioned it, but she figured it was understood. If they had to make a quick exit from the hotel, they needed to be ready.