Page 151 of Gone Before Goodbye

BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…

Steadier now.

BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…

It’s working.

BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…

The room cheers.

BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…

Under the mask, Maggie’s face breaks into a wide smile. She looks up to lock celebratory goggle-eyes with Gruff Voice.

But he’s gone.

Maggie rips off her gloves, strips out of her gown, and steps into the shower.

The shower’s jet stream is powerful. Marc had always liked that in a shower, maybe more so because the showers during any kind of humanitarian mission were set on what Marc called “light urination.” When Maggie and Marc renovated the bathroom in their apartment, he offered the contractor no opinions on tiles, faucets, colors, toilets, design, only noting, “I want the water pressure to be so powerful I bleed.”

The pang again.

Weird when it comes back. She hadn’t felt him that much during surgery. Now, in the shower, with the powerful blast washing the blood and tissue of an evil man off her, once again grief makes its sneak attack.

She dries off and slips back into sweats. There is a full-size mask and goggles for her to wear on the way out. Forget it. If they recognize her, who cares? She enters that main tunnel again and heads to the makeshift ICU. She looks in the window. Ragoravich is still unconscious. There are monitors and six overly masked staffpresent. Maggie wonders whether any of these people had been on her team.

Through the glass, she hears it again.

BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…

From behind her, she hears Ivan Brovski’s voice. “A tremendous success.”

Maggie frowns. He sees it in the window’s reflection.

“You don’t agree?”

BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…

“I warned Oleg. I warned you. I don’t think it’s ready for human usage.” She turns to him. “Who were the other surgeons with me?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“To keep confidentiality?”

“Yes. You know now how we hire people. You know how we pay them. It’s like you, in Russia.”

“Speaking of Russia,” Maggie says. “You almost killed me.”

“Not really, no. You ran onto the roof. My men, they reacted. Aleksander was running away too at the time. It created something of a panic. We wanted to close it all down. We needed you alive, but the men didn’t know the mission. And then, of course, there was Nadia.”

BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…

“What about Nadia?”

He shrugs. “She was in many ways the lady of the house.”

“Are you saying she wanted—”