Page 72 of Gone Before Goodbye

She pushes open the window, and a blast of cold shoves her back a step. She closes her eyes against the wind and swings her legs over the sill. Her sneakers scrape against the stone roof as she drops out the window and closes it behind her.

Oh man, it’s freezing.

The ground, except for the coil-heated part of the lawn, is blanketed with snow. She wonders how much time she has before Brovski starts knocking on the door. Not much, she imagines.

Time to move.

No way to go down the front. Not with the black-suited men still crisscrossing the lawn. She has to find another way. The wind is already biting her face. She can’t stay out here too long. The exposure will get to her soon.

Keep moving.

A plan… Well, not really a plan. Almost a plan. A bare sketch of a desperate, impossible idea comes to her.

Head to the back of the house, she tells herself.

The roof tile is slick, and she nearly falls before regaining her balance. She ducks low and starts half sprinting, half skating toward the back of the estate. With a shaking hand, she sees the battery on her phone is down to 4 percent. Shit. She hits send. No response. She hits send again and jams the phone back in her pocket.

She needs both hands to keep her balance.

Maggie tries to remember that weird house tour with Oleg Ragoravich.

Man, was that really only yesterday?

It is too cold. She should go back. Maybe the Marc griefbot iswrong. Maybe Brovski and Ragoravich don’t mean her harm. She did the work she’d been hired to do. People know she’s here. Or at least, well, when she thought about it, only one person knows: Evan Barlow. So if she vanishes now, if she is somehow thrown out of a helicopter into a deep hole, somewhere in the forests of Russia, what would happen to her? Would Barlow come forward? And if he did, so what? What could anyone prove?

But the griefbot had said it best: She’d done facial surgery on Ragoravich. Why? None of it had been to improve his looks. She’d known that right away. It was clearly done to disguise him. To change his identity. The type of surgery she’d performed would fool any facial-recognition program at, say, an airport or border crossing.

But still. Would they kill her?

She starts slipping as she reaches the edge, nearly sliding right off the rooftop. She claws her way to a stop at the drainpipe. She sits up, her legs dangling over the side of the roof. She stares down.

Way too far to jump, even with the snowbank.

There has to be a way.

There’s a fire ladder to her right. Perfect. She scooches toward it. When she reaches out and touches the top rung, she pulls her hand back. The metal is so cold it feels as though her hand might freeze-stick to it.

“Doctor McCabe?”

The wind snatches most of the sound away, but she knows it’s Ivan Brovski.

She has no chance. Not really.

Surrender? Is that her best option?

Ivan again, calling from the window: “Maggie?”

She lays flat on the roof. Her head hangs off the edge. She looks down. No one is directly below her. She turns her head to the right. Nothing. She looks to the left.

Two black-suited men. They have guns out.

What the hell is going on?

Maggie hears a shuffling noise from behind her.

Someone else has come out on the roof. They’re coming toward her.

No choice now. She pulls down her sleeves, so that the cuffs cover her palms. Makeshift gloves. She jumps on the ladder and starts down it. If her memory and geography are correct, she is over the indoor pool right now.