Page 96 of Gone Before Goodbye

Alena nods. “Order a drink. Watch me. When I go to the ladies’ room, wait a minute and then follow me in.”

“Wait, what?”

But Alena is already up and moving toward a dark booth. The modelesque bartender saunters over and asks Maggie what she’d like to drink. Maggie asks if there’s a bourbon she’d recommend. The bartender says they have a Pappy Van Winkle 23 Year Old. Maggie is about to nod, but she has a distant memory of seeing one on display at a museum or something.

“Do you have, I don’t know, Maker’s Mark or something?”

A hand reaches over her shoulder, holding a very fancy-looking credit card. She looks to see who it is.

Viking Bob.

“Get her the Pappy Van Winkle,” he says, handing the bartender the card. “In fact, make it two.”

Maggie says, “You don’t have to—”

“Your host insists,” Bob interrupts.

“How much is it?”

“If you have to ask, you don’t belong here.”

“But I don’t belong here,” Maggie says.

“Fair point. Just be glad they ran out of the Old Rip Van Winkle 25 Year Old.”

“Why?”

“In stores it sells for fifty K a bottle.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?”

“Yep.”

“For a bottle of bourbon?”

Bob shrugs.

“Does it come with a sex act?”

He laughs. “I guess it should at that price.”

She laughs back, making the quasi-bawdy joke to keep the mood relaxed and casual so he doesn’t interfere with whatever Alena is planning. Bob has clearly been sent down from ahigh to keep an eye on her.

“On the rocks or straight up?” the bartender asks.

“Oh, you can’t put Pappy Van Winkle over ice,” Bob says.

The bartender nods, pours the drinks. They clink glasses. Maggie brings the glass to her lips. The smell is ambrosia. She tilts a sip into her mouth, leaves it on her tongue for a moment, and even with everything that’s going on, she lets the bourbon warm the back of her throat.

Oh man.

Bob smiles. “Good, right?”

“Nectar of the gods.”

Alena reappears from a dark corner.

She heads down the side of the bar, not so much as glancing toward Maggie. Maggie carefully takes another sip. She smiles at Bob while, behind him, she sees Alena stroll past one of the guards and disappear into the bathroom.