Last Words

“I will.”

“Good.” He started toward the door, then stopped. “You’re not pla

“No.” Mia walked into the hall ahead of A

“I’d appreciate it.” Beck turned off the light at the wall switch. “The chief of police over in Cameron was pretty adamant about not bringing the FBI into his investigation.”

“We’ll bring him around,” Mia said over her shoulder as she and A

“No doubt you could,” Beck said under his breath as he watched her walk down the hall. “No doubt at all…”

13

“So, what’s it like, living out here all by yourself?” A

“Quiet. If I didn’t work so much, I don’t know if I could stay,” Mia admitted. “You’re actually the first visitor I’ve had since I moved out here.”

She opened a box of pasta and tossed it into the pot, then added, “Unless of course, you count the wildlife. Deer. Fox. Raccoons.”

“You could always move back to Arlington,” A

Mia made a face. “Too far. John’s been assigning me to a lot of the action on the Eastern Shore. Over the past few months, I’ve had several cases in Dela ware. I think once Co

“You mean Wilmington, Delaware, not North Carolina.”

“Right.” Mia searched the cupboard for a jar of spaghetti sauce. She found it behind a box of cereal she’d brought with her when she moved in, but had never opened. She opened the jar, poured it into a pan, and set it on a burner.

She opened another cabinet and took down two wineglasses. She handed them to A

“Sure.” A

“Not a clue. I never know. About a month ago, he breezed in around 3:00 A.M., scared the shit out of me, stayed two days, then disappeared again.” Mia laughed. “He’s like a shadow, you know? He goes off and does whatever it is that he does, comes back, reports to whomever it was that sent him there in the first place, gets another assignment and poof! Gone again.”

“I’ve noticed he’s been doing much more of that over the past year or so.” A

“Co

“That’s one game I wouldn’t want to play. The stakes are very high.”

Mia turned to A

“We talk sometimes,” she said simply.

“You mean between assignments?”

“Sometimes.”

“Does he tell you where he goes? What he does?”

“Not with a great deal of specifics, but sometimes he just needs to unload. And I guess me being a psychologist, he feels safe unloading to me.”

“The fact that you were going to marry his brother probably has nothing to do with it.”

“I’m sure it has a lot to do with it.” A

“Does he ever talk about Dylan?”

“Of course. We both do.”

“Even though you’re married to Evan now?” Mia asked.

“The fact that I was lucky enough to find someone else to love, who loves me, doesn’t mean that I’ve had my memory erased. I did love Dylan; Evan knows that. He also knows that I would have been married to Dylan by now if he hadn’t died.”

“You mean if my brother hadn’t killed him.” Mia’s jaw was squarely set. “If my brother hadn’t murdered him-”

“We both know how Dylan died, Mia,” A

Mia picked up her glass and took several sips of wine.

“Sometimes I don’t understand how you can still be friends with all of us.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Mia shook her head.

“I’ve worked with members of your family for as long as I’ve been with the Bureau, Mia. At one time or another, I’ve worked with every one of you. I have great respect for you and Co

“Are you really that forgiving?”

“Mia, there’s nothing for me to forgive. No one was responsible for Brendan’s actions except Brendan. No one is to blame, except Brendan. Please tell me you don’t think that any one of you could have stopped him from doing what he did.”

Mia shrugged. “Andy and I have talked about this a million times, why we didn’t see what he was doing, why we didn’t know how evil he was…”

“Why would you have?” A

“He was our brother, we knew him better than anyone.” Mia laughed harshly. “We should have known.”

“You know of a person only that which they choose to show you. Brendan obviously had a great stake in not letting anyone see what he’d become. He was very careful to never slip out of character.” When Mia started to protest, A

“By his partner. A child smuggler.”

“We take our saviors where we find them.” A

Mia drained her glass and reached for the bottle to refill it.

“Until someone else picks up where they left off.”

“That’s always a possibility, of course,” A

Mia opened a cabinet and took out a colander and set it in the sink.

“Look, there are a lot of bad things going on in this world, I don’t have to tell you that. You deal with it every day, just as I do. We do the best we can to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

From where she sat, A

“It’s Brendan’s sin, Mia, not yours,” she said gently.

As if she hadn’t heard, Mia grabbed the pot from the stove and drained it in the sink. She put the spaghetti on plates and topped it with sauce, then placed one before A

“You might want to move your file. Spaghetti sauce finds a million ways to splatter when you’re trying to read.”

“Right.” A

“So,” Mia said. “How is Mara feeling? It must be so exciting for her and Aidan, with the birth of their first child so close…”

And just that quickly, Mia had changed the topic and hadn’t brought up Brendan’s name again for the rest of the evening, A