Olen Steinhauer - The Tourist

Now… now, someone they'd both known was dead. Stephanie was on the floor, watching a movie about gnomes, and Milo had fed himself and escaped her on the pretense of washing. She felt utterly alone.

Once she heard the shower running, she unzipped the bag Milo had left by the door.

A set of dirty clothes, with extra socks and underwear. His iPod. A pair of running shoes. ChapStick, a bag of Q-tips, deodorant, sixtystrength sunblock, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss. Pocket tissues. A bottle of multivitamins. Motion sickness wristbands. Soap. A ziplock bag held assorted medical stuff-drugs, a hypodermic needle and syringe, bandages, suture and needle, zinc oxide tape, and latex gloves. There were more drugs claiming to be doxycycline, Zithromax, Imodium, Benadryl, Advil Cold and Sinus, Prilosec OTC, ExLax, Pepto-Bismol tablets, Tylenol.

At the bottom, she found a pair of no-prescription glasses, a four-ounce bottle of blond hair dye, and twenty-five crisp twentydollar bills. And duct tape. For some reason, that bothered her more than the syringe.

She repacked everything, zipped up the bag, and went into the steamy bathroom. Behind the opaque shower door, Milo washed loudly, humming some song she didn't know.

"Who's that?" he said.

"Me." She settled on the toilet. The steam was loosening her sinuses, and she used toilet paper to wipe her nose. "Christ," she heard him say. "What?"

"It's really good to be home.”

“Hmm," she hummed.

After a moment, he shut off the water, opened the door, and reached a long arm for the towel on the wall hook. She passed it to him. "Thanks," he said reflexively.

She watched him towel off as all husbands do, maritally unaware of his nakedness. She looked at those two spots on the right side of his chest, the scars he'd earned the moment they met. Six years ago, Milo 's body had been one of his many alluring traits. He wasn't much of a communicator, but he was a looker, and had a few skills in bed. When they were living together briefly in Boston, Margaret had called him "hot."

But six years in one city with a family had given him a gut, loosened his once-firm ass, and replaced his pectorals, which had once stood out, with a layer of fat. He'd become a chubby deskman.

Not that he wasn't still attractive, she thought guiltily. He was-but he'd lost that edge that is the property of people who take very watchful care of themselves.

He was dry now, staring down at her with a smile. "See something you like?"

"Sorry. I'm spacing out."

Unfazed, he wrapped the towel around himself.

Tina watched him squeeze toothpaste onto his toothbrush. With a hand, he wiped a clear spot into the mirror's condensation. She wondered why he needed to see himself to brush his teeth. She said, "Tell me about Angela."

The toothbrush halted in Milo 's mouth. He pulled it out. "You don't want to know."

"She's dead?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"You know I can't tell you that. But I'm looking into it."

He went back to his teeth, as if that settled the issue, and though she hardly knew why, this time his decisiveness pissed her off. "I feel like I don't know who you are, Milo."

Milo spat again and shut off the water. He turned to her. "What's this about?"

She exhaled. "It's all the secrecy. Over the last year, you've been coming back from more and more trips with bruises, or sulking, and I'm not trusted to know what's been damaging my husband."

"It's not about trust-"

"I know," she said, irritated. "You're protecting us. But that's a lot of legal hairsplitting. It doesn't help me. It doesn't help Stef."

"Some wives and husbands don't know anything. You know that, right? Some think they're married to insurance salesmen or war correspondents or financial consultants. You know more than they know."

"But they know about the lives before the Company."

With what felt like coldness, he said, "I've told you my entire life story. I'm sorry if it's not interesting enough."

"Forget it," she said and stood. "You want to tell me stuff, fine. But don't make me poke around searching. It's humiliating."

Milo caught her by the shoulders and looked into her face. "You want to know what happened in Paris? I'll tell you. Angela Yates was poisoned. I don't know who did it, but that's how she died."

Tina was suddenly able to draw a clear picture of the lovely, lavender-eyed woman who'd eaten steak with them and kept them laughing for a whole evening. "I see." She swallowed.

"You don't," he said. "Because I think she died because the Company was dealing in bad information. Which means that / was dealing in bad information when I was investigating her. Which makes me responsible for her death."

Tina couldn't manage another "I see," so she just stared back.

Milo let go of her shoulders and gave her one of his famous half-smiles that was more sadness than anything else.

He said, "When I flew to Dallas, I was following the Tiger."

"The Tiger?" she said. "You mean that famous…"

"Assassin, yes. I ended up in a little town in Tennessee, where I watched him die in front of me. Suicide. It was horrible. I think his death is connected to Angela's."

"But…how?"

He didn't answer that; he only muddied the waters more: "I'm stupid, Tina. I don't know half of what I should know, and it's upsetting. It's also getting me in trouble. The hounds from Langley are barking at me, and there's a woman from Homeland Security who believes I killed the Tiger-she found my fingerprints on his face. My prints were on him because I attacked him. I attacked him because he brought up your name-yours and Stef's. I attacked him because I was afraid for you."

Tina opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn't get any air. There was too much moisture; it was like breathing water. Milo took her by the shoulders again and half-carried her through the hall to the bedroom. He sat her on the bed and squatted in front of her. His towel had fallen off somewhere; he was naked again.

Finally, she managed: "Well, you've got to do something, right? Prove you didn't kill that guy."

"I'll figure it out," he said, and for a moment she believed him. "Okay?"

She nodded, because she'd gotten some of the truth she'd asked for, but couldn't take it. She should've known this before, that there was a good reason Milo kept things from her. She was just a goddamned librarian, after all. There was a good reason he left her and all the other simple, law-abiding people in the dark.

She lay on the bed, Milo helping get her feet up, and stared at the ceiling. She whispered, "Poor Angela."

"Who?" said a high voice.

She raised her head to see, beyond Milo 's penis, Stephanie standing in the doorway, gaping at her naked father. She was holding the towel he'd dropped.

"Shouldn't you shut the door?" said Stephanie.

Milo laughed-an unbelievably natural laugh-and said, "Give me my towel, will you?"

She did, but didn't leave.

"And scram, kid! Let me get dressed, and we'll figure out what all to do at Disney World."

That convinced her, and she left them alone. Tina said, "You sure we should still go?"

He latched the towel around himself. "I'm taking my family on vacation, and no one's going to stop me. No one will get that pleasure."

It was the kind of answer she would have wanted to hear only an hour ago. But now, knowing what she knew and hearing his hard, almost brutal tone, she didn't know what she should want.

Sunday morning was like most Sunday mornings family men grow accustomed to, and then start to depend on. The smell of coffee, eggs, and toast, sometimes bacon, the rustle of newspaper and discarded advertising supplements, and everyone moving slowly in loose-fitting robes. Milo read a New York Times editorial on the administration's failure to leave Afghanistan with a stable government, six years after its post-9/11 invasion. It was depressing stuff. Then, on the facing page, he noticed a letter to the editor from Dr. Marwan L. Khambule, Columbia University, concerning the U.S.-supported embargo on Sudan. Were it not for Angela, he probably would have skipped it.