Mariah Stewart - Last Words

She opened another cabinet and took down two wineglasses. She handed them to Annie and said, “Would you mind opening the bottle I picked up on the way home tonight? It’s still in the bag next to my purse there on the counter. The opener is in the drawer to your right.”

“Sure.” Annie did as requested. After she poured wine into both glasses, she handed one to Mia and said, “Speaking of Connor, any idea when he’ll be back?”

“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.” Annie tossed it out there and waited for a reaction. When there was none, she added, “It’s almost as if he can’t stay in one place for too long.”

“Connor loves to travel.” Mia shrugged. “He always has. And he’s always been into that covert thing. Sometimes I almost think it’s a game to him.”

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

Mia turned to Annie. “How do you know?”

“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.” Annie studied Mia’s face.

“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,” Annie said softly.

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 Connor and Grady and Andrew as professionals, and I care about all of you very much. And Aidan-hell, my sister is married to him, he’s soon to be the father of my first nephew. And yes, we’d have been family if Brendan hadn’t killed Dylan.” Annie took a deep breath. “I like to think you’re still family, and not just because your cousin married my sister.”

“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?” Annie’s eyes narrowed.

“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, Annie held up a hand. “I’m the specialist in behavior. If anyone should have noticed that something was off with him, it was me. But I never did, not for an instant.” She tried to smile. “Even when he set out to kill me, I never saw it. I was just lucky that his plan was interrupted.”

“By his partner. A child smuggler.”

“We take our saviors where we find them.” Annie leaned her elbows on the table. “And Luther Blue will spend the rest of his life in a federal prison for his crimes, not the least of which was shooting Brendan in cold blood. At least the operation was shut down.”

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,” Annie said, “but I know that entire area is being watched pretty closely. I doubt you’ll see truckloads of children being smuggled out of Santa Estella again. Let’s be grateful for that much, okay?”

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, Annie could see that Mia had tears on her face.

“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 Annie.

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

“Right.” Annie sighed and moved the file aside. She watched Mia refill both wineglasses and move her own files out of the way so she could sit across the table from Annie.

“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, Annie recalled later. Once dinner was over-a dinner during which Mia had just about polished off the rest of the wine-Mia excused herself to go up to her room with her file, presumably to work.

Annie had settled into Connor’s room and studied the case files Beck had given her earlier that day, but her thoughts kept returning to the woman pacing the floor above. It didn’t take a doctorate in psychology to see that Mia was very troubled.

Finally, when the sound of footsteps overhead ceased, Annie got out her phone and dialed a number that very few people knew. She listened as the phone rang until voice mail picked up.

“Connor, Annie here. Hope you’re safe and well, wherever you are.” She paused. “Please give me a call when you’re able. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Everyone seated? Got your coffee, your tea, whatever? Once we start, I don’t want any interruptions, so whatever it is you need, get it now. Anyone?”

Beck stood at the head of the table in the conference room where once again he’d gathered his staff behind closed doors for what he referred to as a “situational update” on the Holly Sheridan case. Everyone who’d had an assignment was expected to report their findings, and everyone present was expected to be tuned in to whatever information was being shared.

Noting that everyone appeared to be set, he continued.

“First, I want to thank all of you for giving up Sunday morning with your families. If circumstances were different, we’d have waited until tomorrow. Agent Shields is with us again today, along with her colleague, Dr. Anne Marie McCall, who will offer her insights once everyone else has reported on their piece of the pie. Any questions?” Beck surveyed the room. There were none.