Alex was twenty-three weeks pregnant, and her last doctor’s visit revealed that she had high blood pressure, which the doctor said explained her headaches and upper abdominal pain. He’d diagnosed preeclampsia and told her to slow down and take it easy. The only cure for preeclampsia was to deliver the baby, and Alex was nowhere near term. Jenkins had taken over all the bookkeeping and administration of CJ Security from Alex, in addition to performing the fieldwork. They’d named the family business after their son.
Jenkins kissed her. “Promise me you won’t overdo it, Alex.”
“I won’t. They have a desk and chair in the classroom for the pregnant lady.” She got behind the wheel and buckled in. “Have you spoken with Randy?”
“Alex . . .”
“I’ll have less stress if you tell me you have.”
“I have a call in to him.”
“How much do they owe us?”
“Let me handle it. I’m sure we’ll get paid by the end of the month.”
“I think you should tell them you’re pulling everybody out until they’re current. That would get their attention.”
“I’m sure it would. Don’t stress about it. The doctor said stress isn’t good for the pregnant lady.”
CJ shouted from the back seat. “I’m going to be late, Mom.”
She rolled her eyes. “Now he’s worried.” She kissed Jenkins and shut her car door. “Call Randy,” she said, lowering her window and speaking as she drove away. “Give him until the end of the week. Tell him he’s stressing out a pregnant lady and if I go postal, he’s first on my list.”
Jenkins smiled and called after her. “I’ll let him know.”
The Range Rover spit gravel as Alex navigated the center turn around the large sequoia and drove toward the asphalt road.
CJ Security provided services for the Seattle-based investment company LSR&C. The company’s CFO, Randy Traeger, was a fellow soccer parent who had approached Jenkins after learning that Jenkins had security experience working for Seattle attorney David Sloane and his clients. Traeger explained that LSR&C was expanding quickly, with satellite offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, and that it intended to expand overseas. Jenkins could coordinate much of the security work—protecting employees as well as wealthy clients who visited the office—by phone, thereby avoiding commuting an hour and a half in ever-worsening Seattle traffic.
The Range Rover turned left at the end of the road and disappeared behind trees and shrubbery. Jenkins looked to Max. “The security contractors won’t wait until the end of the month to get paid,” he said.
The dog gave him a fretful look.
“Yeah. That’s how I feel.”
Jenkins disconnected after leaving Randy Traeger another message. If Traeger didn’t call him back today, Jenkins would drive into Seattle and make a personal appearance at LSR&C’s office in the Columbia Center. He clicked through the documents open on his computer. Forming CJ Security had required a hefty business loan and much of their savings, but the work had initially been strong. With the recent change in the market, LSR&C had slowed in paying CJ Security’s bills and was now more than fifty thousand in arrears. Jenkins could not draw again on his business loan to make the midmonth payroll to his security contractors and vendors, and he did not have the money to float LSR&C. He tried to present a calm front for Alex’s sake; additional stress would only exacerbate her preeclampsia, putting both her life and the baby’s at risk. He kept reminding himself that LSR&C had been late paying its bills before, but it had always eventually come through.
Jenkins shoved his cell phone into his pocket, grabbed a cup of coffee from the pot on the kitchen counter, and stepped outside to get some fresh air. Max trotted along at his side. He walked down to his vegetable garden, which looked like it had been hit with an atomic blast, nothing but withered stalks, wooden stakes, and shriveled leaves. He hadn’t had time to button it up for the winter while running the business by himself.
Jenkins thought he heard tires crunching gravel—Max’s bark confirmed it—and he looked to the south. A car navigated the dirt-and-gravel path across his neighbor’s property. Many years ago, an easement had allowed the cars to continue along the path onto Jenkins’s land, but when that easement expired, the adjacent neighbor put in a gate and planted blackberry bushes to prevent cars from driving all the way to Jenkins’s home. Charlie built his driveway and an alternative road at the back of his ten-acre lot.
The car stopped when it reached the overgrown blackberry bushes and locked gate. At least the engine shut off. A car door slammed.
Jenkins walked to the front of his house. By the time he got there, a man stood as if admiring the property.
“Can I help you?” Jenkins said.
The man turned—a ghost from Jenkins’s past. Still tall and lean, he had the bronze skin of someone regularly in the sun, but with hair now a shock of white. Carl Emerson peered at him with familiar, piercing blue eyes.
“Been a long time,” Emerson said.
2
Jenkins entered the living room and handed Emerson a mug of coffee.
“So, this is where you’ve spent your time?” Emerson stood at the picture window, looking across the horse pasture to what had once been a dairy farm but now stood fallow.
“This is it,” Jenkins said.
Emerson sipped his coffee to cover an awkward silence. “Private security?” he said. He’d done his research or had someone do it for him. The question was why.
Jenkins nodded.
Carl Emerson had been Jenkins’s CIA station chief when Jenkins served as a case officer, but Jenkins had not had contact with Emerson, or anyone else from the agency, since abruptly leaving that post some forty years ago.
“You enjoy it?” Emerson asked.
“For the most part,” Jenkins said. “It has its ups and downs, but it’s mine.”
“The buck stops with you.” Emerson took another sip of coffee, smiled, and walked from the window to the river-rock fireplace. He considered framed family pictures on the mantel, one of Alex on their wedding day. “You married another case officer. Her father consulted for us in Mexico City, didn’t he?”
Jenkins ignored the question. “And you, what are you doing these days?”
“Keeping busy as a desk jockey in an office in Langley,” Emerson said. “Though I should have retired by now.”
“And yet, here you are,” Jenkins said.
“Here I am.” Emerson set his mug on the mantel. “Mr. Putin has brought Russia back to the forefront of American intelligence, making people like you and me, who worked through the Cold War, a hot commodity. Vy yeshcho govorite po-russki?”
“Not in a long time,” Jenkins said.
During his training at Langley, Jenkins learned he had an affinity for foreign languages. He spent a year in foreign-language school learning Russian and Spanish before being sent to Mexico City to counter what had become a haven for KGB officers at one of the largest Soviet embassies in the world. “Why are you here, Carl?”
“The seven sisters.”
Jenkins shook his head, unfamiliar with the term.