Ann was curious about history, and she was a tourist’s tourist, wanting to listen to the tour guide, read all the exhibit signs, stand and gawk at things both magnificent and ordinary. She was enjoying Washington, D.C., and Paul was enjoying immensely showing it to her. But he had made a mistake suggesting they come here before heading home. They had left Black with Dave and Kate, gone to New York, and then come here for a week. They should have returned home.
Ann was asleep on the hotel bed, facedown, one arm wrapped around a pillow, as the clock moved toward eight p.m. They had come to change before an evening meal, and he had encouraged her to stretch out for half an hour. That had been two hours ago.
He watched her sleep, knowing it was exhaustion that had put her down so quickly. He prayed she stayed asleep. All of it was piling up on her. The change in her routine, the marriage, the nightmares. He didn’t know how to get her through it. The reality of being married was pulling energy out of her that she hadn’t been able to replenish.
She took a couple of walks on her own, she read for a while, and often up during the night she would spend another hour or two reading or writing. She’d asked for four hours a day of solitude, and she was carving it out. It was probably helping more than he realized, but it just wasn’t enough. The idea of her being gone for a week was something he didn’t want to think about, but he’d have to honor that request when they were home.
He hadn’t really understood before. He’d thought her wish was because she was comfortable being single and used to being alone, and she wanted assurance of some space to be alone even while married. He was seeing now why she had put it out there so bluntly. She needed the solitude to survive. She had to sleep without interruption, and the only way she knew to find it was to be alone where nothing could trigger that dream.
He reached for her hand as the nightmare ripped through her. “Easy.” She jerked awake. And she started to cry.
Paul keyed the elevator to the fourth floor. Ann had grown quieter the closer they got to the building, and he could almost feel her nerves. The weeks so far had been a honeymoon and a vacation, and now it was the forever of a new home and a new life as his wife. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and quietly hugged her as the elevator doors opened. “Welcome home.”
She smiled, but it faded. Black, not used to the elevator, darted around him, glad to be free, and disappeared toward one room and then the next. He found one of his toys and the bear growled. Ann smiled when she heard it. Paul carried their luggage inside, turning on lights as he went.
Lisa and Kate had been busy. He could see small signs of Ann’s things about the place—the photos on the wall, the dog-treat jar on the counter, her jacket hung next to his, the books on the table beside the couch, and the stack of yellow writing pads and pens within easy reach. They had messaged that they had unpacked her clothes and done their best to recreate her work space.
“I asked them to set up your office in with mine. Your table fits, with some rearranging of the furniture. I’d really like you to share the space with me. I can learn when not to interrupt your train of thought.”
She simply nodded. He carried their luggage through to his bedroom, their bedroom. He should have asked Lisa to do some shopping for him, to get more neutral colors in here so it wasn’t so much his. He turned to find Ann standing in the doorway watching him, and of all the emotions and expressions he had seen on her face in the last weeks, this was new and the most troubling. “What’s wrong?”
She rubbed her arms. “I should feel married. And I don’t. That same queasy uncertainty just sits there, like I’m going to wake up and this is an unreal dream. Why don’t I feel married? What’s wrong with me?”
He smiled. “Not a thing.”
“Do you feel married?”
He crossed over to join her and slid his arms around her waist. “Very married.” He rested his head against hers. “Don’t worry so much. You will eventually feel married. I promise you that. I’ll keep reminding you until you do. You can unpack more of your things tomorrow, and put in better places what Lisa and Kate unpacked for you. It will feel more like your place when you see your things around here.”
“What are we going to do tonight? Tomorrow night? The night after that?”
He smiled, but chose to take the question as she had intended. “For tonight, you are going to find a book to read, or pick up a pad of paper and write for a while, and I am going to fix us something to eat and then watch whatever ball game I can find on TV. If you want to share the couch with me, I could probably be talked into sharing. In about four hours we will figure out which side of the bed you’re going to prefer to sleep on and sort out who gets to shut off the alarm clock in the morning. For the rest of it, we’ve got a week before I return to work to figure that out. I know it feels like the world just shifted on you, but it will find its footing again very soon. This won’t feel so strange a month from now.”
“I’m really scared I’m going to get this wrong.”
He stroked her shoulders, her arms. “There’s no test, nothing to pass or fail. Relax. The days will be different, but you’ll find a new rhythm soon.” Black crashed into her and about threw them both off-balance. “He’ll help.”
She steadied the dog as she laughed. And she relaxed. “Paul, I love you.” She reached up and kissed him. “Take Black for a walk for me. You know the neighborhood. He’s going to want to smell everything. Let me unpack without him underfoot.”
He smiled. “I can do that. But one thing first. I’ve got a wedding present for you.” He nodded to the hall. “Beyond that door.”
“What?”
He gave her a hug. “I know you’re tired, Ann, the kind of worn-out-inside kind of tired that makes that smile an effort, and your energy feel like it’s never returning. You need a place of your own to use as a retreat, to find some solitude if you’re ever going to rebuild, somewhere to let you get away for a week every month where you can find some real rest. So I’ve arranged some options.”
He opened the door.
The construction had come out better than he hoped. “There’s a bedroom and sitting room on this level, and up that flight of stairs you’ll find a studio.” It would take a few days for the new carpet and new paint smell to dissipate, but otherwise it looked ready to move in.
“The lady upstairs has been a friend of the family for years. Her husband painted for a living, and had a separate studio created to keep the oil paint and fumes out of their home. It’s been dormant since his death a decade ago. She hasn’t wanted to sell the space and have someone new coming in and out of the building, but she liked the idea of adding it to our place. Come up and see it. It looks just like it did the day before he passed away, a half-finished painting on the easel and his paint supplies still on the worktable.” He took her hand and led the way upstairs.
He was watching her when she got the first look and caught her instant smile of delight.
“What a wonderful life he must have spent here in this room. You can see it in what he had around him. It’s a good space.”
“I know you’ve been painting, and you could continue without an interruption this way.”
She wandered around the room and looked out the windows, and then turned to smile at him. “It’s really nice, Paul.”
“I surprised you.”
“Knock-me-over-with-a-feather surprised me.”
“I think it could work, Ann.”
“I think so too.”
He joined her near the windows. “I also have a second option arranged.” He pointed to the building across the street. “There’s an apartment in that building, fifth floor, the fourth window from the corner. It’s a two-bedroom place, with a nice-sized living room and a small kitchen. I’d rather not have overnight guests in our home if there are other options, so I like the idea of having the place. It can be for family and friends to stay when they visit, or for you to use if you prefer. We’ll keep it at least for a year as a fallback
plan.”
She rested her head against his chest. “You’re flooring me here, Paul. And I didn’t get you anything.”
He laughed. “You’re sharing the dog. That will do for now.”
She slid her hands into his and interlaced their fingers. “I have something I need to tell you. I think it counts as another secret, as it is kind of big. About why I’ve been painting.”
“I’d like to hear it. Do you want to tell me tonight or have the conversation another night?”
“I’ll let you decide. I was working on a book for friends that I stopped when I married you. It was a price I paid when I married you, my choice, and one my friends supported and understood. But it was a big price. That book was why I’ve been painting. It’s not right that you not know that or why.”
He had thought there might be a book in the works from what Dave had mentioned, but he hadn’t realized there was another secret out there related to her writing. “Let’s go downstairs, and you can tell me.” He led her to the kitchen and got them both sodas.
He nodded to the stool and leaned against the counter facing her as she sat and opened her soda. He wondered how many conversations in a lifetime it would take to really grasp the layers in this lady he had married. She was hesitating, even now, to risk this with him. “Trust me, Ann. Just start somewhere.”
“This falls into the gray area of almost being a security-clearance-level secret rather than just a personal secret, and I wasn’t comfortable talking about it before I was married. It is a big-deal kind of secret. No one knows, not Kate, not Vicky, no one knows about this couple except for Marcus, and he knows them through his role as head of the U.S. Marshals.”
She had friends in witness protection. That fact had his full attention. “When did you meet them?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that.” She toyed with the soda, watching the moisture bead on the countertop and then rubbing it away with her palm. “I promise I’m not going to do this again, so don’t flinch when you hear. Marcus needed a favor, a fast one, and I was the closest pilot he could put his hands on who was willing to land on a private airstrip during a serious thunderstorm. There were rumors deemed credible that a sniper after the couple was in the area, and it had to be done. Given his history with Shari, Marcus is not one to dismiss a threat like that. I’ve been in more danger at times, but never taken a more intentional risk.”
“What happened to the flight?”
“What always happens when you put metal into a thunderstorm. I got hit by lightning and about scorched the plane. I limped us out of the area, feeling like I was flying a rock through a mud puddle. It was an unforgettable night. I wouldn’t even fly near a dark cloud for the next few months. The marshals shot a sniper that night, so the threat was real.”
“It tells me something profound about you, that you said yes when Marcus called. Promise me, over the next year, you will tell me what stories you can that fall in this gray area.”
“I’ll try. And it says more about who I was than it says about my good judgment. I was single, I was a cop, and I knew the risk, but I didn’t fully appreciate it. I was a brave idiot.”
He smiled. “Tell me about your friends. Tell me about the book you set aside.”
“She’s an artist. On her way to worldwide fame. Ambitious, genius, driven, brilliant. She was twenty-six when she witnessed a murder.”
Ann paused and for a time disappeared in her own thoughts. “It’s a sad story, Paul. The kind as a cop you hurt just hearing. She saw the murder, she told the police what she witnessed, and she drew a portrait of the man from memory. She told the DA she would testify. They arrested him. He’s Irish mob, politically connected—a mean streak in him that goes with a violent temper. Within days there was a contract out on her life. They put her in witness protection.
“The man set out to destroy her art. He wanted to pull her out of the shadows so she could be killed, and he put his thumb down on the one thing she treasured. Every piece of her life’s work on public display or known to be with specific collectors was suddenly at risk. Paintings were slashed, acid was thrown, some were stolen and burned. She lost a lifetime of work. The pieces she could retrieve from collectors were stored away to safety in art vaults—three vaults around the country—and he found one of the vaults. She lost another thirty pieces in one day.
“It was six months before he came to trial. She testified against him. The jury deliberated four hours and came back with a guilty verdict. He was sentenced to life without parole. It didn’t stop him. He had connections, and family, and it was now a point of honor. Museum exhibits, galley exhibits, anywhere one of her works was displayed, were sprayed with bullets, people were hurt. Her work was too distinctive for her to show a painting, even unnamed.
“It about destroyed her. She retreated, and for a time she simply stopped painting. She tried photography, as she had a good eye and had to earn a living. She created a name for herself in her new field of marketing. She built a good business around her camera and her marketing images, while she died some more inside.
“She had been in witness protection for five years when she went for a pizza and met a guy. She didn’t know him, he didn’t know her, but he was as famous in his own field as she had been in hers. He had a similar history, of fame and money and a forced retirement, and like her he was a driven businessman. He had bought a pizza business with three locations and turned it into a national chain.
“He liked her, he liked her photographs, and he talked her into doing the marketing work for his pizza business. And he pursued her. As he puts it, he tumbled after her like a high school boy with a sweetheart crush. And she puzzled him to no end because she refused his invitations and wasn’t interested in being seen with him.
“He’s a smart man, and he can be relentless when he decides it matters. He eventually discovered who she was. He gave her back her art, in a very private studio and a very private vault. He convinced her it was safe to paint again. It took him another two years, but he convinced her it was safe to love him, and he convinced her to marry him. They’ve been married for ten years now.” Ann, remembering, smiled. “She thrives with him. They are a power couple, in the best meaning of that word.
“She’s been painting every day of their marriage. She’s had no critic to comment, no observer to comment, no collector to respond to her work, she’s only had herself. And she has turned painting into something extraordinary. I have to go back centuries to find such an intense talent of genius in her field.
“He loves her, and he wants very much to give her back at least a slice of who she was before this happened. Her husband wants to release a book telling her story, and alongside it he wants to produce a coffee-table book showcasing her art. He asked me to write their story. He asked me because I had written Sara and Adam’s story, because I was the MHI, because I was a good cop with a security clearance and resources and friends who could help me watch for signs of trouble brewing.
“When I agreed to write Sara and Adam’s story, to write Danger in the Shadows, the man who’d gone after Sara was already dead. The reason she had been in witness protection was over, the threat was past. But this book is different. The man who wants to destroy her has a powerful family. They are still actively searching for her.
“My writing sounds like me. For the same reason she can’t change her style of painting so it’s not recognized as one of hers, I can’t change my style of writing to not have the book be recognized as mine. Even published under another name, eventually it could be figured out. The assumption will correctly be that I know her, know the name she now has, and have an idea where she lives. Those after her would go through me to get to her.
“When I was single, that risk could be managed. It changes now. I told them if I married you, I would end work on the book. And they were in complete agreement with that decision. Even published under another name, the risk is too great now. He is going to go ahead with the art book, but not her story. It
was a very special case of someone who could write the book and have a reasonable chance of staying free of trouble. Her story is not going to get told, even if her art will get shared.”
Paul said, “You can’t do the book because it will sound like you, and someone could recognize that you are the writer, and if they did, the Falcon family and businesses are at risk.”
“Yes.”
“You made the right decision, but I’m sorry, Ann. It would have been an incredible story for you to write.”
“I’m simply glad you hadn’t met me after the book had been released. Marriage would have been a much more difficult decision for me to make if I knew this book was out there.”
“Who are they?”
“The retired shortstop for the Atlanta Braves, Kevin Copper, now the Pizza King, and his wife, Kimberly. Her real name is Paulette Sunfrey. She is never seen in public with her husband. She’s had plastic surgery, but if you wondered, you would look at her and say maybe.”
He walked around to take the stool beside her and just considered his wife. “Sunfrey. Whose works already were legendary in her twenties before she disappeared. Whose work titled The Coming Dawn sold for just under two million when she was twenty-two. I keep postcards of her works in my desk drawers just so I can enjoy them.”
“If she were able to sell the paintings she now has in her private vault, she would be able to feed a country or two. They are extraordinary works.”
“Your friendship with them—you travel occasionally to see them?”
“They would keep a guest bedroom with my name on it when I was in the area. He travels a lot, and since I’m one of a handful of people his wife can be herself with, he encouraged the friendship from the first days we met. Now they are both simply good friends. They were some of the first people I called to tell I was getting married.”