Fool Me Once(57)

“Name it.”

“Look at everything again with fresh eyes. Her travel records, her personal files, anyplace she may have hid things. Whatever. She was trying to take down the Burketts. She found out that they were paying off this Tom Douglass, and I think that was the catalyst for something bigger.”

Eddie nodded. “I will.”

They both stood there and watched Daniel hoist Lily onto a carousel horse. Daniel stayed on one side, Alexa on the other. Lily beamed.

“Look at them,” Eddie said. “Just . . .”

Maya nodded, afraid to speak. Eddie had said that death followed her, but it probably wasn’t that simple. All around her, children and families played and laughed and reveled in the glory of this seemingly ordinary day. They did so without fear or care because they didn’t get it. They all played and they all laughed and they felt so damn safe. They didn’t see how fragile it all was. War was far away from them, they thought. Not just another continent but another realm. It couldn’t touch them.

But they were wrong about that.

It had touched one of them already, more specifically Claire, and Maya was to blame. What she had done in a combat helicopter over Al Qa’im, like those sounds that wouldn’t ever leave her, started an echo, a reverberation, and eventually that echo found its way to her sister.

The truth was so obvious and so deeply painful. If Maya hadn’t made those mistakes in that chopper, Claire would still be alive. She would be standing here, overwhelmed by the beauty and laughter of her children. It was Maya’s fault that she wasn’t. Claire was not here, and somewhere, behind the happy smiles of Daniel and Alexa, was a sadness that would always haunt them.

Lily started to spin her head, looking around. She spotted her mother and waved. Maya swallowed and waved back. Daniel and Alexa waved too and beckoned for Maya to join them.

“Maya?” Eddie said.

She said nothing.

“Go to them.”

Maya shook her head.

“You’re not on guard duty right now,” he said, a little too in her thoughts. “Go and enjoy your daughter.”

But he didn’t get it. She didn’t belong here. She was an outsider, out of her element—even though, ironically, this was the way of life she had fought and risked everything to protect. Yes, this. Right here. This very moment. Yet she couldn’t cross that line and be a part of it, could she? Maybe that was the deal you made. You can participate or you can protect, but you really can’t do both. Her fellow soldiers would understand. Some might force themselves to cross over. They’d smile and go on the carousel and buy the T-shirts, but there would be something behind the eyes, something that couldn’t quite let go, something that kept them scanning the perimeter for approaching danger.

Did that ever go away?

Maybe. But not yet. So Maya stood there, watching, a silent sentinel.

“You go,” Maya said.

Eddie thought about it. “No, I’m good here with you.”

They stayed there and watched.

“Maya?”

She said nothing.

“When you find out who killed Claire, you’ll need to tell me.”

Eddie wanted to be the one to avenge his wife. That wouldn’t happen. “Okay,” she said.

“Promise?”

What was one more lie? “Promise.”

Her mobile phone buzzed. She checked the number. Tom Douglass’s home line. She stepped to the side and brought the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“I got your message,” Mrs. Douglass said. “Come by as soon as you can.”


*

“Let me take Lily home with us,” Eddie said. “The kids will be thrilled.”

It would indeed make things easier. If Maya were to try to pull Lily away from the festivities, she would understandably throw a tantrum worthy of, well, a two-year-old.

“It’s about that Tom Douglass,” she said, even though he hadn’t asked. “He lives in Livingston. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

Eddie made a face.

“What?”

“Livingston. That’s Exit 15W on the Turnpike, right?”

“Right, why?”

“The week before Claire was killed,” he said, “her E-Z Pass showed a couple of hits through that toll booth.”

“Was that unusual for her?”

“I never really checked her E-Z Pass before, but yeah, I mean, we don’t go down that far.”

“What do you make of it?”

“There’s some fancy mall down there. I figured maybe that’s where she went.”

Or he didn’t want to look too closely, which was understandable. No matter. Maya hurried back to her car. Her sister had been murdered because she was getting too close to a secret. Maya was sure of it. That secret had to do with Tom Douglass and, by extension, Joe’s brother Andrew Burkett. How Andrew Burkett, who’d been dead almost fifteen years when Maya and Joe met, could possibly have led to Claire’s murder was still a mystery.

She started toward the highway, flipping stations, finding nothing she liked. It wouldn’t do to overanalyze right now. Her daughter was safe with Claire’s family.

She hooked up the playlist on her phone via the Bluetooth and tried to clear her mind. Lykke Li came on singing “No Rest for the Wicked.” Lykke sang that she let her “good one” down and then the killer line: “I let my true love die.” Maya sang along, lost in that small bliss, and when the song was over, she hit the back arrow, played it again, sang it all the way through to the also-killer end stanza: “I had his heart, but I broke it every time.”