Hadley & Grace(92)

“She didn’t shoot at him,” Hadley says. “She was warning him not to go for the gun I dropped.”

Fitz frowns, and Hadley realizes she just did what she swore she wouldn’t. She just incriminated Grace. She drops her eyes and returns to shredding the napkin.

“It’s good she got away,” Fitz says. “Hopefully far away . . . far, far away, like a nonextradition country. Is that where she went?”

Hadley says nothing, though that was the plan. Once Grace gets to London, she will decide where to go next. She was considering Dubai or a country near South Africa. Once she gets there, she’ll get word to Melissa, and Melissa will pass the information on to Hadley.

“With her past,” Fitz goes on, “things won’t go well if she gets caught.”

Hadley nods, seemingly unable to stop herself from confirming his theories and making things worse.

“For you, it’s different,” he says. “You have more to lose and less at risk.”

She tilts her head.

“You don’t have a record,” he says. “So long as you make it clear you had no idea Mark was an agent when you pointed the gun at him, the charges against you won’t be so bad.”

She says nothing. She knew perfectly well Mark was an agent, and Fitz knows it.

“Sometimes it’s all in how you present the facts,” he says, sounding a lot like Grace did when she was trying to convince Hadley they needed to turn themselves in.

“Why are you helping us?” she says.

His face pinks, and he looks uncomfortable. “I just don’t want to see you in more trouble than you need to be.”

“But why?”

He looks down at the table, then back at her. “Ironically, for the same reason Mark was always getting on my case.” He smiles sadly, and Hadley can tell how much Mark meant to him. “Mark was always saying I cared too much.”

Hadley nods. It’s exactly what he told her about Fitz.

“And I suppose because of the note,” he says.

“What note?”

“The one you left for that lady who loaned you her car.”

“Nancy?”

“Yeah. Nancy.”

Hadley remembers the note, a thank-you card she bought at Walmart and left on the dash for Nancy to find.

“Mark got mad at me,” Fitz says, “when I told him the card you left was nice.”

“He didn’t think it was nice?”

“He didn’t like that I called you Hadley and Grace instead of Torelli and Herrick when I told him it was nice.”

Hadley smiles, unable to help but be amused by the idea of Mark setting this young man straight for calling her Hadley.

“He was always telling me I needed to toughen up and disengage.” He pulls his shoulders back and imitates Mark’s bluster, then relaxes and slouches forward in his oversize suit. “Then he did it. After he escaped from the archaeological site, he called the office, and when he was telling me what happened, he slipped up and called you Hadley.”

She laughs, the sound escaping like a yip and causing Fitz to smile.

“He didn’t even realize he’d done it. But it struck me because he’d never done anything like that before. And so, I don’t know, after he died, I kind of felt like I owed it to him to try to figure out what was what before O’Toole got involved. I mean, while I get what the whole thing looks like, I also get why it happened, and I think Mark did also. It’s why he went to Coors Field to try and stop you before things got worse. He wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“He wasn’t?” she says.

Fitz shakes his head. “O’Toole had taken him off the case.”

“Oh,” Hadley says, her emotions surging forward as she is reminded that Mark died because of her . . . for her. She bites down on her lip to hold back the tidal wave that threatens to overwhelm her.

“Let’s face it, Mrs. Torelli,” Fitz says, “you’re not exactly a hardened criminal. You took money you believed was yours. You ran from men you believed were working for your husband. You shot a gun in the air because some jerk was harassing your daughter. Most juries are going to sympathize with you. So long as you convince them that you didn’t knowingly pull a gun on a federal agent, I think you’ll get off pretty light, possibly only probation.”

“And I’ll miss out on years of my kids’ lives,” she says. Each time she’s considered this moment, this has been the part she can’t quite get past, knowing how much she will be missing. Desperately, she wants to be there for Miles’s first steps, for Mattie getting her license, for Skipper learning to ride a bike, for the birth of the new baby, and the thought of missing those milestones destroys her.

Fitz looks away, sympathy plain on his young face.

“It’s okay,” she says, feeling bad for him. “I know you have a job to do, and I deserve what’s coming. I appreciate you trying to help. I do.”

He nods, but she feels him struggling. “At least if you serve your time,” he says, “you won’t have to abandon your house and the business.”

Hadley drops her eyes and shakes her head. “That’s why I took the money. Frank won’t ever let me near any of that. He’d see it all burn to the ground before he’d ever give me a cent.”