Suspects(16)

She herself came from a moneyed, respectable, upper class New York family. They were comfortable but didn’t have a vast fortune. She was an only child, an outstanding student, and she had caught the wave of internet commerce in the early 2000s after she graduated from Harvard magna cum laude. She was a smart businesswoman, and had built an impressive success of her own, though not on the same scale as Matthieu, but she was much younger, and had embraced what she knew best. She wasn’t driven by the same demons he was, with an entire family history of treason and betrayal to live down. Her family had been peaceful and her relationship with them had been good. But she had her own burdens to bear now, and her own losses.

It was all so different from Mike’s own history. He was from a boisterous poor family in Boston. He had two older brothers and the sister who was now an artist. His father had been a police sergeant and died young of alcoholism. His mother had managed her four kids on her own, with two jobs and doing whatever extra work she could get. She had worked hard and set that example for them, and she insisted that they get good educations. The best way for her sons to achieve that was to join the military, which she encouraged them to do. He had a football scholarship to Notre Dame, but he lost his two brothers in the Persian Gulf in the Iran–Iraq war, one in an accident and the other in combat. Mike had joined the navy in order to go to graduate school and get a masters in criminology. He wound up in military intelligence, which he loved. He had been decorated for several very dangerous missions in the Middle East. He didn’t mind the risks since he had no attachments, no wife or kids, and his mother had died by then. The CIA had been the right job for him for nearly twenty years. It challenged him, and he liked knowing that he was making a difference, even if in unsung ways. The idea of protecting people from the unseen evils in the world motivated him. He had strong protective instincts.

His mother had died young after a life of hard work, and the only family he had now was his sister, Fiona. He helped her with a check every month. She had never married either, but she had a steady boyfriend. She and Mike didn’t see a lot of each other, but they did have lunch or dinner together from time to time. She had bad memories of their impoverished childhood. He didn’t. Never having enough money hadn’t been an easy life. She was an artist and still struggling at forty-two. He was satisfied with his life in the military and passionate about his undercover work for the CIA. He still missed it at times. He had a lot of administrative duties now, which he enjoyed less. But he had no regrets about his life, and he thought he had been lucky with the choices he’d made. He couldn’t have made the same ones if he’d been married or had kids. It wouldn’t have been fair. He couldn’t have consistently risked his life if anyone depended on him, so it was just as well that he had stayed unencumbered. The only time he had ever considered marriage was to Becky, but he was so young then, and it probably wouldn’t have worked out in the long run with both of them federal agents working undercover. She had loved the dangerous assignments as much as he did and wouldn’t have wanted to give them up either. There was no way he could have saved her. He knew that now, but he hadn’t for years, until one of his superiors shared the classified file with him. She had died for her patriotism, protecting her country the best way she knew how. They had been on the same mission when she was killed, and he had blamed himself for years for not dying instead of her. Years later, the agency discovered that she had been exposed by an informant and they hadn’t known it, so her killers had been gunning for her. Her death was not an accident Mike could have prevented. There was no way he could have saved her. He knew that now, but he hadn’t for years, until one of his superiors shared the classified file with him.

He recognized that he led a strange life. It was very different from that of the people he’d grown up with, had known in college, and even those in the navy. Once he went down the CIA path, it isolated him to a special world of people with similar lives who had made the same hard choices. The way he lived was comfortable for him now.

When he thought of Theo, he thought of a beautiful, graceful bird about to take flight, and he wanted to protect her before someone shot her down. It seemed inevitable that someone would go after her sooner or later, no matter how much security she had. He had noticed that there was no security for her in the back of the store that night. Private bodyguards were never as effective as professional ones, and he suspected that that was all she had to protect her. Robert Richmond had guessed it too. Mike wished he knew her, so he could talk to her about it, but he doubted there would be a circumstance where he would see her again. She thought he was just an ordinary lawyer who had lost his way at the party and wound up in the back room. A kidnapper would have found her even faster and been out the door with her before anyone could stop them. The thought of it made him shiver, as he left his computer and helped himself to a beer from the fridge. The article in Le Figaro about Matthieu had given him a lot to think about. He had obviously been an intriguing man with a heavy history to live down. It must have fascinated Theo too. That made the difference in their ages easier to understand. Matthieu Pasquier had exuded power in every possible way, and he was an honorable man. He had deserved better than to be killed by an amateur gang of greedy thugs, so stupid and inept and evil that they left him and his son in a pile of dirt close to a back road near the chateau. It could have all ended so differently if handled right. It was such a senseless waste that it hadn’t been.