Red Widow by Alma Katsu (good books to read for beginners txt) 📗

later, there’s a message from Molina. Got what you wanted. Only there weren’t emails between them, so I looked for chat. I’m sending you the instant messaging records.

In another few seconds, an email appears in her queue from Molina. The attachment isn’t long, but it is damning.

13 august 2018 2322z warner, theresa: Saw you sparring with Wilson in the teleconference over the Milan hack. That report you cited, is it Skipjack?

13 august 2018 2322z kincaid, kyle: Yes. All the best stuff is.

13 august 2018 2323z warner, theresa: I really should get read into the compartment. I need a little more info, though, to convince my manager.

13 august 2018 2323z kincaid, kyle: Sure, whatever you need. How about we meet for coffee

The last chat session was from a few days ago.

7 december 2018 1805z kincaid, kyle: How about Wildfire, on Foster Drive? 8?

7 december 2018 1805z warner, theresa: Sure. I’ll meet you at the restaurant

You don’t meet for work at a restaurant. Had they gone on a date?

Lyndsey looks up Kincaid’s phone number, then reaches for the phone. He has some explaining to do, such as why he hadn’t told her about Theresa’s interest.

But there is no answer. It goes to voicemail.

She slams the phone down. She can’t wait for him to get in touch with her and besides, he’ll only continue to be evasive.

She goes to the online white pages to pull up Kincaid’s record. It takes only a minute more to track down Kincaid’s supervisor. She exhales slowly in an effort to calm down, and is surprised when the phone is answered quickly.

She explains that she’s running an investigation and needs to speak to Kincaid. Can he tell her how to get in touch with him, please?

There is a strained silence on the other end. Finally, the man says, “You haven’t heard? I guess you don’t know . . . Kyle is in the hospital. He’s in a coma.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Theresa stands outside Lyndsey’s office, listening. She has always been as quiet as a nun. Able to hide from her parents, sneak up on her husband.

She overheard all of Lyndsey’s conversation with Kincaid’s supervisor. There can only be one reason Lyndsey is looking for Kincaid: Lyndsey is onto her. Once she finds out Kincaid is in the hospital and starts tracing Theresa’s steps, it will be over.

She will lose everything. Her son. Her one chance to get Richard out of prison.

Which means all these terrible things she’s done will be for nothing. Betrayed her country, caused one man’s death, probably responsible for a second (though not Yaromir Popov, she had nothing to do with that).

All for nothing if the Russians don’t pull her out in time.

Tick tock, tick tock. With every minute, she feels Lyndsey closing in on her.

Tarasenko is a sadist, keeping her on tenterhooks.

She feels helpless. She doesn’t like to feel helpless.

She tiptoes away from Lyndsey’s office, silent as a swan gliding across a lake. She needs a minute alone. She grabs her purse and heads to the ladies’ room. Standing in front of the full-length mirror, she plucks nervously at her hair. Reapplies her lipstick, moisturizes her hands.

What she needs is a plan, a way to buy time if everything goes to hell.

She’s pretty sure Lyndsey hasn’t put it all together yet, or else they’d have arrested her already.

All she has to do is keep Lyndsey from putting the last pieces together.

There’s still time.

As she returns the moisturizer bottle to her purse, her hand falls on the tiny Altoids tin. She picks it up, gives it a shake. Is rewarded with a tinny little rattle.

There’s still half a pill inside.

THIRTY-FIVE

The details surrounding Kincaid’s hospitalization, when Lyndsey finally hears them, are gruesome. Found alone in a hotel room, half-undressed, unresponsive.

No one knows why he was at the hotel. His apartment is fifteen minutes away.

The clerk told police that a woman was with him, but he couldn’t provide much of a description. He didn’t recognize her, which means she wasn’t one of the prostitutes who came through the hotel regularly.

The Agency’s Security department was working with the police, of course. They always did when an Agency employee was injured or died under suspicious circumstances. But so far, there was maddeningly little. After Lyndsey reads the medical report, she contacts Randy Detwiler. “I’m no poisoning expert, but it looks like one to me. And this is the second poisoning related to this case, which seems like too much of a coincidence to be one.” He promises to look into it.

She must turn back to the case, as little as she has the stomach for it: Detwiler’s finding on the gelsemium and Molina’s findings mean another late night for Lyndsey. Outside the closed door, she listens as one by one, the others leave for the day. The rattle of cabinets being shut and locked, doors opening and closing. Finally, it is completely quiet, so quiet that she can hear the handler cycle on and off. The air in her tight little office grows stale as she pulls out her files and rereads every report, looking for more clues. Something she’s overlooked. The list on the yellow legal pad grows longer slowly, line by line.

She puts down the pen and pushes the legal pad away. She wishes there was more face-to-face. She’s better at that, understanding what is meant by every flick of the eyes and shift of weight in a chair. There’s more certainty in the tilt of someone’s head than in their words, at least to Lyndsey. She wants to study Theresa from across a room or behind one-way glass.

Near midnight, she finds something that was overlooked before. The manifest from Popov’s flight was attached to the toxicology report, at the very back, which may account for the oversight. Somehow the medical examiner’s office was able to get Delta to cough it up. Perhaps the office was afraid of contagion, and thought it might need to track down the passengers