Liar's Market. Taylor Smith
to kiss her far more warmly than their surroundings warranted, letting his gaze linger on her in the kind of long, wistful glance she’d rarely seen since they’d left Africa—and virtually never in the last couple of years. What was that all about?
Drum turned back to the senator with a sigh and an uncharacteristically silly smile on his face. “You’re right, Senator. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
Carrie didn’t dare risk glancing over at Tom Bent to see what he made of that.
It was approaching six when the senators finally began to gather up their coats to return to their hotel and freshen up before the ambassador’s dinner. After Tom Bent had herded them all out to their waiting cars, Drum accompanied Carrie down the elevator to the embassy’s main floor and out through the solid steel door that divided the secure area from the public lobby.
As he held up her buff-colored Burberry raincoat for her to slip her arms into, the smoked glass lobby windows rattled under an ominous peal of deep, rolling thunder.
“Are those the shoes you came in?” Drum asked.
Carrie gave her Manolos a rueful glance. “Yes. I’m an idiot. I’ve been sloshing around for the past two hours.”
“Well, make sure you grab a cab. Don’t try to walk in this weather.”
She nodded, tucking her hair inside a dark chocolate-colored beret and slipping her hands into soft brown kid-skin gloves. “Do you know what time you’ll be home?”
“Pretty late, I imagine. Don’t wait up for me.”
“The story of my life,” Carrie said, with no real trace of bitterness.
She was long past questioning his late nights, and complaining was a waste of time. Drum said it was a hazard of his profession. Generally speaking, that was probably true. Generally, but not always. At this point, Carrie had given up trying to reconcile his work with the lingering scents that sometimes accompanied him when he slipped into bed late at night—scents of passion Carrie hadn’t shared and perfume she didn’t own, scents a shower couldn’t quite mask. Lately, he’d been gone more and more, caught up in crisis after crisis as terrorist threats continued to mount. He could make Carrie feel positively un-American for questioning anything he did. She no longer bothered.
She reached up to offer the kind of perfunctory peck on the cheek that was habitual by now, but he held her close, once again giving her a more lingering kiss than a public venue and seven years of marriage normally inspired. His arms stayed around her as he studied her.
“What?” she asked, resisting the urge to squirm out of his grasp.
“Nothing. I just wanted to look at you. You’re really something, you know that?”
She frowned. “Drum, are you all right?”
He smiled and kissed her once more, lightly, then released her. “I’m fine. I’d better get back upstairs and get a little work done before I have to go baby-sit those visiting clowns. I’ll see you at home.”
“Right. See you later.”
Carrie watched him walk back to the heavy steel door, where he slipped his hand under the keypad cover and entered the four-digit security combination. The lock clicked and he wrenched the handle open, pausing briefly to give her a last look and a wave before disappearing back into the secure womb of the building.
Exhaling wearily, she slipped her handbag over her arm and headed for the front doors, but before she’d gone a few steps on the marble tile, a muffled voice called her name. Carrie looked around for the source of the hail and saw a familiar figure waving her over to the reception window.
At this hour, with the embassy closed for the day, the civilian receptionist had left and the Gunny was alone on duty behind the bullet-proof glass. A Marine corporal stood by the front doors, opening them and then re-locking them behind staff leaving the building.
The last public straggler was still at the window with the Gunny. A young woman, she was hunched over at the counter, madly writing on a white file card. Her wet umbrella was propped against the wall, while her coat dripped water on the gold-streaked marble tiles.
“Hey, Gunny,” Carrie said, smiling as she walked gingerly over to the booth, taking care to avoid the death-trap puddles on the slippery floor. “What’s up?”
His voice crackled back at her through the speaker set into the glass. “I heard you were going to be in the building, but I was on the phone when you came in. I been working on the team rosters for the kids’ softball league. Is Jonah gonna go out for Pee Wees?” The Gunny’s son Connor was Jonah’s best buddy and the two boys often slept over at each other’s flats.
“He wants to,” Carrie said, “but you know we’re going home this summer?”
“Yeah. Connor’s really bummed about that.”
She sighed. “That’s the worst thing about this life, isn’t it? The poor kids have to keep making new friends.”
People who married into the business knew what they were getting into, Carrie thought—theoretically, at least. But the kids had no choice in the matter. Drum had been an Army brat himself, but he was philosophical about it. The tough ones survived it just fine, he always said, and the weaklings were going to stumble whether or not they stayed in one place all their lives. Carrie wasn’t sure about that, but she had noticed that relationships in Drum’s life all seemed vaguely disposable. Was it the impermanence of his childhood friendships that made him always seem to be holding something back even now?
The Gunny held up a finger for her to wait while he dealt with the girl at the window. She’d straightened and seemed to have finished what she was writing. Carrie peeked over her shoulder. It looked like a consular registration form.
“All done?” the Gunny asked.
“I think so,” the girl said, sliding the white card into the metal drawer under the triple-paned window that separated her from the Marine.
The Gunny pulled a lever and the drawer slid back to his side of the glass. “Looks good,” he said, picking out the form. “I’ll leave it for the consular section to file tomorrow. They’re all gone for the day now.”
“Thanks a lot for letting me in.” The girl slipped her pen back into the bag slung over her shoulder. “It took me longer to get over here than I thought it would, but I promised my parents I’d do this.”
“No problem. We wouldn’t want you to have to tramp back over here again tomorrow.”
“Is it supposed to rain again?” she asked, buttoning up her tan raincoat.
“That’s what I hear. Welcome to jolly old England.”
“Rats. I guess we’ll have to do some museums.”
The Gunny’s buzzed head gave a nod. “You don’t wanna lose that umbrella. You’ll be needing it.”
Watching the girl tuck a few loose hairs into her knit tam, Carrie felt a sudden plunge in the pit of her stomach. They were about the same height, and although their coloring up close was different, dressed in rain gear as they were, they would be almost indistinguishable from a distance.
It gave Carrie the sort of brief shock she got every time her own reflection surprised her in passing a mirror or window. She’d had an identical twin sister once. When they were small, they were always dressed in matching frilly outfits, to be cooed at and admired in their tandem stroller.
“It made me so proud,” her mother used to say with a sigh. “My two little Strawberry Shortcakes—identical and perfect.”
As if anything less than a matched pair fell somehow short of the mark, Carrie had felt ever since.
Isabel, her twin, had died when they were eighteen—about this girl’s age, by the look of her. But even now, more than a decade later, the pain of losing her other half could still overwhelm her unexpectedly,