Page 152 of Gone Before Goodbye
“I don’t know,” Brovski says. “It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”
BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…
“Nadia led me here,” Maggie says.
“What do you mean?”
“Can I see your phone?”
“Excuse me?”
She lifts her hand and beckons for him to give it to her. He looks asthough he’s about to protest but then, thinking better of it, he opens it with his face and hands it over. Maggie takes it and starts searching for the appropriate app. Brovski watches over her shoulder. Maggie doesn’t care. When she opens the app, she scrolls down.
“Good timing,” she says. “My being here.”
Hmm. The dropped pin is there. Nadia had been telling the truth.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“It’s nothing.”
Maggie hands his phone back to him. “It was good timing, I guess—my coming to France just when you needed me to do the surgery.”
Brovski shrugs. “We could have grabbed you and brought you here anytime.”
“So why didn’t you?”
He shrugs again. “No need. You showed up.”
BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…
“Yeah, I’m not really buying that, Ivan.”
“And I’m not really selling it either.”
“Do you know who killed my husband?”
Just like that. She holds his gaze.
“I can tell you what Oleg and I believed.”
She waits.
“You are adrenaline junkies. You always took too many risks with your humanitarian missions, and while your medical care benefited some, it wasn’t worth it. Many you saved ended up living short, miserable lives in squalor or getting killed in the next battle. You didn’t have to take such risks. You could have played it safer. Instead, you chose to keep rolling the dice. Eventually the dice came up snake eyes.”
BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…
“So it was just a matter of time,” she says.
“I know you want there to be more. And maybe there is. Your husband died a hero. But he also died a fool.”
Ivan Brovski starts to walk away.
“And Trace Packer?”
He says nothing.
“Do you know where he is?”
