Page 147 of Gone Before Goodbye
“And Trace?”
“What about him?”
“We still don’t know where he is.”
“A problem for another day.”
She takes a sip of wine. “None of this makes sense.”
Porkchop says nothing.
“It’s like they knew I was coming. It’s like they led me here.”
Porkchop still stares out in silence.
“Do you think Nadia set me up?” Maggie asks.
“How so?”
“She told me about Brovski landing in Bordeaux.”
“How did she know where he was again? Oh right, she stole his phone and dropped a pin.”
“Which is a little suspicious in itself, right? Maybe Nadia made that up. Maybe she’s on their side. I don’t know. But think about it. They were ready for us, Porkchop. Ragoravich had a surgical team prepared. He has the THUMPR7 and all our equipment. All he needed was me—and voilà, here I am.”
Porkchop takes another sip. “You asked this Ragoravich guy if he killed Marc.”
“Yes.”
“And he said no.”
“Right.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I do. He only cares about the THUMPR7. He needed Marc for that.”
“Did he?” Porkchop asks. “Or did he need you?”
“I don’t get what you mean.”
“Neither do I.” Porkchop lifts up the empty wine bottle. “Probably a little too much grape.”
“So what do we do now, Porkchop?”
“We finish our glasses. We stroll up the path to La Grand’Vigne. That’s the vineyard’s two-star Michelin restaurant. We sit at a little wooden table outside. We don’t look at the menu. We ask Chef Nicolas what we should order and his sommelier for the proper wine pairing. We finish watching this glorious sunset, and we think about Marc.”
The tears start pushing into her eyes again. “I shouldn’t have gone home. I should have stayed with him in Dubai.”
“Then you’d both be dead,” Porkchop says. “You would have gone to that refugee camp with him. You would have stayed by his side during the siege. And whoever killed him would have killed you too.”
“And whoever,” Maggie repeats. Then: “You think it was Trace.”
“Yeah, Mags, I do. But either way, you’re alive. Marc is dead. He’d want you to move on.”
“You don’t believe in life after death, do you?”
Porkchop shakes his head. “We get one ride. This is it.”
