I just stood there, unable to move.

“If you find her, you kill her. It is as simple as that. If the organization is compromised, a lot of people will die. Good people. People like your Natalie and my Marie-Anne. People like you and me. Do you understand now? Do you understand why you have to let it go?”

I did. But I still raged against the machine. “There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t.”

“You just haven’t thought of it yet.”

“I have,” he said in the gentlest voice I have ever heard. “More times than you can imagine. For years and years. You have no idea.”

He put the pillbox back in his pocket.

“You know what I’m saying is the truth, Jake. You are my best friend. With the exception of a woman I will never get to see or touch again, you are the most important person in my life. Please, Jake. Please don’t make me kill you.”

Chapter 28

I almost bought it.

Check that: I did buy it for a long while. At first blush, Benedict—he wanted to make sure that I always called him that, that there would never be any slipup—seemed to be absolutely right. I had to back off.

I didn’t know all the details, of course. I didn’t know what the full deal was with Fresh Start. I didn’t know for certain why Natalie had vanished or where she had gone. Truth was, I didn’t even know if she was alive. The NYPD had suspected that she was dead. I didn’t know why, but they probably surmised that if guys like Danny Zuker and Otto Devereaux want you dead, someone like Natalie doesn’t survive and stay out of sight for six years.

There was more I didn’t know. I didn’t know how Fresh Start worked or about the training center doubling as a retreat or about Jed or Cookie or what role everyone played in this organization. I didn’t know how many people they’d helped vanish or when they had started, though according to that charity report, it all began twenty years ago, when Todd Sanderson was a student. I could probably build a comfortable house with what I didn’t know. That no longer mattered. What did matter, of course, was that lives were at stake. I understood the oath. I understood that those who had made such sacrifices and taken such risks would kill to protect themselves and their loved ones.

There was also tremendous comfort in knowing that my relationship with Natalie had not been a lie, that she had, it seemed, sacrificed the truest love I’d ever known in order to save our lives. But that knowledge and its accompanying utter helplessness tore a hole straight through my heart. The pain was back—different maybe, but even more potent.

How to lessen that pain? Yep, you guessed it. Benedict and I hit the Library Bar. We didn’t pretend the arms of a stranger would help this time. We knew that only friends like Jack Daniel’s and Ketel One could blot out or at least blur images this searing.

We were pretty deep into our Jack-Ketel friendship when I asked one simple question. “Why can’t I be with her?”

Benedict didn’t reply. He was suddenly fascinated by something at the bottom of his drink. He hoped that I’d let it go. I didn’t.

“Why can’t I vanish too and live alone with her?”

“Because,” he said.

“Because?” I repeated. “What are you, five years old?”

“You’d be willing to do that, Jake? Give up teaching, your life here, all of it?”

“Yes.” There was no hesitation. “Of course I would.”

Benedict stared back down at his drink. “Yeah, I get that,” he said in the saddest voice.

“So?” I said.

Benedict closed his eyes. “Sorry. You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Two reasons,” he said. “One, it isn’t done. That’s just part of our protocol, part of how we compartmentalize. It’s too dangerous.”

“But I could do it,” I said, hearing the pleading in my voice coming right through the slur. “It’s been six years. I say I’m moving overseas or—”

“You’re talking too loudly.”

“Sorry.”

“Jake?”

“Yes?”

He met my eye and held it. “This is the last time we talk about this. Any of this. I know how hard it is, but you have to promise me you won’t raise it again. Do you understand?”

I didn’t reply directly. “You said there were two reasons I couldn’t be with her.”

“Right.”

“What’s the second?”

He dropped his eyes and finished his drink in one enormous gulp. He held the liquor in his mouth and signaled to the bartender for another. The bartender frowned. We had been keeping him busy.

“Benedict?”

He lifted his glass, tried to drain out the last drops. Then he said, “No one knows where Natalie is.”

I made a face. “I get that there’s secrecy—”

“Not just secrecy.” He kept an impatient eye toward the bartender now. “No one knows where she is.”

“Come on. Someone must.”

He shook his head. “That’s part of it. That’s our saving grace. That’s what’s keeping our people alive right now. Or so I hope. Todd was tortured. You know that, right? He could give up certain things—the retreat in Vermont, some members—but not even he knows where they go after they get their”—he made quote marks in the air—“‘fresh start.’”

“But they know who you are.”

“Only Malcolm does. I was the exception because I came from overseas. The rest? Fresh Start set them up. They are given all the tools. Then, for everyone’s safety, they go out on their own and tell no one where they end up. That’s what I mean by compartmentalizing. We all know just enough—and not any more than that.”

Nobody knew where Natalie was. I tried to let that sink in. It wouldn’t. Natalie was in danger, and I could do nothing about it. Natalie was out there alone, and I couldn’t be with her.

Benedict shut down then. He had explained as much as he ever would. I knew that now. As we left the bar and staggered back to the house, I made my own promise of sorts. I would back off. I would let it go. I could deal with this pain—I had dealt with it in other forms for six years—in exchange for the safety of the woman I loved.

I could live without Natalie, but I couldn’t live if I did something that would put her in danger. I had been warned repeatedly. Now it was time to listen.