But that would require Alena's corroboration, and as Alena was known in certain law enforcement and intelligence circles as Drama, and as Drama was wanted in connection with something in the neighborhood of two dozen murders-for-hire, the odds of her corroboration being seen as credible were pretty damn low. If she walked into the Federal Building in lower Manhattan, the only way she'd walk out again would be in full restraints, with a phalanx of guards, on her way to arraignment.

If she walked out at all.

Someone had hired Oxford to kill her, after all, and that someone was most likely connected with the government. Just because Oxford was currently bloating with swamp water in the Allendale Nature Preserve didn't mean another attempt on Alena's life wouldn't be made.

Even now, we didn't know who had bought the hit. We didn't have the first idea.

I had given Alena my word that I would protect her. I had sacrificed friends and future because I believed her when she told me that she was a killer no more. I had promised her that she would be safe. The best way I could keep that promise was to button her up someplace safe and secure, and that someplace was this house in Cold Spring. Natalie would run the security, and Dan would provide the muscle and the firepower. Nothing fancy, just a safe place that could be secured and controlled for a week, maybe two at the outside. Long enough to be sure that the threat to Alena was gone, that Oxford was the end of it. Long enough for me to disappear someplace far, far away. It didn't matter where.

Just someplace where the people I loved didn't die because of the things I'd done, or the man I'd become. Miata padded off into the darkness, in search of Alena, and I listened with half an ear to Natalie and Dan, standing around the kitchen table, discussing the security he'd put in place. Vadim up in the tree house had been a last-minute addition, it seemed, placed up there while Illya-the guard on the front door-had been dispatched to find me a car. While they talked I found myself a nearly clean glass and filled it with water, drinking it down. I was still wearing my Kevlar, and while it was a light vest, about as thin and comfortable as these kind of things ever managed to be, I was warm in it.