Fool Me Once

She made sure the Glock was loaded and closed the safe. She strapped on a leather IWB (inside waistband) holster, which would keep the Glock concealed, especially when she wore certain flex-fabric jeans and a dark blazer. She liked the feel of carrying. On some alternate planet, you weren’t supposed to like it-it was wrong, it showed you were violent, whatever-but there was something both primitive and comforting in the weight of the weapon. That could, of course, be a danger too. You get overconfident. You tend to let yourself get into situations that you shouldn’t because, hey, you could always shoot your way out of them. You start to feel a little indestructible, a little full of yourself, a little too brave, a little too macho.

Carrying guns gave you options. That was not always a good thing.

* * *

Maya stuck the nanny cam frame in the back of the car. She didn’t want it in the house anymore.

She put the address Christopher Swain had given her into her map app, which informed her the ride with current traffic conditions would take one hour, thirty-six minutes. She blasted Joe’s playlist on the ride. Again she couldn’t say why. The first song was Rhye’s “Open,” which starts hot and heavy with the line “I’m a fool for that shake in your thighs,” but a few lines later, in the afterglow of the moment, you can feel a gap growing between the lovers: “I know you’re faded, mmm, but stay, don’t close your eyes.”

In the next song, Lapsley gorgeously sang a warning: “It’s been a long time coming, but I’m falling short.” Boy, did that feel apropos.

Maya got lost in the music, singing out loud, drumming on the steering wheel. In real life, in the helicopter, in the Middle East, at her home, everywhere, she cut it all off and kept it down. But not here. Not alone in a goddamn car. Alone in goddamn cars, Maya blared the music and shouted every lyric.

Damn right.

The final song, as she hit the Darien town line, was a haunting beauty from Cocoon called, weirdly enough, “Sushi,” and once again the opening line smacked her like a two-by-four: “In the morning, I’ll go down the graveyard, to make sure you’re gone for good…”

That sobered her up.

Some days, every song seems to be talking directly to you, don’t they?

And some days, a lyric may hit too close to home.

She drove down a narrow, quiet street. Thick woods lined both sides of it. The phone map showed that the address was at the end of a dead end. If that was the case, and she had no reason to doubt it, the residence was in a secluded spot. There was a guard booth at the top of the driveway. The gate was lowered. Maya pulled up to it as the guard approached her.

“May I help you?”

“I’m here to see Christopher Swain.”

The guard vanished back into his hut and picked up the phone. A moment later, he hung up and came back over to her. “Drive up to the guest lot. It’ll be on the right. Someone will meet you there.”

Guest lot?

As she drove up the driveway, she realized that this was not a residence. So what was it? There were security cameras on trees. Buildings of rain-gray stone started popping up. The overall feel, what with the seclusion and stone and layout, was very similar to Franklin Biddle Academy.

There were probably ten cars in the guest lot. When Maya parked, another security guard drove toward her in a golf cart. She quickly took out her gun-no doubt in her mind there would be some kind of wanding or metal detector here-and jammed it into her glove compartment.

The security driver took a cursory look at the car and invited her to get into the passenger seat of the golf cart. Maya did.

“May I see your ID, please?”

She handed him her driver’s license. He snapped a photograph of it with his camera phone and gave it back to her. “Mr. Swain is in Brocklehurst Hall. I’ll take you there.”

As they began to drive, Maya spotted various people-mostly in their twenties, men and women, all white-huddled oddly in groups or walking fast in pairs. Many, too many of them, were smoking. Most wore jeans, sneakers, and an assortment of sweatshirts or heavy sweaters. There was what looked like a college quad, except there was a fountain statue of what might have been the Virgin Mary dead center.

Maya asked out loud what she’d been asking herself. “What is this place?”

The security guard pointed at the Virgin Mary. “Until the late seventies, it was a convent, believe it or not.”

She believed it.

“Full of nuns back then.”

“No kidding,” Maya said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. Like what else would a convent be full of? “And what is it now?”

He frowned. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Who are you visiting?”

“Christopher Swain.”

“It isn’t my place to say anything.”

“Please.” She said it in a voice that made him suck in his gut. “I just need to know where I am.”

He sighed, just to give the impression of thinking it over, and said, “This is the Solemani Recovery Center.”