Upside Down

Epilogue

The dapper Phillip Dresser sat alone at a small table in a coffee shop, watching the passersby. The night before, he'd eaten dinner at Brennan's Steak House so he could monitor the Masseys and Faith Ann, who had been seated at a nearby table.

He had decided that the safest place to hide from his enemies, who would assume he was heading back to Moscow, was in New Orleans, at the Pontchartrain Hotel. He would repay his handler for the betrayal, without even lifting a hand. Yuri Chenchenko would spend his life in a perpetual cold sweat anticipating Styer's return-seeing ghosts until he died, hopefully many years down the road.

Styer looked at his watch.

Any minute now, he thought.

Moments later they came into sight, moving along the concourse. He smiled as he watched Winter, Sean, Rush, and Faith Ann strolling toward their flight to Texas. They were headed there to bury Kimberly Porter and Millie Porter Trammel. After that they would fly back to Charlotte. In a month, Hank would be able to return to North Carolina. Styer envied the old man. Hank would spend his last years surrounded by people who loved him. He wondered if these people really knew how lucky they were. Of course they know.

Faith Ann looked directly at Dresser. The girl couldn't recognize him-she, like Winter, had been far too preoccupied to have noticed him in the crowds, disguised and shadowing their party during the past days, listening to their conversations. She looked as skinny as ever, and her butchered hair was tousled and uncombed, but the happiness he saw reflected in her eyes warmed him. You raised yourself a special daughter there, Kimberly Porter, he thought. She does you proud.

Styer had an hour before his flight to Denver. He put a new toothpick in the corner of his mouth. The wooden pacifier was something he'd picked up recently-a habit he found oddly soothing.