Gone Before Goodbye

Chapter Seventeen

Maggie sinks into the plush sofa next to Nadia.

The two women sit side by side in silence, both staring out at the curtain. The music thumps into the room, but it seems hushed now, respectful almost, as though the entire club is receding into the backdrop.

“I know you asked for me,” Maggie says.

“Asked?”

“To be your surgeon. You requested me.”

“Yes.” Nadia stares out. A sad smile comes to her face. “We met before, you know.”

“I don’t.”

“No reason you would. I was eleven. In Libya. You probably treated a hundred girls that day, maybe more.”

“Salima—”

“I prefer Nadia, if that’s okay. I was both for a while, but Salima is dead now. She died in that refugee camp too.”

“You’ve been lying to me,” Maggie says.

Nadia doesn’t answer.

“That tattoo,” Maggie says.

“It was temporary, yeah.” She shakes her head. “I should have kept it on longer, I guess.”

“I’d have figured it out anyway.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Why did you do it?”

“The tattoo? Why do you think?”

“To mess with my head.”

“Yes.” Nadia still stares out, so that Maggie has the profile view. “Most of what I told you is true. I grew up in Libya during a time...”

She stops, closes her eyes, opens them again. “That’s not important. There were refugee camps. There were humanitarian crises. You were there. I don’t need to explain to you how bad it was. And yes, I sold my kidney. Just as I told you. The World Health Organization claims over two thousand kidneys were sold in India alone last year. That’s a small part of the worldwide black market. I have no regrets. I explained my reasons for doing so. It saved my family.”

“Nadia?”

“What?”

“Are you in any pain right now? I mean, from the surgery.”

Nadia chuckles at that. “A physician first.”

“I should probably examine you.”

“No, I’m fine. Really.” Then: “Charles sent you, didn’t he?”

“You know Charles Lockwood?”

“I work with him.”

“He didn’t mention that.”

“He doesn’t trust me right now. It’s why he sent you. He told you about the money laundering?”

“Yes.”

“Did he give you his whole theory on corruption — on how it starts small and it either grows like a cancer or it dies?”

“He didn’t use a cancer analogy.”

“But you get it. And if it starts with money laundering, you can probably guess the next profitable step.”

Maggie nods. “Selling organs.”

“I was in that refugee camp when I was recruited to donate my kidney. WorldCures was there too. After I agreed to be a donor, I was flown here. For the surgery.”

Maggie is puzzled by this. “To Dubai?”

“Yes. To a place called Apollo Longevity.”

Apollo Longevity.

Nadia is trying to read her face. “You’ve been there, right? At Apollo Longevity.”

“You already know I have.”

Nadia gives her a slow nod. “WorldCures has a relationship with Apollo Longevity.”

“Had,” Maggie says, correcting her. She tries to keep her voice controlled, even, though the memories are starting to rock her. “We had some space in their facility.” And then, because Maggie wants to change the subject and is tired of Nadia’s cute evasions: “Are you going to tell me my husband removed your kidney?”

“I wouldn’t care if he did, but no, I don’t know. What matters is that I got my family out. At a cost. Not just my kidney. The organ brokers, they would only provide two of us with identities to get into the United States. I gave them to my mother and my brother. They do live in the Midwest now, just like I told you. They are prosperous and happy.”

“And what about you, Nadia? What happened to you?”

“I stayed here. In Dubai.”

“On your own?”

“Yes.”

“That must have been difficult.”

“Not really, no,” she says, but the words feel forced. “I, Salima, became Nadia. I did well here. I worked in clubs like this. Someone — a man usually — was always willing to take care of me. One Ukrainian benefactor gave me access to online education. He opened the door, and I walked through it. I learned quite a few languages, including Russian and English, which helped when I met Trace Packer one night at this club. He’d been drinking heavily. You know Trace liked nightclubs, right?”

“Yes.”

“He told me I looked familiar. I figured it was just a line—”

It probably was, Maggie thinks.

“—and I was going to tell him he was mistaken, but I, well, I remembered him. He was kind at the refugee camp. He was so nice to his patients. So I told him who I was.”

“You told him you were Salima?”

“From the refugee camp, yes. He said he remembered me. The next day, we met for coffee. He told me about WorldCures’ latest missions. So I volunteered to help out.”

Maggie tries to sort this all out in her head. Some of it she had figured out already. Charles Lockwood had hinted that laundering money was only the start — that that crime alone would not have been enough to make Marc flip on someone as deadly as Oleg Ragoravich.

But harvesting organs?

That would have been the proverbial straw for Marc. The money laundering — again, it was bad but once you cross that line, there really is no going back. Even if Marc wanted to flip on that, everyone who worked at WorldCures — especially their three founders — would be subject to prosecution or, at the very least, have their reputations destroyed. More than that — much more — Oleg Ragoravich would never let them sell him out and just walk away. If Marc or Trace had any delusions about that, one quick helicopter trip would have straightened them out.

“So you accompanied Marc and Trace on that last mission,”

Maggie says to her.

“Yes. I knew the area. I speak all the dialects.”

“So what happened?”

“We got overrun. A surprise attack. Just like you heard. It was a slaughter. Trace and I tried getting people to safety. We were mostly successful. But Marc” — she stops, shakes her head — “he was so brave. Just like you heard. He insisted we go without him. He stayed behind, tried to save more. But still...”

Nadia stops.

“Still what?”

“The situation was dangerous, sure, but the invaders let the medical staff live.”

Maggie swallows. “Except for Marc.”

“Yes,” Nadia says. “He’s the only one they killed.”

“You have a theory why?”

Nadia nods. “I think someone sold Marc out.”

She lifts her head to look at Maggie now. Nadia’s eyes are on fire, hot with anger, full of hostility even.

“And I think that someone was you, Maggie.”

Maggie doesn’t even know how to respond to Nadia’s words, so she goes with the most obvious:

“You think I had something to do with my husband’s murder?”

Nadia stays quiet for a beat, but for Maggie, the pieces are slowly starting to, if not come together, at least fall out of the box and onto the table.

“Is that why you asked specifically for me to do your surgery? You wanted to get me alone. At that house. All those weird conversations, Oleg’s ball, the hints something was wrong. And then, boom, the tattoo.” How had Maggie not seen it? “You were trying to mess with my mind.”

Nadia finally speaks. “Yes.”

“You were hoping — Jesus, what were you hoping for?”

“That you’d slip up,” Nadia says. “That you’d reveal the truth.”

“The truth that I, what? That I would...” She can’t even say it.

Nadia doesn’t reply.

“Why the hell would you think I had something to do with...?” Maggie still can’t articulate the thought.

Killing Marc?

Nadia stands as though she’s about to leave. Uh-uh, no way, Maggie thinks. She blocks her path.

“You don’t just lay down an accusation like that and walk away.”

“I’m not walking away.”

“What then?”

Nothing from Nadia.

Maggie gets up in her face. “I lost the man that I loved,” she says.

And Nadia replies, “So did I.”

Silence.

“What are you talking about?”

Maggie almost takes a step back. She shakes her head. No way. No way.

“Wait, if you’re trying to say that you and Marc...”

“No,” Nadia says.

Maggie stops. “What then?”

Maggie looks Nadia over as though looking for a clue — and finds one. She hadn’t focused on it before, but once Maggie’s eyes latch on to it, she can’t wrest her gaze away.

Nadia is wearing a ring on her left hand.

She hadn’t been wearing it in Russia, that’s for certain. But she’s wearing it now. Maggie slowly reaches out for Nadia’s hand. Nadia pulls back at first, but then she lets her.

It’s a square-shaped emerald.

The one from that faded photograph in Trace’s apartment.

The same one Trace had clutched at his mother’s funeral.

Oh, damn.

Those puzzle pieces on the table? They start to shift into place.

Maggie meets Nadia’s eyes. “You and Trace...?” Her voice drifts away.

Nadia nods.

Maggie closes her eyes.

“Trace is missing,” Nadia says. “Do you know where he is?”

Oh man, she should have seen this. Maybe not immediately. Not when she first got to Ragoravich’s or even when she met Nadia — but as soon as Maggie realized that Nadia was, in fact, Salima, she should have figured it out.

“We’re in love,” Nadia says.

More pieces drop into place.

“Where is he?” Nadia asks.

“I don’t know.”

“You claim he went to Bangladesh,” Nadia says.

“Whoa, I don’t claim anything. That’s what Trace told me.”

“Told you how?”

“On the phone. He called me. After Marc was murdered. He’d thought about coming back to the States. Pay his respects. That kind of thing. He wanted to make sure I was okay.”

“Were you?”

“Okay? No, of course not. But he couldn’t help with that. No one could. But Trace, well, he wasn’t the best with death or grieving. Have you seen that side of him?”

“Yes,” Nadia says.

“Then you know.”

“It hurts him too much. Other people’s pain. He has to deflect, channel it into something more constructive.”

That isn’t it, but Maggie sees no reason to go into that right now.

Nadia asks, “When did you last communicate with Trace?”

“When I was in his apartment the day before I came to Russia.”

“Why were you in his apartment?”

“Because that’s what we used to do. Trace asked me to look in on his place if I was in town. A long time ago, Marc and I lived in that building too.”

“And you talked to Trace a week or so ago?”

“Texted.”

“A text can be faked.”

“What?”

“It could have been anyone on the other end. What did your text to him say?”

Okay, Maggie thinks, that’s enough. “It said none of your goddamn business. Let me ask you the same thing: When was the last time you talked to Trace?”

“Here. In Dubai. Five months ago. The day you called him.”

Maggie frowns. “I didn’t call Trace five months ago.”

“That’s what he told me.” A tear runs down Nadia’s cheek. “He was upset. He said he was going to fly to Baltimore. That he had to see you in person.”

Maggie shakes her head.

“I went with him to the airport,” Nadia says. “I kissed him goodbye at Terminal 1. I watched him walk through security...” Nadia stops and looks away. “And that’s it. Trace never came back. He never called me again. He just... vanished.”

Silence.

“What did you say when you called him?” Nadia asks.

“I didn’t call him, Nadia.”

“And what happened when you met with him in Baltimore?”

“I didn’t meet with him in Baltimore.”

“So Trace was lying to me?”

Maggie doesn’t know how to answer that.

Nadia lifts her hand and points to the emerald ring. “He proposed, you know.”

“I had no idea.”

“We were going to get married.”

It made no sense. It made perfect sense.

Trace had always professed to be a confirmed bachelor, that he wasn’t built for long-term relationships, and his past actions more than bore that out. So had Nadia changed him?

Could be.

Nadia made for a pretty amazing package. Maybe Trace had fallen for real this time. He gave her his mother’s ring, for crying out loud. Maggie couldn’t get over that. Trace’s mother’s ring on Nadia’s finger.

Wow.

So maybe, in that way at least, Trace had changed. What do they say in finance? Past performance is not an indicator of future results.

“Then suddenly,” Nadia continues, “after Trace goes to see you—”

“He didn’t see me, Nadia—”

“—my fiancé vanishes and supposedly ran off to help people in Bangladesh or somewhere else too remote to reach him. Not one word to me. Not a goodbye. Not a breakup. Nothing. Don’t you find that strange?”

Maggie doesn’t reply.

“And no one knows any details about his whereabouts. If he’s working for a relief organization, no one can tell me which one. No one sees him or communicates with him. Meanwhile the last place he said he was going was, well, to visit you. So I start to wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“You left WorldCures—”

“My mother—”

“I know. She was ill. But come on, Maggie. You left WorldCures. You had some idea of what was going on. Let’s not pretend.”

That accusation again. What’s the old joke her father used to tell? “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.” Had she intentionally looked away from the finances? Probably. And yes, she knew that Marc and Trace were risk-takers, that they were pushing boundaries, that they were frustrated by the normal protocols that slowed down medical advancements. They wanted to speed up their progress, ends-justify-the-means kind of guys, and when those two were both together, when you blended Marc’s and Trace’s passion, the result bordered on the toxic.

And there had been that surgery, that awful surgery here in Dubai...

“Do you see how it looks?” Nadia continues. “You leave WorldCures — and then on his very last humanitarian mission, someone sells out your husband.”

“Oleg Ragoravich probably.”

“That was my thinking too,” Nadia says. “At first. Which is why I made it my business to get close to him.”

“How?” Maggie asks, and as soon as she does, she realizes how stupid the question is. No need for subtlety. “You, what, seduced him?”

“The man I loved had vanished. I would do anything to get him back.”

Sounds like a yes. “So how did it happen?”

“Like a lot of oligarchs, Ragoravich had made Dubai a big part of his life. I made sure we crossed paths. At this very club, as a matter of fact.”

“Jesus.”

“Are you judging me again?”

Maggie shakes her head. “No, go on.”

“I wanted him to take me back to Russia.”

“Which he did.”

“Yes. I thought I would find answers there.”

“And did you?”

“No, not really. I searched Oleg’s computers and files. I don’t think he had anything to do with Marc or Trace. So I kept asking myself: If Oleg isn’t behind all this, who else could it be?”

Maggie makes a face. “And the answer was me?”

“I couldn’t forget Trace’s face getting on that plane. He was so shaken. Scared, even. I’d never seen him like that. Don’t you see how it looked? Trace gets a call. He’s upset. He drops everything and flies to you and then, poof, no one ever sees him again.”

Nadia gives Maggie a challenging look. Maggie shakes it off.

“I had nothing to do with that,” Maggie says. “Trace is my friend. We were in combat together.”

Nadia’s eyes continue to bore into hers. “I just want to find the man I love. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Of course.”

“So now I’m in Russia, with Oleg. I’m learning about how he had his hand in all these medical charities. But I’m getting nowhere with my original mission.”

“Finding Trace.”

“Yes. But I’m starting to wonder what you’re hiding.”

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“Meanwhile Oleg, he keeps saying how he loves me, but I’m too skinny. When a man says you’re too skinny, well, you know...”

Maggie knows. They both know. Most women know.

“So Oleg, he was already looking into finding a discreet surgeon for some plastic surgery of his own. When I heard that, I suggested that at the same time, hey, I could get bigger boobs. He loved the idea.”

“Big surprise,” Maggie says.

The two women share a knowing smile. Men. They don’t change much.

“So now I put myself in charge of finding the surgeon.”

“And you made sure that I got selected?”

“Yes.”

“So you could get me to Oleg’s weird palace and hope, what, I’d crack?”

“Yes,” Nadia says. Simple as that. “I’d control the environment. You’d be isolated, out of your element, off-balance. I wanted to confuse you, make you question everything. The tattoo was a big part of that. By the way, I saw the tattoo on Marc in a pool here in Dubai. He and Trace told me the story about how he got it in college. I had other things planned for you, and if they didn’t work, I planned on directly confronting you — like I am now.”

“You had other things planned?”

“Yes.”

“More head games?”

“Yes. You were supposed to stay longer. Your first demand was two weeks.”

Maggie remembers. “So what went wrong, Nadia? Why was everyone suddenly in a panic after the operations?”

“I don’t know. But it had something to do with Oleg.”

“What?”

“From what I could make out, he ran after the surgery. I heard gunfire. A couple of guys got shot and killed, I think. Ivan wanted me out of the way, so I asked them to fly me back home.”

“You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”

Nadia smiles. “Not luck. I took precautions. Killing me would have made it worse for them.”

Maggie thinks about it for a moment. They’re missing something...

“Wait, why would Oleg Ragoravich want facial surgery anyway?”

“Oleg kept making jokes it would make him prettier.”

“But we don’t believe that.”

“We don’t,” Nadia agrees.

“Oleg wanted to disguise himself. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“And if that was the plan, why would he run?”

“I don’t know,” Nadia says. “I also don’t know how you escaped. How did you get out?”

Maggie shakes her head. She’s not ready to go there just yet.

A man dressed in, yep, a black suit opens the curtain. He says something to Nadia in Arabic. She nods.

“I have to go.”

“So now what?” Maggie asks.

“I’m not sure. I don’t even understand why you ended up coming to Dubai.”

“The same reason you did,” Maggie says. “To get answers. To find Trace.”

“And maybe also find...?” Nadia asks, her voice with a little tease in it.

Maggie isn’t about to go there. “And maybe also find a way to bring down this whole enterprise.”

Nadia still has a hint of a smile on her face. “So the two of us should work together?”

“Yes.”

“Except, Maggie, I don’t trust you.”

“Perfect,” Maggie says, “because I don’t trust you either.”