“I know. But, son, when you love someone, you look past that. When she was here, with us, she was Sally and she was great. When she walked out the door, she went to work. If she had to be somebody else, I was okay with that.”

“Then she walked out on us. Chose Rebecca over Sally.”

“Right. And that is unforgivable.”

Unforgivable.

I want to spend the next five hours talking to my dad, but I can’t. For one of the few times in years, I’m pissed off that I have Henry Bins.

“I need to go but I’m gonna call you tomorrow, and you are gonna tell me everything you know about mom.”

He agrees, though I have a feeling he just did.

It is 3:23 a.m.

I jump on the internet and type “Rebecca Hulgev.” There are a bunch of Hulgevs, a bunch of Rebeccas, but no Rebecca Hulgev.

Lassie jumps back on my lap.

I sniff.

He smells fine.

I scratch behind his ears while I think.

My mother wasn’t a terrorist. She was a spy.

She would have been in her mid-sixties now. She couldn’t possibly have still been a spy, could she?

I imagine my mother’s dark brown hair laced with gray. The sharp angles of her face slightly more relaxed, crow’s feet adhering to the edges of her blistering green eyes. Surely, she was retired by now, living out her days on her pension, drinking piña coladas somewhere tropical.

But she hadn’t.

And now she was dead.

My brain fills with question marks.

How did my mother end up on the Department of Homeland Security’s radar? If she was a spy, why was she flagged a Red Four? What if my mother turned? What if she flipped sides? I wasn’t sure where she was from, but my mom wasn’t from the United States. She had an accent. Didn’t she? Eastern European? You can’t fake that. Or could you? Was she recruited into the CIA during the Cold War? Was she a sleeper agent this whole time? Was she Russian? Ukrainian?

President Sullivan had mentioned the problems in the Ukraine. Could my mother’s death be related?

I shake my head, trying to exit fantasyland and get back to reality.

I look at the clock.

3:37 a.m.

Lassie looks up at me.

I know the look.

“Fine.”

I go to the fridge and uncover his bowl of cat food and put it on the ground. I grab a premade Cobb salad and sit down to the computer.

I ponder calling the federal morgue in McLean where, according to Ingrid, my mother’s body was moved. But if they gave her the runaround, then I have little chance.

I imagine them asking me what her name was and my reply. Um, it could be Sally Bins, Rebecca Hulgev, or ten others.

No, that wouldn’t work.