Connor.
My brother's head is bandaged, and I can see some dried blood on his chin. But the first thing he asks when I come into view is "Lanny? Are you okay?"
"Yes." I realize I'm whispering. "I'm okay. I just--" I swallow. "I'm afraid he's coming back." Something terrible occurs to me, and I stand up and look around. Really look. There aren't any closets. No hidden places for my dad to be hiding in. "Did Dad tell you he'd meet you here?"
"No," Connor says. He looks so miserable. "He was supposed to meet me at the house. I never meant this to happen, I swear, I just--" He starts to cry like his heart is breaking. "He said he loved me."
I can't imagine what that feels like, or how big it seems to him. I just want to wrap my arms around him and hug him until he stops feeling so bad. Until he's my annoying little brother again.
He's the one who's been quietly, constantly suffering, and I didn't even know about it.
Connor gulps and says, "Please come back. Please. You have to."
He backs away from the camera. Kezia leans in, and I see her looking at him in concern for a second before she transfers attention back to me. "Honey, I need you to find yourself a place to hide. If you can't find one in there, get out of that cabin. We're triangulating the signal, and we're sending police as fast as we can. I'm going to stay here and stay on the line with you. Take the laptop with you if you can and keep it on."
I have to keep the lid open, and that's awkward, but stepping out of the cabin feels like intense relief. It only lasts a few seconds, though, and then I start wondering where the van is. Is it coming back? I can't see anything through the trees. I can't hear anything.
What if he comes back on foot? I had to leave my club behind.
"There's no place to hide," I tell Kezia miserably. "It's just the cabin and trees." I pan the camera around.
"Stop," Kezia says. "What's that?"
I take a look at what I moved past. "I think maybe it's a well? Do you want me to open it?"
"See if it's some kind of basement," she says. "But don't go down there. Just look."
I reach out and wrap my hand around the metal cover, then slide it back. I can't see anything much. There's a ladder on the side, rickety iron, but I can't tell if there's a room down there.
I turn up the brightness on the laptop as much as I can, minimize the Skype screen, and go to a white page. Then I angle the laptop awkward over the edge and shine the light down.
It's not as deep as I thought. If it was once a well, it's been filled in part of the way. About fifteen feet down, the ladder ends in a concrete floor.
There's a white pile of sticks down there. Lots of sticks. I don't know what it is until I see the pale curve of something that looks . . .
. . . like a skull.
I'm looking at bones.
I almost drop the laptop. I hear a high, thin hissing in my ears, and I stumble backward and sit down, fast. The laptop falls on the ground next to me, but the lid doesn't close. Everything looks grainy and weird, and I feel like I'm floating.
I'm fainting, I think, and that's so stupid. Why would I do that? My heart isn't pounding, it's almost fluttering, and I feel sick. Cold sweat has broken out on the back of my neck, on my face, my neck, under my breasts and arms. It smells rancid.
I don't know what's happening to me.
"Lanny!"
I blink. Kezia's been calling my name for a long while now. I turn toward the laptop. I tilt it so the camera can see my face, and I bring up the Skype screen. Kezia's practically filling the camera, she's leaning so close.
"There are dead people," I tell her. "In the well. They're dead."
I see her swallow. I want to cry again, but everything feels wrong side out now. I don't know if I have tears. I can't feel anything but cold.
"Are you coming?" I ask her. "Please come. Please."
"We are," she promises. Kezia's got tears for me. I can see them rolling down her cheeks. "You just breathe, sweetheart. We've--" She pauses to listen to something someone's shouting in the background. Takes in a deep, unsteady breath. "Okay, we've got your signal triangulated. We're coming, Lanny. We're coming right now. I'm going to send Connor with Detective Prester, and I'm going to stay right here with you. Right here. I'm not going to leave you alone, okay?"
"I'm okay," I say. It's automatic. I'm not okay. I'm glad she didn't shut down the call. I don't know what I'd do if someone wasn't looking at me. Scream, probably. Or just . . . vanish. This feels like a place where people just . . . disappear.
Kezia keeps telling me I'm safe, but I don't feel safe at all.
I sit and stare at that open pit until I hear the sirens coming. All this time I thought I knew what evil was. Mom knew. I pretended. But now I know it's that room in the cabin. That pile of bones. Evil's a quiet place, and darkness.
Kezia says, "Can you see the police cars? They're coming up that road. They're coming now. Don't worry about the man in the van. They got him down toward the main road. He's in custody. He can't hurt you."
I nod. I look away from the pit. I look at her, and I say, "He was going to bring Connor here. Wasn't he?"
She doesn't answer.
I'm glad she doesn't.
24
SAM
Mike Lustig and I sit in the coffee shop where I'd retrieved the tablet, and a few customers trickle in as the leaden sun rises. Some of the cloud cover begins to thin. Ice will melt off by noon, the news is promising, but commuting will still be a mess. Flights are starting in an hour out of the airport, which is now packed with stranded travelers.
Gwen is gone. There's no tracking her now. We lost any chance at it the second that van went over the hill and disappeared into thin air. There's nowhere for me to put my grief and fear and anger except to bottle it up inside. That pressure cooker will only hold for so long, but it has to hold for now.
We have to find a way to get to Melvin Royal that they can't foresee.
Mike and I ignore the slow resumption of normal life and sit in the corner watching the video as we try to find something, anything, that we've missed. The tablet has a provision for two sets of earphones, and he has his own. When we get to the end of the video the first time, Mike nods and makes a circling motion with his hand. Play it again. I do, all the way through. We watch it over and over again, and I've lost count of the screams, the pleas, the questions and answers. I see nothing I didn't see before.
And then I do.
It's a flash of memory rather than what's on the screen, sparked by the sight of a dirty eighteen-wheeler moving past the coffee-shop windows. And from that random glimpse, my viewpoint shifts, and I get it. I know why all this is happening. Why I've been feeling this shadow, this weight, almost from the beginning.
I wish I could feel relief. I don't. I feel real horror twisting my guts into a knot. This can't be happening. Can't be right.
Mike sees it in me as I take my headphones off, and he pauses the video midscream. "What? What is it?"
"We got it wrong. No. No, I got it wrong from the start." My voice sounds rough and distorted. It's my fault. That fact yawns in front of me in a black, bottomless canyon of blame. "Christ, I did this, Mike. It's--"
"Hey, man, focus. What did I miss?"
"You didn't miss anything," I say. "Come on. We've got to move, now."
I'm already on my feet. He grabs the tablet and shoves the headphones in his pocket. "Where are we going?"
"The airport."
"Airport? Tell me you're not taking their bait and going to Kansas, man. You're smarter than that . . ."
The walkway's been coated with rock salt, and it crunches under my boots as we head for the Jeep. The air tastes heavy, sharp in my lungs with ice crystals, but the sun's a thick, hazy glow behind the clouds. The front will burn off soon. I'm thinking about that because I'm trying to figure logistics. Logistics is better than the guilt, because if I fall into that chasm, I'm never climbing out of it alive.
"Let me ask you a question," I
tell him. "What was the name plastered on that eighteen-wheeler on the access road last night?"
Mike pauses to stare at me over the hood of the Jeep. "The hell are you talking about?"
"Last night we were following the white van. It was about a half a mile up when the pickup wrecked, remember? When we came over the hill, we saw a red sedan, another black Jeep going too fast, a police SUV with lights burning. And an eighteen-wheeler."
He's frowning now, and I can tell he thinks I've completely dropped my marbles. Maybe I have. Maybe coming at this crazy is the only way to understand it. "What about the eighteen-wheeler?"
"Rivard Luxe," I tell him. "The truck on that road had Rivard Luxe written on the side of it. Mike, it's big enough to fit a van inside."
I see it when I blink: fancy gilded script on the dirty side of that eighteen-wheeler, as if it's suspended on a jumbotron hanging right in front of me. The most vivid memory I've ever had. I noticed, but I didn't pay attention. I was too focused on Gwen, on that van, to see what was right in front of me.
Mike still isn't getting it. I open up the driver's-side door and get in, and when he's inside, too, he says, "Even if you're right, what the hell does the truck have to do with the video we were just watching?"
"The first time we talked about the video, I asked if you knew the name Rivard," I say. "And you told me that Ballantine Rivard is famous. From that moment on, we were making the wrong assumptions. We just did it again, while we were watching it."
"Jesus." Mike drags out the word, and it's so reverent it's almost a prayer. "That poor bastard PI wasn't hired by Ballantine Rivard. He just said Rivard."
"Exactly," I say, firing up the Jeep. "He wasn't hired by the old man at all. He was hired by Rivard's son. The dead one."
"And that's not a coincidence," Mike says. He gets it now. All the way. "Fuck."
So now we know. The problem now is . . . what can we do about it?
There's a reason I want Mike on my side. FBI agents carry weight.
Mike has a backroom conversation with an airline manager who magically produces two tickets for us, despite the backlog of travelers, and we're rushed through security on the strength of his badge and into business-class seats to Atlanta on the first available flight.
I'm reminded of the plush seats on the Rivard Luxe plane we took to and from Wichita, and I feel angry and sick that I fell for it. I keep chewing on it. I can see it all now, every step. Ballantine Rivard has gone out of his way to mislead us, misdirect us, threaten Gwen, sow doubt and fear to split us up.
I'd lay heavy bets that Rivard's son was never hounded to his death by Absalom. Not the way his father described to us, anyway.
"Rivard's never going to talk to us," Mike says. "I don't have a hope in hell of getting a warrant based on a supposition and a wild-ass guess."
"I know you don't." I sound bitter and angry, and I am, because I've been a damn fool. I've left the idea that Gwen's guilty in the rearview. I don't know why I ever fell for it in the first place, except that I was already conditioned to believe it. She's only ever been straight with me. I'm the one who lied. I'm the one who came into her life intending to tear it apart.
And now I've done that, and I need to find her and help her put it back together. It's the only way I can even start to make up for what I've just done to her.
"How do you feel about helping me out without that badge?" I ask Mike, and he sighs.
"I'm not too likely to be carrying one, anyway, once this is all done; the Bureau doesn't much like agents going rogue, and brother, I am as rogue right now as it gets. But I'll stand with you." He's silent for a second, maybe just contemplating the breathtaking mistake we've both made to get us here, and then he asks, "You think Rivard's behind his son's death?"
"Has to be," I say. "That tower is his fortress, and if I had to guess, the stores are nothing but an elaborate money-laundering operation. Absalom's dark web is his real business, and he wasn't about to let anybody kill his golden goose. If his son got too close, maybe grew a conscience, that explains his 'suicide.'" I air-quote. I'm basing a lot on an eighteen-wheeler and a guess, but it all rings true. It all, finally, makes sense to me.
I knew something was off about that slick old man. I'd felt it from the beginning--the effortless way he'd conned us into the tower, then gotten us to do his bidding in Wichita. He wanted a plausible way for the second false video about Gwen to be discovered, and maybe Suffolk had been getting a little difficult. Two birds, one stone.
This goes deeper and darker than I ever imagined. Melvin Royal, vile as he is, is just another tool for Absalom--fulfilling his own sick fantasies, and there was Rivard, ready to pay him to do it. I feel dizzy and sick with the scope of it, and the cruelty.
"I don't care what we have to do," I tell Mike in a low, dead-quiet voice. "I want Rivard to tell us where Gwen is. Whatever it takes."
"Whatever it takes," Mike says. "But you need to gear down a little, son. Save that edge for when you need it."
I sit in impatient, jittering silence as the plane is deiced, as we wait for our turn for a runway, and finally, we launch upward toward Atlanta.
We land at three o'clock. The weather is crisp and clear and barely qualifies as fall, much less the winter we just left. We rent another SUV, this one on Mike's personal credit card, and he takes all the damage insurance. "Screw it," he says. "I'm not worrying about the paint job."
We get to Rivard Luxe and park in the visitor's area in the garage. We sit for a moment, and Mike says, "You got even the vaguest idea what we're going to do now?"
"Sure," I say. "I'm just trying to think of a better one, because this tactic is liable to get us adjoining cells. Mike . . . I'm talking federal offense."
"You're selling this plan hard. Well, I said I'm in, so let's get on with it. Don't spell it out for me. I don't want to know." I know he feels every tick of the clock, just like I do. Gwen's out there, and in the back of my mind, I can't help imagining what might be happening to her already. I have to keep that locked up. If I don't, I'm going to rush, make bad decisions, and all this will be for nothing.
"Okay," I say. "I need you to go across the street to that convenience store we saw on the corner. Buy a ball cap, a clipboard, a manila folder, bottled water, sunglasses, and a pen. If they have any hoodies, get two--one for me, one for you. By the way, do you have evidence gloves on you?"
"Sure," he says, then reaches into his coat pocket. He pulls out a set and hands them to me. "I'm guessing what you're asking me to get is a disguise. Anything else?"
"Baby powder."
"What kind of party are we starting, here?"
"Just shut up and get it."
"Where are you going while I'm off doing the shopping?"
"Copy shop down the block," I tell him. "Meet you back here in fifteen minutes."
Fifteen minutes later I'm standing by the SUV with a thick cardboard documents envelope in my hand. Mike comes walking down the ramp with a plastic sack stuffed with items. He's got everything, even the hoodies.
As we get back in the rental and shut the doors, I take the papers I've printed out of the envelope. "Here. Put that on the clipboard."
"Sure," Mike says. He slips the paper under the spring clip. "Sign-off sheet. I assume we're doing a delivery. That only gets us to the front desk."
"We need to make them evacuate the tower," I tell him. "In a building like this, the fire alarms are zoned, so only certain floors get evacuated first. Keeps the whole place from being shut down at once, and makes evacuations easier. But to trigger the fire alarm for his floor, we'd have to be in his penthouse, or the security center."
"That's not going to happen."
"No. Which is why we need the whole building out at once. We need Rivard to come to us." I hold out my hand. I see him register that I've got on the latex gloves he gave me earlier. "Baby powder."
"Oh shit," he says, even as he hands over the small container. "You're not serious, Sam. Shit. You get any print
s on that envelope?"
"No," I tell him. I pour a generous amount of powder into the manila envelope and use the bottled water to wet the flap and seal it. Then I slide everything in to the thicker cardboard envelope, turn it over, and press on the printed label I created at the copy shop. It has a bogus but official-looking address from a local legal firm, and it says PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL: BALLANTINE RIVARD, and on a separate line, URGENT: OPEN IMMEDIATELY. "Trust me, I don't want adjoining cells."
"Okay. So what do I do?" Mike asks.
"You wait here. Only one of us needs to be on that camera." I zip up the hoodie, put on the ball cap and sunglasses. I secure the cardboard envelope under the sign-off sheet so all I have to handle is the clipboard, then strip off the latex gloves. I have to be careful now with what I touch. Clipboard's okay. I can't put my fingers on the paper, or the package.
Mike knows I'm doing it to keep him out of it, in case this goes bad. "Keep your head down and sunglasses on. Good thing you're an average-looking white boy."
When I hit the lobby, I'm walking fast. It's nearly quitting time, so a lot of people are already streaming toward the doors. I head like an arrow straight for the reception desk. I don't recognize anybody on duty, and as I shove the clipboard across the desk at the man behind the computer, he barely spares me a glance anyway. "Sorry," I tell him. "Signature. Package for"--I pretend to squint at the label--"Ballantine Rivard. Personal and confidential. Urgent delivery."
He doesn't miss a beat. Why would he? He scrawls a signature, fills in the date, prints his name, and takes the envelope without any prompting from me. He shoves the clipboard back. Now the man in the Rivard Luxe jacket looks harassed. "Great," he says. "You know it's almost five, right?"
"Must be nice," I tell him. "I got four more stops before quitting time, man."
That's it. I exit fast out the front doors and walk around to the parking garage. I get back in the SUV and toss the clipboard in the back. Mike's got his own blue hoodie on now. "Went about as well as it could. So what's standard protocol for these things?"
"In a high-rise building? When somebody identifies possible anthrax in the mail, they pull the alarms and call hazmat, cops, FBI, everybody. It's a big scramble. Building security evacuates everybody, all floors, to a safe distance. Circulating air gets shut down. It's a zoo and a circus, and the bigger the building, the bigger the chaos."