I frowned at him. I guess I kind of had the idea that the only reason I didn’t end up in a trunk floating is that Dylan Grace had saved my ass, as he so eloquently put it. Wrong again.
“Then how did you find me?”
REMEMBER HOW EASY it was for me to get away from Dylan in Riverside Park? It turns out he expected me to try to run from him. In fact, he wanted me to run.
“I thought you were hiding something. I figured I’d let you run and I’d follow, see where you led me. We were listening to your cell phone calls and were able to track your movements to the Internet cafe, the SRO on Forty- second Street. Then we lost you. Actually, you walked right by my partner. Nice job with your hair, by the way. You’ve got a whole Sex Pistols thing going there.”
“Thanks,” I said with a narrowing of my eyes. “You don’t look that great, either.”
“You made some calls from Inwood, so we headed up there. The last call we picked up was your conversation with Grant Webster. By the time we figured out where you were and got up there, you were gone. NYPD had already arrived-they’d been called about gunshots and a helicopter, but they didn’t know what happened. They were searching the area, picked up some shell casings from automatic and semiautomatic fire. That was it.”
“No sign of Jake.”
He shook his head. “No, Ridley. I’d tell you if I knew something. I promise.”
I nodded.
“We went to Grant Webster’s apartment in the Village.”
“Was he…?” I couldn’t stand to finish the question.
“Dead? Yes,” answered Dylan softly. I felt that sick guilty feeling that was becoming so familiar to me. I held some culpability for the things that had happened to Sarah, to Grant, to Jake, even to myself. I wasn’t sure how to deal with that. So I just blocked it out. Dylan went on.
“From his phone call, we knew you were in trouble, that he’d found something and tried to warn you. But Grant has some kind of kill button on his network. He managed to wipe all his data before he died. Anything he knew was gone.”
I shook my head. “I really doubt that. There must be backup somewhere.” I remembered his website, how he’d chastised people for not protecting and backing up sensitive data. He impressed me as a person who’d practiced what he preached.
“If there is, we haven’t found it.”
“He said I was walking into a trap, that ‘they’ thought I knew where Max was, that I could lead them to him.”
“Is that true?”
I gave him a look. “Um, no. You know, why don’t you believe me about this? You’ve been watching me for a long time now. If I was secretly communicating with Max, wouldn’t you know?”
“I didn’t know about the website. For all I know, you’ve been using the computer at your adopted parents’ house to communicate with him.”
I thought about what Grant had said about the government’s dislike of encrypted websites and steganographic software. I started thinking about that streaming video and how maybe it was just a way to hide a message. Again, I wondered what my father’s log-in might be. I was betting I could figure it out if I could get to a computer.
Dylan was watching me in that way that he had, as if he believed he could stare me into admitting all the many lies he’d thought I told. The sad part was I was just as clueless as he was. I sighed. What was obvious was that we didn’t trust each other. We could go around and around like this for hours. I didn’t bother repeating how I’d just found the website recently, that I had no way to log in.
“Anyway, the point is that we lost you,” he said. “I didn’t even know where to start looking. The fact that I’d taken you into custody when I really didn’t have the right to and then allowed you to escape caused me a lot of trouble. I was reprimanded and might have been suspended, except that I’m so entrenched in this investigation, I would be impossible to replace at this point.”
“So you do work for the FBI?”
He nodded slowly. “I work for the FBI Special Surveillance Group. We monitor foreign agents, spies, and others who are not specifically targets of criminal investigations.”
“Like me?”
He nodded. “And like Jake Jacobsen. The point is that I’m not exactly a field agent. I gather data, conduct surveillance, monitor communications and movement. If I see something suspicious, I raise the alarm. Jacobsen has been interesting to us because of his skills as an investigator. We’ve been on him for nearly two years. As a result, we’ve also been watching you.”
I thought about this for a second, the fact that I’d been under surveillance for I didn’t know how long. I looked at Dylan Grace, a man who’d likely heard every private conversation, read every e-mail, seen every move I made since I met Jake. The thought embarrassed and intrigued me. How well could you know a person, watching her live her life from a bird’s-eye view? You’d see all the faces she wore for the various people in her life. You’d hear the same stories and events repeated for different people, each version sounding a little bit different, tailored for the listener. You’d see her face when she thought no one was watching. You might hear her cry herself to sleep at night or make love to a man she cared for but couldn’t trust. For all of this, would you know her better, more intimately, than if you’d been her lover or her friend? Or did you know her not at all, never having been allowed entry into her heart?
He went on. “I watched your cell phone records, credit cards, ATM records, passport control. I didn’t find anything for two days. I feared the worst. I thought you’d disappeared like Myra Lyall.”
“Then?”
“Then a charge from the Covent Garden Hotel popped up on your Visa bill. I was on the next plane to London. I bribed the desk clerk for your room number, found you in the state you were in. Through my London contacts, I was able to get you some antibiotics and painkillers-that’s what I was jabbing into your arm. I went out to get some more bandages and antiseptic to take care of your wound. When I came back, you’d stumbled into the lobby. I watched as they took you away in an ambulance.”
I thought about the time line of his story. It seemed credible enough under the circumstances. It was still hard for me to believe that this was my life now, that I’d wound up with him here at all. And while I didn’t totally trust this man, I didn’t fear him, either. And these days, that was something.
“Okay, so where’s the rest of the FBI? If you really do work for them, why isn’t there anyone to help us?”
“Because-don’t you get it? I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be behind a desk listening to your phone calls. I’m not supposed to be out here with you.”
“Unsupported?” I asked, using the word he’d used.
He nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “What now?”
He pressed his mouth into a tight line, and glanced at the fire for a second, then back at me.
“I’m open to suggestions,” he said.
“Great.”
“IF YOU REALLY let life take you, if you release control and stop clinging to sameness, you can’t imagine the places you’ll end up. But most people don’t do that. Most people get this death grip on what they know, and the only thing that loosens their grasp is some kind of tragedy. They live in the same town they grew up in, go to the same schools their parents went to, get a job that makes a decent living, find someone they think they love, marry and have children, take the same vacation every year. Maybe they get restless, someone has an affair, there’s divorce. But it will just be the same boring life with the next person. Unless something awful happens-death, house fire, natural disaster. Then people start looking around, thinking, Is this all? Maybe there’s another way to live.”
Max always ranted like this when he was drinking. He was hung up on the concept of “normal” people and how sad they were. He felt that most people were just zombies, sleepwalking through their lives, and would just die without ever leaving even a footprint on the planet. Max was a titan, a shooting star. In his lifetime he was responsible for the erection of thousands of buildings, countless charitable works in countries all over the world.
