For Adam, that summer became yesterday, before everything changed, and the warmth of Jenny’s lips was once again a preface-not just to their lovemaking, but to a life. Then he pulled a few inches back, resting his forehead against hers.
“We can’t,” he murmured. “You know that.”
Her throat pulsed. “Will I see you again?”
“Yes. At least before I go.”
Gently he withdrew, then left, wishing it were not so.
When he got to the car, Adam found a message on his cell, relayed through a ghost phone no one could trace.
Stopping at the foot of Jenny’s driveway, he tried to shake off the last hour, then listened to the message. The voice belonged to Amanda Ferris. She was making headway with her new source, she told him, though it was clear that the man had no access to the coroner’s report. But she had learned that the report was crucial to a web of evidence-including the crime scene report and statements extracted from Adam’s family-that could lead to Teddy’s indictment for the murder of Benjamin Blaine.
Struggling to detach himself, Adam weighed his choices. He could walk away from this, hoping that Jack was right. But if he wanted to warn Teddy of the case against him, then work to alter the course of events, he must place himself at risk. His advantage was that no one on this island knew what he was capable of doing. In many ways, if not all, this was still an innocent place.
He started driving again. By the time he reached his family’s home, his plan was fully formed. But then, he had started on it the day he saw George Hanley.
Seventeen
To assure his solitude, at dusk Adam took the stairs down to the beach below the promontory. Pulling out his cell phone, he called a former colleague for the second time that week.
“Other than you,” Adam said, “I’m out of answers. How do you get me in?”
“Not sure I can,” Jason Lew replied laconically. “Even the standard system you describe is difficult to beat. Cut the power, you trigger the alarm. And you’re also dealing with cameras, right?”
“Yes. I’ve got the locations memorized. I also know where the control panel is-a room just off the entrance.”
“That’s what I need.” Lew paused, signaling his reluctance, then said more slowly, “I’d have to pose as a service guy and insert a receiver. That will connect to a switch that shuts the system down from the outside. Pushing the switch is your job.”
“How long do you need on your end?”
“Two days to build the receiver, then a day trip to the Vineyard. Say three nights from now you can go in. Assuming they don’t spot me as an imposter and arrest me on the spot.” Lew’s chuckle became the phlegmy rumble of a smoker. “Funny work for an old guy. But fifteen thousand in cash would send me to Costa Brava.”
Adam felt the night envelop him. “I’ll have it for you by tomorrow.”
“Deal.” Lew’s speech slowed again. “This kind of service doesn’t come with warranties. You could hit the switch and find yourself on candid camera, with a shriek alarm for a laugh track. Instead of Afghanistan, you’d wind up in jail.”
How had he gotten here? Adam wondered again. “If you’d screwed up on the job,” he said, “the guys relying on you could have been killed. They tell me no one was.”
“Different times,” Lew said. “The obstacles are greater now. We’ll see if I still have it. Otherwise, you’re fucked.”
That night, Adam twisted fitfully in bed, unable to find sleep.
Again and again, he saw the Afghan reach for the gun hidden beneath his robes. For a split second, Adam imagined the consequences of failing to react-instant death or, more likely, kidnapping followed by torture no normal man could endure. At the end he would become a mutilated body by the side of the road, or the centerpiece of a videotaped beheading he prayed his family would never see. The lies he had told them would cause suffering enough.
He jerked the wheel abruptly, throwing Messud sideways as he pulled the gun concealed beneath his seat.
Righting himself, the Afghan perceived that he was speeding down an empty road at night with an American who was exactly what the Taliban suspected, and knew Messud’s true loyalties very well.
“I never trusted you,” Adam told Messud in Pashto, and shot the Afghan between the eyes.
For fifty miles, Adam drove with Messud’s body slumped beside him. Dumping it by the road, Adam hoped that someone would blame an Afghan. Then he drove to Kandahar and learned that Benjamin Blaine was dead.
Adam closed his eyes, and tried again to sleep.
Early the next morning, he took a flight to Washington, D.C.
There was a Vineyard sunrise of heartbreaking beauty. Looking out the window as the plane climbed higher, he saw Cuttyhunk Island on the edge of the blue horizon, and thought of his last sail with Jenny Leigh.
They had rented a sailboat. Though not an experienced sailor, Jenny was eager to learn. She took the helm, holding the tiller in one hand and the mainsheet in the other. Adam sat beside her, noting subtle shifts in the wind. A stiff breeze blew the blond strands of hair across her smiling face.
“Good,” Adam said. “Now let out the mainsheet a little.”
She did this, tentative at first, then grinning as the mainsail caught the wind. The sailboat gained speed. Satisfied, Adam slid forward on the port side, balancing the boat to help her. Even when sea spray splashed her face, Jenny’s eyes were bright. Adam could feel her exhilaration.
After an hour, her mood still elevated, Jenny began to talk about her writing. “For me,” she explained, “it’s partly about why we are the way we are. But it also means I feel safe.” Hand on the tiller, she gazed ahead, face solemn now. “In my stories, I control what happens. There’s no experience I can’t use. But it can’t hurt me anymore. Instead, I can understand it, then change it to be more the way I want.”
As more often lately, Adam sensed that Jenny was dealing with a pain she refused to reveal, perhaps did not fully understand. “So do you write for other people, Jen, or for yourself?”
“Both.” Suddenly, she was animated again. “I don’t just want to be a writer, but a great one. I want to be on an airplane, or on a beach, and see someone so enthralled by what I wrote they don’t notice me at all.”
This was Jenny at her emotional peak, her ambitions boundless and romantic. To Adam, three years older, she seemed touchingly, almost heartbreakingly, young. He hoped that life would not give her more hurt than she could endure. “I like the part of being anonymous,” she explained, “where the reader’s only idea of me comes from what I write. Did it ever feel strange to read your father’s books?”
“In a way.” Adam paused, trying to express what he had never told anyone. “I admired his talent, and also felt sad. The man who wrote those books was larger in spirit than the dad Teddy and I knew. ‘If you can be that way on the page,’ I wanted to say, ‘why not with us?’”
As Jenny adjusted the tiller, Adam felt her mood change. Pensively, she said, “Maybe I’m like that, too.” Heading for Cuttyhunk, the idea seemed to consume her, rendering both of them silent.
On the way back, a fierce current along the Elizabeth Islands caught them up.
Adam took the tiller, fighting stiff and erratic winds as the current increased to twenty knots. The jib became snagged. When Jenny scrambled to free it, a sudden wave knocked the boat sideways.
Adam saw Jenny lose her balance, suspended in slow motion above the side before pitching into the chill waves of the Vineyard Sound. Turning, he spotted her bobbing in the water as the current swept him away.
She was not a strong swimmer, Adam knew. Quickly, he wrenched the boat in a circle back toward her. Jenny’s arms began thrashing, her eyes wide with fright. Only the life jacket kept her head above water. He fought the wind, his progress toward her agonizingly slow.
Minutes passed. Her face was waxen now, her mouth shut tight. Desperate, Adam tacked to reach her. At last, he came close enough to toss her a line knotted at the end.
