Arpeggios rolled up the keyboard with magical fluidity as the melody began to dance in the upper register. For a second, Trent was mesmerized by the teacher’s mastery of the music, and awed that his amateur instrument could produce such a rich sound.
“We need you,” Arianna said into his ear. “To help get rid of Dopp on Friday night.”
Trent grimaced. The concerto’s uplifting tone suddenly sounded incongruous, the wrong soundtrack to such a meeting. “Do you have any plans so far?”
“We’re going to flee. Me, Sam, and the two doctors. It’s not safe for us to stick around. And I refuse to live my life being constantly monitored.”
Trent stared at her in shock. “To where?”
“Sam still has an old apartment up near Columbia that he never got around to selling. Megan’s been nice enough to prep it for us. We should be able to lie low there for a while.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. I guess until they stop actively looking for us.”
“But—you’re going to make yourselves fugitives!”
“It’s a step up from prisoners.”
Trent nodded. “So how long do you need to lose him for?”
“The transfer should take about forty-five minutes. And then Megan will be in a car waiting outside and we’ll hightail out of there.”
Trent swallowed; his mouth was dry. “That’s a pretty long time. And if he sees you go into the clinic after hours, he’ll definitely follow.”
“I know. That’s why we need you to help us distract him somehow.”
“But—he’s so intent right now, you can’t even imagine. For him to leave you alone would almost be a miracle.”
Arianna frowned. “There has to be a way!”
Trent studied the desperation in her eyes, the total unacceptability of failure, and he knew that he had to come up with an answer. This was not a time to bemoan his lack of cunning, to pass on the torch and wipe his pitiful hands clean.
“I’ll figure something out,” he vowed.
“We only have two days.”
“I know that. I just need time alone to think.”
“I should have come to you earlier,” she moaned softly.
“I wish you had.”
She sighed, and Trent’s heart tightened.
“Wait,” he said. “Before I forget, I have something to give you.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slender black cell phone. The front display was covered with a piece of adhesive clear plastic.
“It’s clean,” he said, handing it to her. “I bought it today, after you called to tell me you were coming.”
Her mouth hung open. “Thank you so much!”
“No problem. It’s for emergencies only—don’t use it regularly or he’ll get suspicious about why you stopped using your real cell. And keep it on silent always, so he never hears it ring.”
She nodded. “Is it under your plan?”
“No plan. It’s a TracFone with sixty prepaid minutes. You can always buy more time and it’s anonymous.”
“Thank you, thank you! I feel so much better having this.”
“I thought you would.”
She leaned her head back against his arm and closed her eyes. The concerto had reached the eye of the melodic storm, the passage of gentle beauty that Molly had described. But between the quiet notes, a harmonic tension lingered. Trent closed his eyes and pulled Arianna a little closer.
TWENTY-ONE
Dopp peered out of his driver’s-seat window. In the middle of a snowing Thursday afternoon, the side street next to the clinic was deserted. Icy brownish slush, marked with tire imprints, coated the asphalt. Dead trees lined the sidewalk, their spindly branches reaching for warmth long forgotten.
Dopp pushed open the door and thrust his cramped legs out into the freezing air. How much longer would he have to stand this confinement? Arianna was the one who was supposed to be sitting in a tiny cell, not him. But she was still saying nothing to anyone.
Even so, he had to keep faith. God was testing his patience and wanted him here for a reason. God would not make him wait here, day after day—while his wife was about to burst and while the department was on the verge of extinction—without bestowing a worthwhile payoff.
With his feet hanging out of the car, ice-cold snowflakes settled on his ankles and soaked into his socks. He drew his legs back inside and pulled the door shut. Still no sound from the radio interceptor, except an occasional cough or sneeze. He hoped that Stewart, the new inspector who was also the dourest of his remaining employees, was giving Arianna one of his professionally dirty looks.
Dopp had never doubted his intuition about people before. It had been scarily accurate his whole life. The first instance had been when he was a boy and his gut feeling had tipped him off to his father’s infidelity. Then as he got older, Dopp realized that he had an uncanny knack for spotting liars. Along with a strong sense of ethics, he had the perfect prerequisites to become a cop, as friends and relatives used to tell him. But he saw his talent differently: his intuition was evidence of a spiritual connection between him and God, who had granted him this sacred link for a reason—to enter the ministry. And so he did, and stayed, until Joanie came along and changed everything. Thrown from his calling, Dopp had lost his way for a while as he struggled to make sense of the urgency that drove him into her arms. He knew he needed to find his way back to God, but how to do it was a mystery.
When the DEP bureau formed in New York City, he had his answer. There he could apply his talent for intuition in a direct, practical way: weeding out sinners to protect innocents. So he had ended up in a branch of law enforcement after all, but one whose mission was straight out of the Bible. There was no way, then, that God would let him down at the most crucial moment of his career.
Reminding himself of this, Dopp inhaled a slow breath. The smell of new leather had begun to nauseate him. He cracked the
