Arianna was breathing heavily; the words were coming faster than she could process as her mind connected certain events from the recent past: the random audit she had passed in October and, mere weeks later, meeting Trent at the book signing.
“How did you know I would be there?” she demanded. “At Dakota’s signing?”
He looked sheepish. “That message online was from me, not the publicist.” He stood up to pace, avoiding her dumbfounded gaze.
“For a while,” he said, “I felt like I was doing a good job getting to know you, with the bike rides. And I kept asking you about science and your work to see how you would react, not because it was for a book. And then, that night you kissed me, everything started to change. I felt weird, but I ignored it. Then after your accident you told me you were sick and we realized that you had a motive to steal embryos. Knowing I was tricking you and you were so sick made me feel even worse, but I ignored myself again. It was for a good purpose, I kept thinking, though even then I found it hard to place so much more value on embryos than actual living people. Something about that seemed off all along, but I didn’t understand what. Then after you told me you went to church, it just went against how I thought of you, and my boss agreed that he thought you might be lying. So he wanted to observe you himself. Our thoughts were pretty much confirmed when we went and had dinner in Long Island, and you admitted to doing abortions. See, those were my parents, but Gideon, well, he’s actually my boss, Gideon Dopp, director of the whole New York City Department of Embryo Preservation.”
Arianna’s jaw dropped as the memory of that night came into focus; the hostility of those people had taken her aback at the time, but Trent had hardly seemed one of them.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” she whispered.
“I needed your trust to protect you. Let me just explain the rest. Jed, my friend, is also one of them.” She gaped and Trent winced. “He came along to talk up how loyal a friend I was, so you would start to trust me. I know; it’s horrible. But anyway, after that night at Dopp’s house, I felt this crazy urge to protect you from all of them, and I realized that I actually did want you to open up to me. It was so insane, because it went against everything I knew was right and moral. I got it in my mind that I was going to quit the case, and I told Dopp so the next day. But then he convinced me that you were worthy of suspicion, because of the abortions, and that I was just being impatient. And I didn’t know how to defend you then. I didn’t realize there was another way of thinking, though I knew you couldn’t really be evil. Then right after that, you showed me the museum and the lab. And, you know this part, the whole world just fell into place for me. It was amazing. Everything you said and believed reflected the conclusions I was starting to come to on my own. I finally understood that it was religion that was the problem all along; I had been trying to believe something that didn’t make sense in order to do something that didn’t make me happy. No wonder I was miserable for so long.
“So it was done; I knew I loved you and I was completely on your side from that night on. And you don’t know how much I wanted to quit my job! How guilty I felt for lying to you! But I realized that I couldn’t quit or tell you the truth. My job gave me the power to keep them away from you, and I needed your trust to be able to do it. Plus you’ve been getting so weak that I couldn’t risk upsetting you. The truth is that if they catch me, we’ll both go to jail. But all I’ve wanted was to keep you safe, to keep you ignorant of all of this, until you were okay again. And now that you’re so close, I hate that I have to do this to you now, but I have no choice.”
Arianna blinked, still gaping. “Why not? And wait, what about the crackdown? You were the source all along! You leaked the news!”
Trent nodded. “I had to find a way to prepare you. Jed had nothing to do with it. After you passed that surprise inspection, Dopp was furious, and he started sending Banks there every day to intimidate you and corner you into wanting to spill to me. And every day, I told Dopp that you weren’t talking. He’s been getting frustrated with me. So he applied for a warrant to bug your cell phone, but the first time, the judge turned it down. I was so relieved.
“Then, yesterday, with Sam’s breakthrough, you unwittingly tipped them off. In the beginning, I had given Dopp records of our earliest conversations, when we discovered we were both only children. After you told Banks about your ‘sister,’ Dopp went and found that conversation, and caught you in the lie. So now he’s closing in. See, he’s under all this pressure from the state to justify the crackdown with some major fallout, like a shutdown or an arrest, before the lawmakers cut our budget for next year. So he’s freaking out that we’ll lose our jobs unless we make a big move. And you’re
