Now practically on top of the camera, Jack’s face was distorted and ugly.
“I want to see my kids,” he demanded, as if reading her mind.
“I’ll send them out if you can calm down.”
“Calm? You want to see calm?” Seeking a target for his frustration, he spotted a terra-cotta planter where the gardeners had recently buried tulip bulbs. He lifted it and threw it onto the front walk, where it cracked into large pieces and sprayed dirt and mulch all over the pavers.
“You should go now,” she told him.
He came back to the camera, panting, and wagged his finger at it. “You want to act all high and mighty. Well, Ava told me you trashed my office. So I know you have anger issues of your own.”
“She was understandably upset. But we can’t bring the kids into this, Jack.”
“I won’t let you tell me what to say to anybody, especially my own children. Send them out.”
“Now isn’t a good time.”
“You don’t get to choose!” he raged.
In a way, it was hard not to open the door. She wanted to fling it wide and hit him with every damning detail she could muster. But she was beginning to recognize the dark allure of withholding information, too. Jack had always known more than her, always kept her in the dark, and it seemed to her now that had been part of what made him feel so powerful.
Two could play that game.
If Jessica was half as clever as she seemed to be, even three.
Chapter Forty-Four
JESSICA
As it turns out, the truth doesn’t always set you free.
—“How I Lied about My Name and Discovered My Truth,” a TED Talk by Jon M. Wright
Jessica pulled up in front of a nondescript beige-brick town house with matching beige trim. That seemed to fit, but an unexpected burst of color from assorted plantings and a flower bed lawn border led her to reconfirm the address Philip had handed her on a folded slip of paper.
He’d added a single sentence:
Any time after 6:00 pm will be fine.
Her head throbbed as she fought northbound end-of-day traffic toward Niles. Philip had apparently discovered something on the hard drive too sensitive to say aloud or even reference in the note. That, or he was using it as a convenient excuse to lure her to his home.
Both options were deeply troubling.
Checking inside her purse for the pepper spray she always carried, just in case, she exited the car, walked up the driveway, and climbed the concrete front stoop.
Philip answered the door before she could knock.
“Where did you get that hard drive?” he asked.
“I’m afraid I can’t say,” she said.
“But you know who it belonged to?”
“I didn’t know for sure.”
“Thank goodness our technology at the office is too updated to get anything off of it, which forced me to access it here,” he said, looking past her to the street, as if checking to see if she’d been followed. “I love my job, Jessica. I don’t want to lose it.”
“I know, and I’m sorry to put you in this position,” she said. “You’re truly the only person I trust at Cancura.”
He paused for a moment to process what she’d said, then nodded and opened the aluminum storm door.
She followed him through a combination living and dining room filled with coordinated furniture and so tidy it could have been a Macy’s showroom, with stairs leading to the second floor. They passed a kitchen, whose farmhouse motif included rooster-print wallpaper and a ceramic-cow cookie jar, before proceeding down the hallway into the only room that met her expectations of Philip’s natural habitat: an office with a battered couch, multiple computers and screens, and a coffee table littered with controllers, empty snack bags, and electronic accessories whose purpose she could only guess at.
Even Philip seemed compelled to acknowledge the state of the room. “I’m not used to having people in here. We usually close the door when company comes over.”
Jessica wondered about Philip’s cleaner, more organized housemate as he motioned her toward a vintage-looking computer on a prefab laminate desk. “The hard drive was from a 2010 Dell PC, which I was able to install into the tower of one of the old machines I used to tinker with.”
“So you were able to read the files?”
“It took some time to determine the correct version of Windows, and then to identify and download the various compatible software, but yes. It’s a large drive, and there’s quite a bit of data. Without knowing what you are looking for, however—”
“Phil?” A woman’s voice. Footsteps coming down from upstairs.
“In my office,” he called with a tenderness Jessica had never heard from him, before turning and adding: “Melanie is working the overnight shift.”
“Melanie?” Somehow, it didn’t compute.
“My wife.”
A moment later, a short, young, and pleasant-looking woman entered the room, regarding her quizzically.
“This is my coworker Jessica Meyers,” said Philip. “She came here on a work-related matter.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” said Melanie.
As they shook hands, Jessica noted a visible swell under Melanie’s baggy hospital scrubs.
“When are you due?” she asked, still astonished by the unfolding layers of Philip’s personal life.
“August,” said Philip, beaming and tenderly patting his smiling wife’s stomach.
As she offered her congratulations, and Melanie apologized for having to run, and Philip accompanied his wife into the hall for a tender kiss, Jessica thought there couldn’t possibly be any surprises left in the day.
That was until she sat down in front of the computer and, with Philip’s guidance, began to go through the folders and files on what turned out to be the hard drive for Jon’s personal computer from the earliest days of Cancura.
Before there was a secure company server to protect highly sensitive data . . .
Before he kept his personal taxes separate from financial information related to the business . . .
And, to her horror, before he’d wised up about his extramarital dalliances and stopped taking intimate photos of his lovers.
Chapter Forty-Five
LARK
Don’t
