Not quite believing what she’d done, Amber pulled the tools out and bundled them quickly into her bag. Then she took a deep breath, and pushed the door open.
Inside James’ apartment it was quiet, and dark. He had the drapes closed. She felt an urge to call Billy, and confirm again that he was definitely not there, and that no one else was either, but she resisted it, and instead looked around for where he kept his phone charger. Billy had given her two different options, and there was one in particular he hoped she could use.
She checked the kitchen counter. It was where she charged her cellphone at home, but there was nothing there. Nothing in the living room either, so she stepped into the bedroom. Here, by the side of the bed, she saw the telltale white cable. It was perfect. The body of the charger was hidden away under the bedside table, so he wouldn’t even see if it was a slightly different type. And when she pulled it out to check, she didn’t even need to worry about that. It looked identical to Billy’s charger. She switched them over. And couldn’t quite believe she was done. There was an urge, a strong urge to check around the apartment further, to try and find some incriminating evidence.
She went back to the kitchen, pulling open drawers to see what there was. She wondered if maybe there would be a pressure cooker – she could photograph it, maybe even take it away. But no. What was she thinking? What the hell was she doing? She had the charger in place. That was enough.
She slipped out of the front door again, and let the lock close behind her. For a second she was hit by panic when she thought she’d left her bag inside – with the lock picks in it, but then she realized it was hanging on her shoulder. It was just the stress, the nervy excitement of what she’d just done, playing with her head.
She called Billy again when she got home, but he didn’t know if it had worked. He needed James to go back, he needed someone to be making noise in the apartment to see if it was being picked up properly. But the next morning Billy called her back. He sounded happy. James hadn’t stayed at Lily’s, he’d returned to his own apartment around midnight. And he’d plugged in his phone to charge, meaning Billy had been able to access it through the dummy charger and install new software onto it. Now James’ cellphone would record every conversation he had, whether using the phone or not, and track his every movement.
Amber still wasn’t quite sure how all this was going to help, but Billy was delighted.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
A week went by, and Amber went back to her normal life. Or tried to. She had to pretend that nothing had changed. That Billy was dead, and that she was in mourning. Albeit in mourning for a friend who had turned out to be a criminal and a murderer. But even playing that part was difficult. The new friends and colleagues she had met in Boston hadn’t ever known Billy, and while they were interested at first in her connection to the young man on the TV news who had bombed the chemical company, the story had no staying power, and so their interest hadn’t either. By the time the next weekend rolled around, no one she knew had asked again, no one even seemed to remember.
For Amber of course the situation couldn’t be more different. She burned to know what Billy was hearing, and whether he’d picked up anything that demonstrated his innocence, and she phoned him several times to ask for updates. But each time he sounded vague and would only tell that the audio was coming through just fine.
The issue, Amber decided after a while, was that Billy was nervous about saying too much using the pre-paid phones. Although he had installed software that he said was completely safe, he’d also said he couldn’t know for sure if the Government had a way of breaking through the encryption – if they had it was a secret, but also the type of thing the Government would keep secret. She understood, yet couldn’t let it go. She simply wasn’t able to get on with her life and compartmentalize what was happening with Billy, to just leave him out there and not even know if he was getting any closer to being able to clear his name. But when she suggested visiting him again – by now she wanted to hear for herself what that Lily bitch and her murderous friends were saying – Billy was heavily against it. He clearly still believed her movements were being watched.
But for as long as they’d known each other, she was the one who understood better what being normal meant. She persuaded him, saying it would be normal – it would look more normal – for a young woman in her position to go home more often in the circumstances she was in. She’d need the support of her family. And from her home it would be easy to go for a drive and end up by the yacht. And so, three weeks after she had discovered Billy alive, she once again boarded the ferry for Lornea Island.
She went through a similar security process before coming to the yacht – changing her clothes and shoes, not taking her normal cellphone at all this time, but leaving it on at her parents’ house – in fact she lent it to Gracie, so that it wouldn’t stay in one place – which might look suspicious – but instead move about the house. Eventually she got to the head of the muddy lane that led down to Bishop’s Landing. She stopped the car here for a long time, but the
