He gave me a dark look. “Believe it or not, I’m not the bad guy here. I may be the only friend you have.”
I thought again about how he didn’t look or act like any FBI agent I’d ever seen. The agents I’d dealt with during the Project Rescue investigation had been all about rules and procedures; they’d been clean-cut and officious, bureaucratic and precise. In other words, the exact opposite of Dylan Grace.
“Where did you first see it?”
“What?”
“The website.”
I sighed and sank into the couch. Ace’s words rang in my ears. You have the chance to turn all of this over to that FBI guy, but you’re not going to. What was it? Was I just being stubborn? Did I want to get myself deeper and deeper into trouble until I couldn’t get myself out again? Maybe I was on some kind of self-destructive jag, acting out because of this low-grade depression that permeated my world. I decided to prove my brother wrong.
“At my parents’ house,” I said with a sigh. “I saw it on my father’s computer.” The admission felt like a failure on my part. It was like saying, “I can’t handle this alone.” It also felt like a betrayal of my father. I didn’t know what the website was or who was using it. But it couldn’t be good.
“But when I saw it there, it was just a red screen, no video,” I added.
He pulled up a chair at the table, straddled it in that way he had, rested his arms on the back of it. He had an odd look on his face. I might have thought it was concern if I believed he was capable of it. Maybe I was being too hard on him. Then again, Trust no one. I should have had it tattooed on my arm.
“I tried to access it again from my computer here with the same results. Just the red screen,” I said when he didn’t say anything.
He nodded uncertainly, kept his eyes on me. He looked at me like that a lot, as if he was trying to figure out if I was lying to him, as if he might be able to see it on my face. I turned away; there was something about that gray gaze that made me nervous. There was a lot more I could tell him. But I didn’t. It was like flirting-give a little, keep a little. Maybe Ace was right about me after all.
“Do you have any idea what that site is?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. I didn’t want to have a conversation with Dylan Grace, and yet here we were again.
He shrugged. “The best I can figure at this point is that it’s some kind of encrypted website. A place to leave and retrieve messages. There must be a way to log in, but I couldn’t figure it out.”
“And the video?”
He shrugged again. “We have some people working on it. We’ll figure it out soon enough.” His voice went low at the end of the sentence, as if he was issuing a warning.
I lifted my feet onto the couch, made myself comfortable. Fatigue was pulling at the lids of my eyes. Now that I knew Jake was okay, or at least that it wasn’t his blood on the floor of the studio, everything else seemed less terrifying and urgent. But that was just one of the many things I’d be wrong about in the next twenty-four hours.
THE NEXT THING I was aware of was sunlight streaming in my east-facing windows. It took me a second to orient myself, then everything of the day before came back at me with sickening clarity. Had Agent Grace really been here? Did he really tell me it wasn’t Jake’s blood on the floor? I felt nauseated that I might have dreamed it all. Or that I had fallen asleep while he was sitting in my apartment. How weird was that? I noticed then that someone had taken the chenille throw from my bed and covered me with it. A dull pain throbbed behind my eyes as I sat up. There was a note on my coffee table. We’ll talk tomorrow, it threatened, signed with the initials DG. It was the handwriting of an arrogant pain in the ass if ever I’d seen it-big looping letters, huge initials. I had to smile. I still hated him but he was starting to grow on me.
I tried Jake. Still no answer. I made some coffee so strong it tasted bitter in my throat. I walked into my office and looked over the notes I’d jotted down during my conversations with Jenna and Dennis. I checked the time; it was seven A.M. I had thirteen hours to find out as much as I could about Myra Lyall and about that website before I went to the Cloisters that night.
I know what you’re thinking: that I was at best reckless and foolish, at worst suicidal. What can I say? You might be right.
It was too early to call a hacker-wannabe like Jenna’s ex-beau Grant, but ambitious people don’t sleep in. A young assistant at the New York Times, especially one worried for her job, was likely to be at her desk before the sun came up. I called through the main number at the Times and was surprised and disappointed to get voice mail. I left a message.
“Sarah, this is Ridley Jones. Before her disappearance Myra Lyall was trying to reach me. Some pretty odd things have been happening to me since. I wonder if we can talk, get together for coffee?”
I left my number and hung up. I know, it was a pretty risky message to leave, considering how many ears and eyes might be on my communications-not to mention hers. But I needed the message to be interesting enough to warrant a callback. The phone rang before five minutes had passed.
“Is this Ridley?” Her voice was young; she was practically whispering.
“Sarah?”
“Yeah.”
“You got my message?”
“Yes,” she said. “Can we get together?”
We arranged to meet in a half hour at the Brooklyn Diner, a tourist trap in Midtown where no real New Yorker would ever eat. I wondered at her choice but figured she just didn’t want to run into anyone from the Times.
“How will I recognize you?” I asked her.
“I know what you look like.”
One of the advantages of infamy, I guess.
THE DINER WAS crowded; a cacophony of voices and clinking silverware rose up as soon as I opened the door. Strong aromas competed for attention: coffee, eggs and bacon, the sugary smell of pastries on a tray at the counter. My stomach rumbled. I stood by the door and scanned the room for a woman sitting alone. There was a petite blonde with her hair pulled back severely from her face, but she had her nose buried in a copy of the Post, sipping absently from a thick white coffee cup. A mix of people sat at the counter. A pink puffy family of three, all wearing I NY T-shirts, huddled over a guidebook with the Statue of Liberty on the cover. I said a silent prayer that they wouldn’t get mugged. A businessman chatted loudly on his cell phone, oblivious to the annoyed stares of people around him. An elderly lady dropped her napkin; the young man sitting next to her bent down and picked it up, handing it to her with a smile.
I watched, losing myself as I’m prone to do in wondering about people. Who are they? Are they kind or cruel, happy or sad? What causes them to act rudely or to be polite? Where will they go when they leave this place? Who will die in the next week? Who will live to be a hundred? Who loves his wife and family? Who’s secretly thinking about shedding his identity, hiding his assets, and running away for good? Questions like these move through my brain rapid-fire; I’m barely aware of them. I can exhaust myself with my own inner catalog of questions and possible answers. I think it’s why I write, why I’ve always enjoyed profiles. At least I get the answers about one person-or the answers they want to give, anyway.
I felt a hand on my elbow and turned around to see a fresh-faced girl with hair as orange as copper wire, skin as pale and flawless as an eggshell. The smudges under her bluest of blue eyes told me that she was stressed and not sleeping. The urgency in her face told me that she was scared.
“I’m Sarah,” she said quietly. I nodded and shook her hand; it was cold and weak in mine.
The hostess showed us to a booth toward the back of the restaurant and we both slid in. I noticed that she didn’t take off her jacket, so I left mine on as well.
“I can’t stay long,” she said. “I have to get back to the office.”
“Okay,” I said. I got right to the point. “Why was Myra trying to reach me before she disappeared? I thought originally that she wanted to talk to me about her article, but I know now that it went to bed before she started trying to reach me. What did she want?”
A waitress came. We ordered coffees and I asked for an apple turnover.
“I don’t know what she wanted,” she said, leaning into me. “I know that she was working on the Project
