I looked on Craigslist, but my requirements were specific. I needed a place within a scooter’s commute of work, and it had to be less than five hundred a month.
I was looking for a unicorn.
* * *
A woman came in about forty-five minutes before my shift was over. She stood just inside the doorway for a long moment as if trying to decide whether to enter. She was glittery in a way I recognized from my time in Hartwell’s circle. Her fingernails sparkled. A rectangular purse with a gold-chained shoulder strap was looped over her shoulder. And her hair was perfect. It was the kind that faded from blonde to brown so imperceptibly and looked so natural that I assumed it was. Until I reminded myself hair didn’t do that.
She half turned to the booths and the windows before changing her mind and starting in my direction, toward the counter.
“May I help you?”
She ordered an iced latte. Unlike most customers, she didn’t walk to the pickup area as she waited for me to prepare it. She shadowed me as I moved, talking over the hiss of the machine and the gurgle of the frother. “Can I ask you a question?”
I smiled. “Sure.”
“Were you there? The day the man was killed?”
My smile wilted.
“He was my boyfriend.”
Grief pierced my soul. I didn’t even know Cade had been seeing anyone. “I’m so sorry. I knew him. We worked together on the Hill.”
“I just want to see. I want to know where it happened.” She was playing with the stack of coffee sleeves, running her nail over their corrugated edges.
“I was here that day. I was the one who found him.”
Her hand stilled. “Can you show me?”
I hadn’t been through that door since the shooting, but I told her I would take her. I explained the situation to Corrine and then joined the woman in the hall, reminding myself that today was today. It wasn’t Monday. There was no killer lurking outside. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open, went out, and held it for her.
She paused on the threshold. Squared her shoulders as she took a deep breath. Then she joined me. Took a look around. “This is where he died? Out here?”
I pointed to the pavement in front of us. It seemed to me that I could still make out that puddle of blood.
“They really didn’t explain it to me very well.”
“They think he was shot from the roof.”
“The roof?” She tilted her head to look up. “You did say you were here. You found him.”
I nodded.
“Did you see the shooter?”
“Not really. Mostly just his shadow.”
“I just— I can’t believe it.” She collapsed, curling into me, sobbing.
I let her cry for a while and then I angled us toward the keypad. “Maybe we should go back inside?” Thinking about the murder, imagining the killer up there on the roof, made me uneasy.
She straightened, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She dug into the purse that dangled from her shoulder and fished a Kleenex from it.
“Did he say anything to you about what he was working on at the FDIC?”
She shook her head. “We hadn’t been dating very long. Just a couple months. But I could tell he was a keeper.”
“He was a good guy. The best.”
“Yeah.” She sniffled. Crooked a finger to catch a tear. “There was one thing he said. He told me he didn’t really like his job.”
I was surprised. “It seems like it would have been a good fit for him. With his interest in economics and everything.”
“I know. I mean, he liked the job part of it. He called it a dream job. But if that were true, then he should have been happy, right? But he was so stressed. And then he didn't want to go out anymore.” She paused. “I mean, he still— We were still dating. He just didn't want to go out on actual dates. He said it wasn’t me. Swore it wasn’t me. He just said he felt like he couldn’t trust anyone anymore.”
Chapter 28
Leo called to check in while I was in a ride-share headed toward the library.
I told him I was fine. “Mrs. Harper got released. She has a broken leg. Her daughter’s going to take care of her, out in Loudoun, until she’s out of the cast.” I didn’t want to tell him about being evicted. It wasn’t his responsibility. But he did seem to think I was his responsibility. “They’ve decided to sell her house, so they asked me to leave.”
“Leave the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“They asked you to leave? As in pack up and move? Right now?”
“Yes. But it’s fine. I don’t want you to worry about it, but I did want to let you know.”
“What are you going to do?”
“It’s already taken care of.” I’d do what I’d always done: I’d figure something out. “Oh—Cade’s girlfriend came to the store today.”
“Yeah? We talked to her a couple days ago. That must have been tough.”
“She wanted to see where he died.”
He grunted. There was a shout in the background. It sounded like he put a hand over his phone and shouted back. “Got to go. That all she said?”
“She said—well, she thought he said that he didn’t like his job, but in light of the shooting—”
“What did she say?”
“She said he couldn’t trust anyone.”
“He turned out to be right.”
“I know, but the thing is, you’d only say something like that if a person you had actually trusted turned out not to be trustworthy.”
“True.”
“Hindsight might be causing me to read into it, but it might be interesting to know who he worked with. To try to figure out why they weren’t so trustworthy.”
“We’re already on it. Got to go.” He hung up.
* * *
I glanced around as I walked into the library. Leo had said there was an agent assigned to me. Was it the man browsing the new releases? Or the woman walking up the stairs to the second floor?
I could drive myself crazy trying to figure out who it was. I told myself the important thing was that someone was watching me. In actual fact, two people might be watching me. An agent and a killer. I didn’t have to know who the former was, but I really wanted to know the identity of the latter.
My first student came to me in a panic. “The test is next Saturday!”
“I know.”
“I don’t think I’ve studied enough.”
She was one of my few students who actually had.
“I took the test you gave me on Saturday morning. And then I took another one in the afternoon. And one on Sunday. I kept getting new things wrong. So I started another one yesterday, but—”
I held up a hand to stop her. “New strategy. You’re not going to study yourself completely crazy anymore.”
“O-kay. So what am I going to do?”
“You’re going to follow the schedule and then, when you’re done for the day, when you’ve covered the topics you said you would, you’re going to put the books away and you’re going to remind yourself of a few things. Write these down.”
She opened her notebook and sat there, pen poised above the paper.
“I’m really smart.”
She wasn’t doing anything.
“Kayla!” I tapped the sheet of paper. “Write it. ‘I’m really smart.’”
She started writing.
“I’m a really hard worker.” I paused for a moment. “Got that?”
“Yeah.”
“This is just a test.” I let her write that too.
“This test will be scored, but it doesn’t get to grade me. It doesn’t get to tell me who I am or what I’m allowed to do. This test doesn’t apply to real life.”
“Could you repeat that?”
I hated college admission tests. With a passion.
And yet we weren’t ready yet to push beyond them. We wanted some
thing that would tell us who we were and what we deserved and what kind of success we could expect. We wanted a yardstick to measure everything by. But we hadn’t found a way yet to measure kindness or intuition or the capacity to dig in and work and work and work at something until it got done.
Tests were useless at measuring the things that mattered most.
And they were the only thing I was good at.
The irony that I was not following my own advice was not lost on me. But in my favor, the bar exam actually would get to tell me who I was going to be and what I was allowed to do. In order to be a lawyer, I had to pass it.
* * *
I stayed at the library long after my last coaching session; I stayed until they closed. It was stupid to go anywhere by myself, so I prolonged the inevitable as long as possible. I booked one of the public computers and did some research on the FDIC hack that Agent Beyer had mentioned.
It had been a huge scandal. The FDIC had tried to keep it hidden, but an unidentified witness reported it to Congress. It had taken a congressional investigation for them to give up their information about it. The FDIC hacks had been pinned on China. And more recently, I discovered, so had the hack of the verification system of a recent stablecoin launch.
Stablecoins bridged the gap between traditional currencies and digital currencies. They were a cryptocurrency backed by a more stable asset. This one had been backed by the US dollar. In exchange for one dollar, verified account holders of FDIC-insured banks were given one stablecoin, which could then be used to trade on the cryptocurrency exchanges.
Why had China hacked into the system that verified all users had FDIC-backed accounts? What had they hoped to gain? For reasons unknown, China was stealing vast amounts of data. What were they doing with it?
No one knew.
It was possible they were using it for internal political purposes, to identify and keep track of exiled dissidents. Or maybe to identify Americans who might be willing to spy for them. But those cases might comprise just a tenth of a percent of people whose personal information they now had.
What could they do with the information they’d stolen?
That was the intriguing part. Who knew what future algorithms they might develop that would help them mine the data for nefarious purposes? They had social security numbers, government security clearance files. The FDIC hack had given them bank records of hundreds of thousands of Americans. They had information on spending habits, mortgage payments, and personal identifiers. If companies like Amazon and Google could target ads based on social media activity, what might China be able to do?
Just about anything.
But that 2010 hack had already been investigated. China was the culprit. All of that happened a decade ago; it was public information. So why was the FBI still investigating? And what did Cade have to do with it all?
I still didn’t remember having any conversations about the FDIC with him. I hadn’t even known he was interested in working there. But China? That seemed relevant.
When Cade and I were on the Hill, China had just made a major announcement about its interest in blockchain technologies. At the time, everyone had discounted China’s interest in cryptocurrency. What the Chinese said, and what we’d all assumed, was that they wanted to develop the blockchain architecture that supported digital currencies. They were going to test it on a cryptocurrency they had created. Cryptocurrency was only one of its myriad applications. But knowing they had hacked the stablecoin verification system made me want to reexamine that assumption.
So, yes. I was sure Cade and I had spoken about China. But we’d done it in a tertiary way. I wished I knew why he’d gotten involved with the FBI.
Eventually, the library announced they were closing. I couldn’t stay there, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell Leo I was homeless. I just couldn’t. So I did the next best thing. I took a ride-share over to the Blue Dog and had the car wait in the alley while I punched my code into the keypad. Then I waved the car off and pulled the door shut behind me.
The shop had been closed for over an hour by then. The last employee of the day had gone home.
I made my way down the hall and then out onto the floor.
The manager had security cameras all over the place, but what were the odds that she actually ever checked them?
It was a risk I’d have to take.
The shop was different at night. The seating area was bathed in the soft white glow of streetlights. During the daylight hours, the shop pushed itself out into the world through its large floor-to-ceiling windows. At night, the darkness pressed back in.
The scent of espresso lingered, but the only noise came from the hum of the appliances.
Out on the sidewalk, a man walked past the windows. He paused. Turned for a moment and seemed to look into the shop.
Had he seen me?
I retreated back to the hall and punched in my code to access the back room. After clearing off the desk, I sat down. I pulled my books out of my backpack and then unzipped an outside pocket and reached for a pen. The key to Mrs. Harper’s apartment was there too. I’d have to figure out how to get it back to her.
I zipped the pocket shut and spread everything out.
At home, I could make all the coffee I wanted. Here? Unless I wanted to gin up the huge coffee makers and clean up after myself, I’d have to make do with tea. But at least in the shop I was secure.
I was safe.
I worked on the topic of evidence for a while.
An hour later, when my neck began to crick, I called my dad.
“Whitney, hi. How are—” His voice slipped away and I heard a thud on his end.
“Dad? Are you okay?”
I didn’t hear anything.
“Dad!”
He came back on. “I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s just—I had the phone on my shoulder. You used to be able to do that with the old phones. You could set it right on top of your shoulder and it would never slip off. Of course, you couldn’t walk around with the phone either. It wasn’t portable.”
“You’re okay though?”
“I’m fine. Fine. I just—” He broke off in a sigh. “I wish you were here to help me.”
“With moving in?”
“No.” He chuckled. “No. I’m fine with that. Frankie came over to help. No. I’m trying to get my finances straightened out. You have a head for numbers.”
I liked numbers. I always had. They never changed clothes or hairstyles. They were easy to tell apart. “I’m happy to look at anything you want.”
“That’s the trouble. I don’t know what I want.” He sighed again. “Once I figure this all out, maybe we can talk again.”
“Anytime.”
“You can give your old man advice for a change.”
We talked for a few more minutes, and then he hung up before he thought to ask about my day. That was good though. As much as I’d made a habit out of lying to him, I still didn’t enjoy doing it.
I put a hand to my back and stretched. Did some head rolls.
It was stuffy in that shut-up, airless room.
I stood and walked its length a couple times. Did some jumping jacks and some knee lifts. There weren’t any good sleeping options in the shop, so I was determined to use the night to my advantage.
I sat back down. Returned to the study guide. My answers for the section were:
A
D
A
And the correct answers were?
I flipped to the back to find them.
B
A
C
How was that possible?
I double-checked my answers against the key.
Somehow I’d completely misread all the scenarios.
I went back to the cases. Skimmed them. Reviewed the questions. But how on earth could B, A, and C be right? I still couldn’t see it.
I read the cases in earnest, looking for the things I’d missed.
How could it be that I’d studied f
or months and was doing worse on the reviews than I had in the beginning? I was starting to sound like one of my students.
I turned to the back once more. Review Section II Answers—Wait. Review Section II?
I flipped back to the cases and questions. I wasn’t on Review Section II. I was on Review Section III. And the answers to those questions were, in fact, what I had chosen. A, D, and A.
I wasn’t stupid. I was just tired.
And really hungry.
I closed the book, put my head down on top of it, and cried, even though I knew crying wasn’t productive and I couldn’t afford it. I convinced myself that maybe what I needed wasn’t food. Maybe it was just a break. I stood up, took a few more turns around the back room. Then I headed out into the hall and to the front of the shop for a change of scenery.
The glow of streetlights diffused the dark. It reflected off the sidewalk and in through the windows. The chance of anyone noticing me in the darkened shop was slim, so I walked the length of the front counter—back and forth, back and forth—swinging my arms, doing head rolls, until I shook off my drowsiness.
It was peaceful there.
The refrigerators and freezers produced a steady hum. Now and then, a car passed, headlights sweeping the sidewalk. As much as Arlington wanted to promote itself as an in-burb of DC, during the weekdays there wasn’t much nightlife. Or any life at all on the streets late at night. I slid into a booth, stretched my arms out across the table toward the opposite side, lay my head on my arm, and stared out into the night for just a few minutes.
Chapter 29
I had almost drifted into sleep when I heard something at the back of the shop.
My eyes sprang open. I sat up. Listened.
Above the hum of the refrigerator, beyond the bathroom at the back of the hall, something was bumping up against the back door.
I stood.
There it was again.
The front door was locked; it opened only with a key. A key I didn’t have. My only way out was the way I’d come in: through the back.
I had no idea who was out there. But with the shop closed, it couldn’t be anyone with good intentions.
Everywhere to Hide Page 16