“I really don’t like this.”
“I wish I didn’t have to propose this solution.”
“He doesn’t have to meet you at the library. He could come to your place.”
“I’m just afraid that what’s going around over here might be catchy.” And the people close to me might be targeted. Cade was. “I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize him right before test day.”
“No. No. You’re right.”
When I finished the last of my parent calls, I called my dad.
A woman answered. “Hello?”
“Hi. Um.” I held my phone out to make sure I’d dialed the right number. I had. “Is John there?”
“Johnny? Sure. Just a second.” I heard her call my dad’s name. Heard a male baritone answer.
“Whitney?”
“Hey, Dad.”
“Um. Sorry. I was just in the kitchen. Frankie was closest to the phone.”
Frankie. The Frankie? “That was Frankie?”
“Yeah.”
“The Frankie from bowling?”
“Yeah.”
“The one who knows the guy who knows—”
“Right. Yeah.”
“Dad?”
“What?”
“I thought Frankie was a guy.”
“Oh. Oh! No. Nope. She’s a girl.”
Neither of us said anything for a long moment. He broke the silence.
“So Frankie helped me move in.”
“That’s nice.” I had a vision of an older woman arranging his kitchen cabinets and bringing him casseroles.
“We’re together.”
“Together how?”
“We’re dating.”
“Oh! Okay.” The image of the casserole evaporated. “As in boyfriend-girlfriend?”
“Yeah. Uh-huh.”
I heard Frankie’s voice in the background. Heard my father’s muffled reply. Then he came back on the line. “The thing is—this is serious.”
“With Frankie?”
“Yeah. We’ve been friends for a long time, but we’ve been serious now since Christmas. That’s why I’m doing the crypto thing. If we’re going to have a future, then we need to build back that nest egg. You know what I mean?”
“Yes. Of course. Of course you do.”
I heard Frankie’s voice again.
“Just a second, sweetie.” He must have put his hand over the phone. I heard him speak, but it was garbled. He came back on. “Frankie needs me to help her with something.”
“Can I just ask you—once when I texted you, it didn’t sound like you. There were emojis . . . ?”
He laughed. “That was Frankie. Sometimes she’s closest to the phone. Reads me the texts. Texts back. She knows how to do all those phone things. Anyway. Gotta go. Talk to you soon?” He hung up.
Leo came over. Stood by my chair. “You okay?”
“No.” I reached out and put an arm around his waist.
He bent and in one fluid motion, he had me sitting on his lap.
“It’s my dad.”
He kissed my forehead.
“I just— Right now? I need you not to kiss me.”
“Okay. Can I still sit here?”
“Yes.” I felt petty and ridiculous telling him what he could do in his own house while I was sitting on his lap. “I think my father has a girlfriend.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he sound happy?”
“He sounds—” How did he sound? “He sounds like he has a life.” One that I didn’t have a part in.
“And how are you?”
“I’m not sure.”
It’s not that I begrudged him a relationship. It’s that I didn’t know how to picture him in one. He was living in a new place. He had a new person.
“Do you know her?”
“Who?”
“The girlfriend.”
“No. It’s a woman he knows from bowling. I’m trying to be a grown-up about this.”
“Are you succeeding?”
“What I really want? I really want my mom back. But she’s dead.”
He said nothing.
“I know that’s not possible and I know it’s not fair to my father, but that’s what I want. I know it’s unreasonable. Because how can I go up to her and say, ‘How dare you not be my mother!’?”
“Maybe you should go out to see him. You could meet her.”
“When? After the killer stops chasing me? After my ex stops stalking me? After I pass the bar?” I paused. Then I said what was really bothering me. “They’re talking about building a nest egg together.”
“It’s better than the alternative. At least they’re thinking about the future.”
“I used to be in that nest.”
“You were in the other nest. The old nest.”
“I want my nest back. Not to sit in it. Just to know it’s there.”
“It is there. Anytime you want to visit. In here.” He tapped his chest.
We stayed there for a few minutes and then he got up, gently helping me to stand. He took my hand and tugged me toward the living room. “Let’s watch a little baseball. Just for a few minutes.”
I sat at one end of the couch. He sat at the other end.
We watched the game in silence for several innings.
“Leo?”
“Hmm?”
“If I lean up against you, I don’t want it to mean anything.”
“Got it. Proximity means nothing.”
We watched the next inning that way.
Then he put a hand to my lap, palm up. “Want to hold my hand? No strings attached. I promise.”
I put my hand in his.
He wrapped his warm fingers around my own. Squeezed. “It’s going to be okay. And until then, you just hold on as long as you want to.”
* * *
The next day, Leo introduced me to Detective Melissa Sims before he left for whatever new case he’d been assigned to. She’d been given my case in his place. She told me the FBI had several agents in the area. Leo’s house was located next to a county park, so it wouldn’t have surprised me if some of the people out walking or kicking a soccer ball or batting a tennis ball around were actually agents. It made me feel better.
If I hadn’t been hiding out, I would have called the morning a luxury. I studied until noon. Took a break for lunch.
My father called.
“Sorry about that misunderstanding. About Frankie. I should have told you about her sooner. I mean, I thought I did. But, you know.”
“I know. I didn’t get it. That’s okay. It’s just a lot. I’ve learned a lot I didn’t know about you in the last few days.”
“I really am sorry. But I’m your father. I felt like I needed to protect you from some of it. Why should you have to worry about all those medical bills? Or feel bad about my being forced to sell the house? Or file for bankruptcy? There’s nothing you could have done.”
“I know.”
“So. I’ve been doing all the talking. What about you?”
What about me? What was there that I could even tell him? I’d kept so much from him that it was hardly fair to dump Hartwell and the shooting on him now. “I’m fine. Busy. Just studying for the bar.”
Around two, Detective Sims texted me. She said the mail had been delivered and asked if I could come to the door for it.
She handed me a couple letters and a large bubble mailer.
It was from the Harpers.
I ripped it open.
There was a check inside with a refund of my rent and my deposit. And there was also another, smaller bubble package.
My name was on the front. There was no return address. I pulled on the tab to open it. Shook the contents onto the dining room table.
There was a folded piece of notepaper and some sort of computer part.
I opened the note.
It took me a moment to decipher the signature at the bottom. I heard myself ga
sp.
It was from Cade.
I read the letter with trembling hands. It changed everything.
Chapter 46
I called Agent Beyer and I read the note to him over the phone.
Whitney—
Really don’t want to involve you but I need to give this to someone I trust. Hold on to it for me. I’m working tech at the FDIC and I found something in that new secure system they installed. Turns out H’s system has some foreign components. Something’s going on. All signs point to China. I’ll give you a call tomorrow once I figure some things out. I need some info about H.
“I’ll come get it from you. You said it’s a computer component?”
“That’s what it looks like. It’s made up of a couple parts. It’s not very big, but it must be significant.”
“I’ll come over right now.”
About half an hour later, he texted me that he’d arrived.
When he knocked, I let him in.
“Can I see it?”
I gestured to the table.
He read the note. Then he put on some gloves and examined the parts that Cade had included.
“I have no idea what this is, but if he thought it was important, then it must be.” He put it into a bag and sealed it. “Any idea who H is?”
“I’m assuming it’s Hartwell.” Whenever we’d talked about him, that’s how we referred to him. Since we were both working for his father, it seemed best. “He pitched his company’s cybersecurity system as a secure, American-sourced alternative to those of his competitors. After the revelation of the CIA’s ownership of an international encryption device company and with the fear of China’s influence over Huawei’s 5G network, everyone’s wary of governmental and foreign interference. That’s why HARTAN was awarded the contract at the FDIC.”
Agent Beyer was nodding.
“But Cade had been planning to talk to me the day he died. I wonder why he didn’t just bring that with him.” I looked at the part Agent Beyer held in his hand. “He’d been in daily contact with you, hadn’t he?”
“Yeah. He first contacted us after some recent hacks. We suspected there was a mole in the FDIC. That’s why we set up the Joe account at the coffee shop. In case he was being followed. We communicated through mobile orders. Soy mocha, I didn’t have any information to pass him. Brewed decaf, I did.”
“And how would you pass that information?”
“We had a dead drop.”
“Did he ever have information to pass to you?”
“Of course.”
“How did he do it? How did you know there was something waiting for you?”
“If he grabbed a napkin on his way out, that was the signal.”
“So you were there? At the Blue Dog?”
He nodded. “Yes. Every day.”
“Then . . .” I was trying to reorder my thoughts. “Then you must have been one of our regulars.”
“I was.”
“Which one?” I had to have seen him. “Does Detective Baroni know this?”
He shrugged. “Why would it matter?”
“Because he’s trying to eliminate suspects.”
“The FDIC case wasn’t his. It was ours. He didn’t need to know about our operation.”
“Then did you notice anyone acting strange the day Cade was killed?”
“No. If I had, I would have said so.”
I gestured to Cade’s note. “He said he needed someone he could trust. Why didn’t he trust you?”
“He did.”
“Then why didn’t he leave that component for you at the dead drop?”
“I have no idea. Maybe he thought he was being watched. Or the dead drop was being watched. I don’t know. We do know he wanted to talk to you. This has been about you all along. If I were you, I’d go back through that journal of yours and read it in light of Cade’s note. Can you get it? We could do it now.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Don’t have what?”
“I don’t have the journal. I haven’t been able to find it since I emptied the storage unit.”
“If you’re saying it was stolen during the storage unit switch, I would have liked to know before now.” Agent Beyer picked up the items Cade had sent and started toward the door. “If Hartwell Thorpe contacts you, please let me know.”
* * *
I told Leo about Cade’s note when he came home that night for dinner.
“What was it? That part he sent?”
“I don’t know. Some sort of computer component.”
“Wow.” He shook his head. “This puts everything in a different light.”
“It must have been Hartwell all along. He must have killed Cade. And he must have tried to kill me too.” I still couldn’t picture it, but it was the only thing that made sense. “I just can’t see Hartwell killing someone.”
“He might have killed you if you’d stayed with him.”
“I know. But domestic violence is specific. It’s directed at controlling specific people.”
“Cade wasn’t a random person. He was someone who discovered something about HARTAN’s technology. He was as big a threat to Thorpe as you were. If Cade found what he thought he had, then Thorpe killed someone who could have called into question the premise of his whole company.”
“Then why did Cade need me?”
“What do you mean?”
“If he had that component, if it was some sort of smoking gun, then why did he need, so badly, to talk to me?” And what conversation had he been referencing in the voicemail he’d left? The only time I remember him mentioning Hartwell was when he was urging me to be cautious about our relationship. He’d made his thoughts about my ex very clear.
Leo shrugged.
“He could have just turned that part over to Agent Beyer. But he didn’t. Why not?”
“He had to think you’d add to his evidence. You must know something about Hartwell that proved his point.”
“If that component is evidence, if it’s so damning that he wanted me to protect it, then whatever I mentioned to him must be even worse.”
Leo reached out and stacked my empty plate on top of his. “Something else I want to understand: How did Hartwell know he’d been discovered?”
That’s what I’d been wondering too.
After dinner, Leo was called away to work on something. “Hoping I’ll be home later tonight, but if not, you have Detective Sims’s number. And there are agents around. If you need anything, just call her. Or call Beyer.”
That evening as I was studying, I became aware of sounds coming from the sunroom. I turned away from my books, toward the room. Cocked an ear to the noise. Something was rustling around out there.
Mice? Or a squirrel?
Mrs. Harper said she had a squirrel come down her chimney once; she chased it all over the house. I hoped it wasn’t a squirrel.
Whatever it was stopped.
But then it started again.
A door in the sunroom led into the fenced backyard and, from there, to the garage. Was Leo home?
“Leo?”
I got up from the dining room table and took a few steps into the living room so I could take a closer look. All I could see was a circle of streetlight that had puddled on the floor.
But something was in the sunroom. I could hear it.
“Hello?” If it was a critter, maybe my voice would scare it away.
There was a moment of silence. One of those moments when I could actually hear myself listening.
And then a figure emerged from the gloom and stood silhouetted between the light of the living room and the dark of the night beyond the sunroom’s glass.
Not Leo.
Chapter 47
I ran into the kitchen.
Footsteps pounded across the floor behind me.
I threw the switch for the kitchen light and then reached for the disposal.
Something buzzed and the house went dark.
In the sudden loss of ligh
t, my vision went blank for several seconds before it adjusted. But that didn’t keep me from moving. I took two more steps to the back door. I flung it open and sprinted across the deck. “Help! FBI!”
I could still hear footsteps behind me.
Where to hide?
I raced toward the gate in the fence that enclosed the backyard. “Help! FBI!”
A light sliced through the night. It rested on my face for a moment. Then it veered off to the darkness behind me.
One voice. Then two. “He’s gone around the other way.”
A hand grabbed my elbow.
I shook it off. Recoiled.
“It’s me. It’s Detective Sims. It’s just me. You’re safe.”
* * *
Safe.
An hour later, I was sitting inside on the couch. Leo sat beside me, arm wrapped around my shoulders. But I couldn’t stop shivering.
I turned to him, brought my knees up to my chest, and curled into a ball.
He pulled me close.
An agent was in the sunroom, investigating how the intruder had accessed the house. Several agents had spread out through the neighborhood, trying to see if they could track him down.
I was safe inside Leo’s house. For now. But what about the next time he went to work? What about the next time I was alone?
I wasn’t safe at Mrs. Harper’s.
I wasn’t safe at work.
I wasn’t safe at the library.
And now I wasn’t safe at Leo’s house.
My phone rang.
I let it.
Leo’s hold on me loosened. “You’re not going to answer that?”
“It’s my d-d-dad.” Just this once, I would call him back later.
“Have you told him what’s going on?”
I tried to shake my head, but my shivers wouldn’t let me. “He doesn’t need to worry about me.” I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. “He has enough to w-w-worry about.”
“And you think that, what? You’ve been protecting him by not telling him the truth?”
I tried to shake my head. “K-k-keeping him from worrying.”
“That’s not your call.”
I uncurled my legs, sat up, and tamed my shivers enough to answer. “Y-yes. It is.”
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