by Brad Parks
We all have our illusions in this world, and we cling to them. We think we’re standing on a broad, sturdy cruise ship of an existence when really we’re floating in a life raft. We construct webs of safety for our families and ignore the hungry spider in the corner. We convince ourselves that the terrible things we read about will always happen to someone else.
Matt had always been at the center of those illusions for me. He was the light shining under the bed, showing me there were no monsters.
That light had now been snuffed out. The monsters were in the room.
Unless . . . was this more of Matt’s plan? His not wanting to be found? It seemed impossible he was that good an actor. The emotions of that video—the terror, the trauma—they seemed far too real to have been faked.
But there was still the unresolved issue of how he vacated that cabin just as Sheena was bearing down on him.
Or had that truly been happenstance?
Not wanting anyone outside to feel like they needed to come in after me, I stood up and splashed some water on my face. Then I walked shakily back into the judge’s waiting room.
The lawyers had their phones out and were talking dates and times. I couldn’t focus on anything that concrete. My head was down. The floor was still swaying slightly, even though no one else seemed to be having the same trouble.
Maybe Sheena could regain her sense of Matt in time, but if not . . .
Five million dollars. Where would I get five million dollars? And by noon the next day? We had a little equity in the house, our 401(k)s, a 529 plan for Morgan, and a small rainy-day fund. None of them were as robust as they probably should have been, and they didn’t come close to five million.
Suddenly, there was someone standing directly in front of me. The person had said something, but I had been too wrapped up in my own distress to register what it was.
I lifted my head. It was Sean Plottner. The man who had only ever been a Google search to me.
“Mrs. Bronik,” he said for perhaps the second or third time.
“Hi,” was all I could manage.
“That video,” he said. “That was really something. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, though I could tell he didn’t believe me any more than I did. So I added, “It just threw me for a little bit of a loop.”
“Completely understandable,” he said. “But right now every minute matters. I’ve got a helicopter waiting a short drive away. I’ve offered Ms. Aiyagari a ride back to Hanover, and she says she’ll go if you will. It will cut your transit time down considerably and get her to the lab that much faster.”
“But I . . . I can’t,” I said. “My car is here.”
“I’ll have someone drive it back for you,” he said. “Just give me your key.”
He pulled his phone out of his suit jacket and ordered his secretary to take care of the details. It was a short conversation. Then he turned to me and said, “Key, please.”
It occurred to me that Plottner was the kind of man who got what he wanted, one way or another. If I argued, I would just be slowing us down.
And I didn’t want anything to delay Sheena’s return to the lab. I reached into my purse and grabbed my keys, separating the Honda key from the ring. Then I handed it to Plottner.
“Okay, glad we’ve got that handled,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I started walking. That massive block of a bodyguard—Lee was his name?—followed a little too closely, like he was going to grab me by the scruff of the neck if I tried to make a run for it.
We were soon back outside. A stretch black limousine was waiting. Lee sped around us with surprising agility, given his size, and was holding the back door open.
The moment we were seated, Lee tapped twice on a smoked-glass partition that separated the back cabin from the driver. The car immediately rolled away from the curb.
“The helipad is five minutes from here; then we’ll be scooting along quite nicely,” Plottner said.
He leaned back. The car was new and permeated by the scent of expensive leather. Plottner seemed like the kind of man whose whole life smelled that way.
“Now, as to the issue at hand,” he said. “Do you have five million dollars to meet this ransom demand?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, I do. But if I were to allot these funds, I would expect a return on my investment.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s pretty simple, really. I’d want Matt to come work for me. On the terms I already proposed: a million dollars a year, working as an employee of Plottner Investments in New York. He would report to me directly—or to my director of operations, whichever he preferred. We can put it in writing. In fact, I’d insist.”
I shifted in my seat. The leather squealed.
“The other possibility is that Ms. Aiyagari is able to find your husband by noon tomorrow,” he said. “We can all root for that, I suppose. But if she can’t, I certainly hope you would consider having your husband work for me to be an acceptable alternative to what the kidnappers have proposed.”
“I guess we’ll have to see,” I said.
This was all too dizzying to even think of another answer.
“Yes, though I do hope it works out with us. I’d love to be in the physics business. I’ve always found it quite fascinating, even if I don’t totally understand it. Like Schrödinger’s cat. I assume you’re familiar with it?”
“Of course,” I said.
In Schrödinger’s imagination, there was a cat closed in a box along with a vial with cyanide and an atom of radioactive material. If the atom decayed, a radiation detector would trigger a hammer to break the vial, releasing the poison and killing the cat.
But the trick is, no one can predict when an individual atom will decay. There’s a chance it has. There’s a chance it hasn’t. Until you opened the box and observed the cat, you could say the cat was both alive and dead.
Crazy, sure. But that’s quantum superposition. Until you nail it down, anything that’s possible remains possible.
“I’ve always had a bit of a problem with it,” Plottner said. “The physicists want me to believe that during the experiment, the cat is both alive and dead. But I don’t buy that. Just because a camera is out of focus doesn’t mean the world is blurry.”
“What do you mean?”
“That cat isn’t truly alive and dead. The whole time, it’s either one or the other. Maybe the scientist outside the box doesn’t know. But inside the box, the cat knows.”
He paused over this point, as if to magnify its significance.
Then he repeated, “The cat knows.”
CHAPTER 43
From the relative warmth of the back of the Crime Scene Unit truck, Emmett inspected what Haver had bagged off the dead men.
He didn’t learn much. Other than that he hadn’t magically developed the ability to read Mandarin.
Still, the mere presence of those characters told him enough. Each man had one small item—just one—left behind on his person. A coupon. A receipt. They were meaningless scraps of paper, the kind of things you might not notice if you were ransacking a man’s pockets before you dumped his body. And yet they would neatly link each man to China.
It felt like the kind of highly calculated thing a brilliant professor would think to do.
Emmett was just leaving the truck when his phone rang.
“Webster here.”
“You out in Canaan yet?” Captain Carpenter asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“How’s it going?”
“Just got a look at the victims. They’re the guys who abducted Bronik. Two of the three of them, anyway.”
“Okay. I was just talking with the colonel, and we’ve worked out a division of labor moving forward. Major Crime is going to continue working the homicide scene. We’re going to keep our focus on Bronik.”
“Yes, sir,” Emmett said.
“We just got word that the judge granted Dartmouth�
��s injunction. Looks like your bloodhound will be back on the trail soon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Once you’re done out there, why don’t you head back to Hanover. If she starts getting that feeling again, I want us to be able to run it down.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right,” Carpenter said.
Then, before hanging up, he added, “Good stuff.”
It almost sounded like a compliment.
Emmett wouldn’t let it go to his head.
He had pocketed his phone and was off to look for O’Reilly when he heard the low rumble of a diesel truck, coming from the south. He peered toward the source of the noise until he saw a boxy truck, painted in drab olive, the same military vehicle he had seen parked outside Wilder Hall that morning. It was being followed by two dark government sedans.
The vehicles halted.
O’Reilly, who had suddenly appeared at Emmett’s side, muttered, “Oh, Christ.”
A man in a dark suit with a short haircut emerged from the first sedan. He had a cord snaking away from his ear. Emmett recognized Gary Evans of United States Army Counterintelligence.
Evans started walking toward Emmett, trying to muster a self-assured stride even as his wing-tipped feet slipped in the snow every third step or so.
“Whose crime scene was this?” Evans demanded.
Was this. That darn past tense again.
“It’s mine,” O’Reilly said, in present tense.
“Well, it’s not anymore,” Evans said. “The army will take it from here. We appreciate your cooperation.”
O’Reilly might have been summoning a response, but the attention of all three men was pulled toward the woods, where there was a crashing noise coming their way: snapping branches, leaves rustling under snow, pricker bushes scratching against fabric.
Then Haver Markham burst out of the thicket, wild eyed, looking like a five-foot-three, strawberry-blonde Sasquatch.
“What’s this”—she inserted a colorfully profane description of the army counterintelligence representative—“doing here?”
“There’s no need for name-calling,” Evans said snippily. “I was merely informing these gentlemen that we are relieving you of jurisdiction.”
“The hell you are,” Markham spat.
“I’m going to ask you to please cease and desist all activities and turn over any evidence you may have gathered to us,” Evans continued. “If you would please also—”
“Under whose authority?”
“Do we really need to go through this again? Because in addition to the national security concerns from this morning, we now throw in the specter of international espionage.”
“I heard you boys just lost in court,” Haver said. “So now you’re going to come take a crime scene from us out of spite? Real nice. Has your dick always been this small or did you have it surgically reduced?”
The corners of Emmett’s mouth lifted just slightly for a moment before he got control of them. He admired her spirit.
But state beat local.
And federal beat state.
This cause was lost. There was a bigger picture to think about. They’d never get the army’s cooperation on anything if they tried to fight it every step of the way.
“Sorry, Agent Evans, she doesn’t mean anything by that,” Emmett said. “We’ll clear out. Good luck here. Hope you find your spies.”
Haver was drawing breath to object, but Emmett silenced her with a fierce glance.
“Thank you, Detective,” Evans said stiffly.
“Just do us a favor,” Emmett said, holding out a business card for the man. “Keep us in the loop, okay? We still have a civilian with a wife and child missing here. There’s been a ransom demand. Every bit of information counts, and every second matters.”
Evans took the business card.
“Of course,” he said.
Maybe the veteran’s touch would actually work this time. Really, it was the only play he had.
Emmett herded O’Reilly and Markham away before they said anything they’d later regret.
“Why are you just giving up like that?” O’Reilly asked.
“We’re probably better off to have this with the feds right now. They have resources and contacts we don’t have. We were at a dead end out here anyway. We’re looking at two Chinese nationals dumped by the side of the road. And it’s great to get a cast of a boot print, but we have to be realistic that we really don’t have a legitimate chance to find the foot that was inside that boot.”
“How did Agent Asshole even know we were here?” Markham grumbled.
“Probably NCIC,” Emmett said, using the acronym for the National Crime Information Center. “Captain Carpenter has been updating it continuously in case Bronik’s captors take him out of state.”
Markham replied to this by offering another observation about the size of Gary Evans’s manhood.
“Let’s just keep our eyes focused on the road ahead, not the road behind,” Emmett said. “The lab at Dartmouth is back open now. Why don’t you take your guys back there and have a crack at it?”
CHAPTER 44
From the back bench seat of the helicopter, I watched the sun lower itself until it was resting perfectly on top of the Green Mountains of Vermont, like the red rubber ball in a song my father used to play.
It perched there for just a few minutes before making its exit, leaving the aircraft to fly toward the dusty pink-and-peach hues left behind.
Matt was down there—somewhere—huddled in a blood-spattered T-shirt, alone with his terror.
Could he hear the chopper passing overhead? Did he know what a hopeful sound it might be? Did he know how hard everyone—the police, the lawyers, and most of all Sheena—was working to rescue him?
Did he know there was such a beautiful sunset?
Would he live to see another one?
That last thought came completely unbidden, and I immediately tried to erase it.
I looked across the aisle, where Sean Plottner and his bodyguard were sitting. They were both wearing ear protection, as were Sheena and I. Lee stared at the fuselage, unblinking and expressionless, almost Plasticine, like an android that had gone into sleep mode but could snap into action instantly if commanded.
Plottner was buried in his phone. As I looked at him, I found myself thinking of something I read long ago in a German-literature class. It was the story of Doctor Faust, who famously sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge.
In this case, it wasn’t knowledge being sold. It was knowledge being bought.
I couldn’t help but wonder if I was dealing with the devil all the same.
By offering to pay the five-million-dollar ransom in exchange for Matt’s employment, was Plottner actually just seizing an opportunity he had created in the first place?
I played out the scenario: Matt turned down the job, so Plottner had Matt kidnapped, faked a ransom demand—which he received on his own Facebook account—and then swooped in with this generous-seeming offer to “save” him in exchange for Matt doing what Plottner wanted all along.
Would a billionaire do something so risky, something that could land him in prison if he got caught?
Or was that precisely what a billionaire did, because he had been raised in such extreme privilege and had spent a lifetime bending rules to his desires and skating away from the consequences?
That would clearly preclude Matt faking his own disappearance. And the question of how the kidnappers had known to evacuate just as Sheena was bearing down on the cabin had an easy answer too: Plottner had hired people to follow her. They had watched her leave Hanover and probably been able to follow us at least as far as Potato Road before falling back to avoid being spotted.
But by then they could have notified others that Sheena was getting close.
It fit. But was it true? I felt like my mind was spinning at least as fast as the rotors overhead.
I shook my head, trying to focus on wh
at was real. Sheena was going back to the lab. And if she failed, there was Sean Plottner’s generous offer.
It was generous, right? Yes, of course. It’s just that it came with strings attached.
Heavy ones.
More like chains.
But that’s all it was. Just an offer.
Matt would forgive me if I had to say yes to this, wouldn’t he? It’s not like I had a choice. What was I going to do, tell Plottner no thanks and invite the kidnappers to go ahead and kill my husband because he was too pure to consider working for private industry?
No, if Sheena couldn’t find Matt, this was clearly the second-best option. I looked over at her, buckled in the next seat over, smiling thinly at her.
Sheena nodded back. There was no smile on her battered face. Only determination.
She was obviously under stress, both from the abduction attempt and from what had followed. It’s not like she had asked to serve as a medium to her kidnapped postdoctoral adviser.
But she was holding up as well as could be expected.
Before too long, the helicopter began its descent and was soon hovering over our landing pad.
As soon as the bird set down, Plottner tugged off his ear protection. Sheena and I did the same. The pilot came around and opened the door.
At the edge of the helipad were two Lincoln Town Cars. Plottner led Sheena and me toward the first one. A driver was already holding the back door open. Plottner stopped short of it, gesturing for us to get in.
I read his lips as, over the roar of the helicopter motors, he said, “I’m sure we’ll talk more soon.”
“Yes, of course,” I said solemnly.
Sheena said something I didn’t catch.
“You bet,” Plottner said. “Good luck.”
He rapped the top of the car twice before heading toward his own Lincoln. Our driver confirmed we were going to Wilder Hall, then got rolling.
I quickly called Aimee, updating her, then asking how Morgan was doing, reading her answers on my screen. Aimee promised she was keeping her nephew distracted.
Then I talked briefly with Morgan, forcing cheer into my voice so he would think Mommy was doing just fine. Thankfully, he didn’t ask the one question I was dreading: “When’s Daddy coming home?”