She found the Hammel College case file in the backseat of the Tahoe and scanned through the loose pages and old photographs, all of it feeling surreal and distant—the idea that this had once been merely a job for Hank and her seemed impossible, laughable. It was the whole world to her now.
College administrators had provided the paperwork that had been given to the conference coordinator; it included two phone numbers for Oltamu, helpfully labeled office and mobile, and a note saying that the doctor preferred to be called before nine or after three.
Abby didn’t think Oltamu would mind the disturbance anymore.
She took the contact sheet, went back upstairs, punched the mobile number into her one working phone, and called, staring at the bizarre clone phone with Tara Beckley’s face on the display.
It won’t ring, she thought, but then she heard ringing.
She was so surprised that it took her a moment to realize it was from the phone at her ear.
She was about to disconnect the call when the voice came on.
“Hello?” A man, speaking softly and with a trace of confusion. Or fear.
Abby looked at the phone as if she’d imagined the voice. The call was connected. She had someone on the line.
“Hello?” the man said again.
Abby brought the phone back to her ear and said, “I was looking for Dr. Oltamu.”
There was a pause, and then the voice said, “Dr. Oltamu is unavailable. May I ask who’s calling?”
Abby hesitated and then decided to test him. “My name is Hank Bauer.”
Pause.
“Hank Bauer,” the man echoed finally, and Abby thought, He knows. The name means something to him.
“That’s right,” she said.
“And what can I do for you, Hank?” A bad impression of friendly and casual.
“Dr. Oltamu is dead,” Abby said. “So who are you and why are you answering a dead man’s phone?”
The silence went on so long that Abby checked to see whether the call was still connected. It was. As she started to speak again, the man finally answered.
“Would this be Abby Kaplan?”
“Good guess. Now, what’s your name?”
“That’s not important.”
“Of course not.” Abby got to her feet and started pacing the empty bedroom, the phone held tightly. “Give me another name, then—give me the kid’s name.”
“The kid.”
“That’s right. Tell me who he was and I won’t need your name. I want him.”
Another silence. Abby glanced at the display again—she’d been on the phone for thirty-seven seconds. How long was too long to stay connected?
“Do it fast,” she said.
“I’ve got no idea what kid you’re asking about. Or why you called this number.”
“Then why did you answer?” Abby knelt and punched the home button on the clone phone, which brought up the picture of Tara Beckley. She was ready to tell the man on the other end of the line what she had, ready to try a bargain, but she stopped herself.
She thought she understood now, understood the whole damn thing—or at least a much larger portion than she had before.
I’ve been there, she thought, looking at the photo. The background over Tara’s shoulder showed spindled shadows looming just past her pensive, awkward smile. Shadows from an old bridge. Abby had paced that same spot with a camera. That place was where this photo had been taken. Hammel College’s campus was just across the river.
“You got the wrong phone,” Abby said.
“What does that mean?” the man said, but his voice had changed, and he hadn’t asked the question out of confusion—he was intrigued. Wary, maybe, but intrigued.
“The one you just answered doesn’t matter,” Abby said. “The one I’ve got does. It might not even be a phone, but it’s what you wanted. It’s what you need now.”
When the man didn’t speak, Abby felt a cold smile slide over her face. “You took two of them,” she said. “You took Tara Beckley’s phone and Oltamu’s. That was the job. Other than killing him, of course. The job was to kill him and take the phones. I don’t know why, but I know that’s what you were trying to do. But there were three phones, and you didn’t know that. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
“Why don’t you explain—”
“You missed one,” Abby said. “And if you want it, you’re going to need to give me the kid who killed Hank. Think we can make that trade?”
“I bet if we meet in person, we can work this out. Quickly. How about that, Abby? You’re in some trouble, and I can ensure that it ends. You need some serious help.”
“And you need that phone. So make a gesture of good faith. Tell me his name.”
Pause. “I’d be lying if I told it to you. There’s my gesture of good faith. Whatever name he’s going by now, I don’t know it.”
For the first time, Abby believed him. “I need to come out of this alive,” she said.
“You will.”
“I’ll believe that when you tell me where to find him.”
No response. Abby looked at the phone again. What if the call was being traced? How long was too long? “Make a choice,” she said.
“Okay. All right. But it will take me some time. And I’ll need to know you’ve got the phone and where you are. You tell me that, I’ll put him in the same place. How you handle it then is up to you.”
“What do you call him?” Abby said.
“Huh?”
“Forget his real name. What do you call him?”
Another pause, and then: “Dax.”
“Dax.”
“Yes. But it won’t help you. Trust me, he’s not going to be located under that name.”
“That’s fine. You want the phone, you’ll put him where I can find him. Agreed?”
“Tell me something about the phone.”
“It’s a fake, for one.”
She could hear the man on the other end of the line exhale. “A fake?”
“Yes. It’s built to look like an iPhone, but it’s not one. Now—ready to make a deal on giving me your boy Dax?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Then I’ll call back. From a different number.”
“Hang on. Tell me where you—”
Abby cut him off. “End of round one. Answer when I call again.”
“Hang on, hang on, don’t—”
Abby disconnected and stood looking at the phone. Her hand was trembling. She powered the phone down. She didn’t want it putting out any sort of signal.
Who the hell was that? Who answered Oltamu’s phone?
Not Oltamu, that was for sure. And not a cop.
The options left weren’t good.
She sat beside Hank Bauer’s rifle and picked up the fake phone, trying to imagine what had made it worth killing for and what Tara Beckley had understood about it when her photo was taken. The smile was uncomfortable, forced, and the man she’d been with had been killed a few minutes—seconds?—later. Tara had been sent spinning into the river below and then rushed to the hospital, where she now lay in a coma. But there was a difference between uncomfortable and afraid, and as Abby looked at her face, she was sure Tara hadn’t been scared. Not yet, at least. Maybe after, maybe soon after, but not in the moment of that photograph.
Access authentication: Enter the name of the individual pictured above.
She hesitated, then typed Tara and hit Enter.
The display blinked, refreshed, and said Access denied, two tries remaining.
“Shit,” Abby whispered, and she set the phone down as if she were afraid of it.
As if? No. You are afraid of it.
People were being killed over this thing, and for what? Something stored on it made sense, but wasn’t everything cloud-based now? What would be on the phone that couldn’t be accessed by a hacker? Hacking it seemed easier than leaving a bloody trail of victims up the Atlantic coast. She stared at the device as if it would offer an answer. It cou
ldn’t. But who could?
Oltamu.
Right. A dead man.
“Why’d they kill you, Doc?” she whispered.
She couldn’t begin to guess because she didn’t know the first thing about Oltamu. That was a problem. Abby was out in front, but she didn’t know what was coming for her.
Look in the rearview mirror, then. Pause and look in the rearview.
To get answers, she would have to start with the first of the dead men.
30
Whenever the concealed microphones in Gerry Connors’s office were activated, Dax Blackwell received an alert on his phone. Generally, he chose not to listen unless Gerry was in the midst of a deal. He was always curious to determine how Gerry valued his efforts, since in Dax’s business, it was difficult to get a sense of the going professional rates. There weren’t many Glassdoor.com reviews for what he did.
Today he listened, tucking in earbuds. He sat in the car with an energy drink in hand and listened to Gerry Connors give his name to Abby Kaplan.
He was surprised by how disappointed he felt. He’d known Gerry was a risk, because anyone who knew how to find you was a risk, and yet he’d had as much trust in Gerry as anyone on earth since his father and uncle had been killed.
Time to put that away, though. Disappointment wasn’t a useful emotion; it did nothing to help your next steps.
And why be surprised? He remembered a day at the shooting range with his uncle and father, Patrick putting round after round into the bull’s-eye from two hundred yards, totally focused, eye to the scope, and Dax’s father looking on with the sort of pride that Dax wanted to inspire in him. Something about watching that shooting display had made his father reflective. Jack Blackwell tended to be philosophical when guns were in hand.
But that day, as Patrick racked the bolt and breathed and fired and hit, over and over, Jack Blackwell had watched his brother with fierce pride and then looked at his son and said, “Dax, if you find one person on this earth who would never fuck you over for money or women, you’ll be a fortunate man. People like that are rare.”
There you had it, then. Why feel disappointment in Gerry Connors when he was doing exactly what you’d expect him to? The only question was how to respond.
Dax sipped his energy drink and played the recording once more, then sat in silence, thinking, his eyes straight ahead. At length, he picked up his phone and called Gerry.
“It’s me,” he said. “I’m struggling here. Our girl Abby has done a good job of hiding. Any ideas?”
31
Gerry Connors had a decision to make, and he needed to make it fast. Abby Kaplan was out there doing exactly what Dax Blackwell had predicted—avoiding police and trying to make a play on her own. The German was out there, inbound and impatient, and he didn’t even know what a mess this had turned into yet. And now there was Dax Blackwell on the phone asking for guidance, and Gerry had to decide whether to set him up or give him a chance.
It seemed impossible that he’d been put in this situation by some disgraced stunt-car-driving chick turned insurance adjuster.
The most intriguing part of the whole thing was that the kid had been right. Kaplan hadn’t gone straight to the cops; she’d gotten scared and run. Gerry couldn’t imagine how the kid had been so damned sure of this.
Yes, you can. You have always imagined it. He’s one of them.
“Gerry?” Dax said. “Are you there?”
“Yeah. I’m here. And she’s not hiding. She’s calling people.”
“Calling who?” Dax said, and he seemed pleased by the news.
Gerry looked at Amandi Oltamu’s silent phone on his desk and wondered how long it would be before it rang again…and what Abby Kaplan would have done in the meantime. Beside the phone was a notepad on which Gerry had scribbled the number she had used to call him. He looked from the phone to the notepad, drumming a pen on the desk.
Trade Dax or trust him?
“Gerry?” Dax prompted.
“She’s trying to make her own way out of this,” Gerry said. “She might already be with the cops, but it didn’t feel like it. She says she’s got the phone, although she might be bluffing. But she understands the way it went, at least. She understands what Ramirez did wrong.”
Dax was quiet for a moment, then said, “How do you know this?”
There he went again, pushing, fishing.
“My client,” Gerry said tightly.
“How did Abby Kaplan reach your client?”
If he’d been in the room, Gerry might’ve shot him. Instead he squeezed his eyes shut, took a breath, and said, “She’s calling Oltamu’s phone.”
“And your client was dumb enough to answer it?”
“Listen, shut the fuck up and let me talk, all right? She called the phone and spun some bullshit about trading for…safety. I don’t know what that means to her exactly and probably neither does she—she just knows she’s in trouble.”
Dax didn’t say anything this time.
“I want to know where she’s calling from,” Gerry said.
“I’d imagine.”
Gerry would have shot him twice for that.
Trade him, then. Give him up.
“How’d you know she’d go this route?” he asked, and the kid must have heard the sincerity in his voice, because for once he wasn’t a wiseass when he responded.
“A lot of factors. She likes to be on the move. Has her whole life. From the cradle until I finally put her in the grave, Abby’s been about motion and speed. She doesn’t have a good history with police either. There are still people in California who are pushing for her to be charged in the wreck that killed the pretty-boy actor. And…” He hesitated, that brief hitch that his father had never shown, or at least had never shown to Gerry, before he said, “I guess you could call it my own instinct. Abby’s not dumb, and I saw that, but I also made sure she knew that I wasn’t dumb. Everything that’s happened since is a reaction to our understanding of each other. That seems simple, but it’s not. If someone is close to a mirror, you see it.”
“Close to a mirror? What the hell does that mean?”
The kid gave it a few beats before he said, “I understand her. That’s all it means.”
“She’s an insurance investigator. If you feel like she could work with you, then I’ve sorely underestimated your talents.”
With no trace of annoyance, the kid said, “Oh, you haven’t underestimated my talents, Gerry. Abby Kaplan’s, though? She’s something more than we’d have expected.”
“Because she got away from you. That’s all you mean. You don’t want to admit that you screwed up with her. Because she got away, we need to pretend she’s something special.”
Still no inflection change when Dax said, “Didn’t you tell me I was right in my prediction about how she’d choose to move, Gerry?”
“Maybe you were.”
“She’s on the run and she’s calling you—sorry, calling your client. Give me the benefit of the doubt on this one. I was right about Abby.”
“After you lost her.”
“Once. Yes. After I lost her once.” He was unfazed. “It won’t happen twice.”
Gerry said, “I’ve got the number she called from, and that’s all I’ve got.”
“It’s a start.”
“You need to work fast. This is going to go in one direction or the other very quickly.”
“An object in motion tends to stay in motion,” Dax Blackwell said cheerfully, “unless an external force is applied to it. Let’s see if we can apply a little force. What’s the number?”
Gerry read it off. “See what you can do with that, and let me know in a hurry.”
“If Abby calls back, is your client going to answer that phone again?”
“How the fuck do I know?” Gerry snapped.
“I suppose you don’t.”
“Of course I don’t. Just do your job.”
“Right,” the kid said, and he disconnected.
&
nbsp; Gerry looked from his own phone to Oltamu’s and found himself wishing Oltamu’s would ring. I’ll make that trade, Kaplan. I had high hopes for this kid, but they’re vanishing fast. You call back, and I will absolutely make that trade.
But for now…
He couldn’t make the trade until Kaplan called back. In the meantime, he could give the kid a chance to clean up the mess. Keep two plays alive until the right one announced itself and then act decisively. That was how you won.
Gerry would win this yet.
32
When both doctors enter the room together, Tara knows it’s bad news. They’ve decided on an alliance, neither wanting to make the other crush a family’s hope. Teamwork, then; they’ll break hearts together. At the sight of the doctors, Mom and Rick and Shannon all rise to their feet, their voices loud and chaotic and too cheerful, as if pleasantries can change the outcome. Dr. Carlisle is all warm smiles and soft tones; Dr. Pine looks like a Zen shark, a good-natured predator swimming past potential victims, not yet sure if he’ll turn and devour them. He eludes Rick’s awful bro-hug-handshake hybrid with grace, then walks to Tara’s side and looks her in the eyes.
“When this is all over,” he says, “I want you to tell me everything that was said about me behind my back.”
The room goes silent, and Dr. Carlisle appears vaguely annoyed. In that expression, Tara sees the results of the test—she passed, and Dr. Carlisle wanted to make the announcement.
She passed. Tara is positive. They know that—
“She’s alert,” Dr. Carlisle says, the annoyed expression gone and a radiant smile in its place. “Not just alert—fully and completely aware, cognitively and emotionally. Her results are extraordinary. Not unprecedented, but close. Every lobe reacted as it should have; her visual, auditory, and processing responses to the movie were perfect.” She turns to Shannon and says, “And she certainly had an emotional response to the girl at the beginning of the movie. You weren’t wrong about that.”
Chrissie, Tara thinks. Why can’t anyone ever remember her name?
If She Wakes Page 19