"They won't all fit in his car," Marshawn said, another smile on his lips, as though he were discovering logistical holes in their plan.
"I know. He's calling for a ride. The FBI will bring a minivan."
"Oh, that won't tip anybody off!" Marshawn laughed out loud this time, and Eleri laughed with him.
"No, it will look like a ride share. Like they're going to the airport or something."
As he nodded, he called out to his girls and offered Eleri a drink while they waited. But she refused. As crazy as this day had been, she still couldn’t eat or drink. She was definitely on the job right now. But she encouraged the girls to grab a snack, as they would be getting on the road soon after returning to the Mazur house.
While Donovan drove them to the safe house, she would head back to their home to watch any comings and goings at the Rychenkov-Schmitt house and try to translate the last of the new notebook passages. She didn't mention any of this to Marshawn. Not yet.
She did talk to the girls, asking them what they would need. She pointed out that if their devices had wireless, they had to keep them turned off. No checking accounts. Good hackers could trace the user back to the location.
She also took their cell phones from them, much to their dismay. “I’m sorry, but I have to do this. At least you’ll be in the house with your friends. And you’ll have basic internet access there, and movies, and TV and more. But you won’t be able to reach out to people you know.”
"Really?" Madisyn moaned, frowning.
"I know. Safehouses suck monkeys," Eleri told the girl, and at least that got a smile. “But it’s not safe to get in contact with anyone. Donovan and I are going to do our best to make sure that you're out as soon as possible. The most important thing is to remember that you'll be safe. That's why we're doing this."
Emersyn and Madisyn both nodded. Though their expressions didn't brighten at all, they at least accepted their fate with a level of understanding that made Eleri proud.
Within a few more moments, they were fully packed. Climbing into her car again, they all headed back toward the Mazur home. Marshawn would drive his own car. The Mazur car would stay in their garage. Eleri and Donovan had already promised to take care of the cat, though Donovan had no major fondness for cats.
They pulled up just behind the rideshare van that the FBI had provided, and loaded everyone in. Once they were headed down the road, Eleri and Marshawn were the only ones left to wave them off, and she couldn’t help the bad feeling that settled in the pit of her chest.
They were close. She knew it. But she couldn’t see it coming.
55
Eleri let herself back into the house, her major task for the evening completed. Still, that didn’t mean the day was over. This one had been a mess from top to bottom, and it felt good to be back in her own place—at least as much as this Frank Lloyd Wright-style home was “hers.”
She knew work was waiting for her at the table and that she should be doing what she could while she waited for Donovan to return. Though she wanted to climb into bed and sleep everything away, she needed to wait for her partner.
He’d climbed into the airport-shuttle-type minivan with both Nate and Kaya Mazur and the four kids. The agent/driver now waited at the Mazur home, armed and ready, simply staring at the walls until Donovan returned with the vehicle.
It was a good hour’s drive to the safe house, Eleri knew, and Donovan would have to take the time to get the family and the kids all settled in. So she didn't expect Donovan to come home any time soon.
Flipping on lights as she let herself in through the garage door, she headed toward the front to hand over her coat. She made the mistake of looking at the table.
The black-and-white composition notebooks still lay open across the surface. They hadn’t even taken the time to shut them before they dashed out the door. Their laptops, at least, shut down after fifteen minutes and were password protected upon opening the screen again. But she and Donovan had been so convinced the kids were in danger, they hadn’t cleared the table well enough.
What if someone had needed to come with her when she came home? What if they showed up at the door? What if someone had snuck in here while they'd been out? Eleri wanted to believe this was the first time that they'd dicked it up so badly, but it couldn't have been. There had been a number of occasions when they'd run out of the house for various reasons.
Despite the darkness hovering outside the large back window, it still wasn't yet late and it would be against protocol to allow her head to hit the pillow and herself to fall asleep for the night. She needed to at least get Donovan’s report on how everyone was settled in, and whether they’d handled the rules and their guard FBI agents well.
Eleri knew basically where the safe house was, though not the exact address. It was a small, single-family home in an unassuming neighborhood full of small, unassuming, single-family homes. The FBI liked it because it came with plenty of bedrooms and just enough space between it and the neighboring houses so as not to draw attention to a minivan full of people arriving like a clown car in the late evening.
Donovan would also have walked them through the standard cover for a family of their means being suddenly gone. The general story was to say they had won tickets on a cruise ship, which is why they would only be answering emails and such periodically. He’d had them each compose a message to a friend. The FBI would dole out the notes over the next several days, so no one would file any missing person’s reports.
That cover would hold for at least a week. After that, the two of them would have to reconfigure things. It wouldn't do to have family members upset or trying to get a hold of Nate and Kaya or even the kids, wondering where they were.
With a deep sigh that she hoped would keep her awake, Eleri headed into the kitchen, where she pulled a banana off the counter and began to eat it. Donovan hadn't eaten any of them, and she wondered why she might have ever thought he would. He wasn't much a fan of fruits and vegetables, which shouldn’t have been surprising.
She ate the whole banana, not realizing that she was hungry until she'd started to peel it. But the food in her stomach seemed to make her even sleepier. Heading to the fridge, she grabbed a soda before sitting down at the table to begin working through more of the pages in the notebooks.
Cola in one hand and pen in the other, she started flipping through the pages, translating as she went. It got easier and easier to read the code with practice. She began recognizing some of the clusters as words, no longer requiring letter-by-letter translation. A ping on her screen caused her to click over and check her email.
The secure FBI system gave her a readout from the CDC lab test on the pillow case. It took three more clicks and a login to open the results, but even that didn’t help. Eleri frowned at the screen.
“Cement dust.”
What the fuck?
How had cement dust gotten on the pillow on Jivika’s bed? Her eyes blinked and she tipped up the soda can only to find that it was empty. Guzzling sodas was not her usual M.O., but tonight was not normal by any stretch. Heading to the fridge, she grabbed another and popped the tab on it. The fizz hit her tongue and her brain but didn’t help solve her problem.
Why would there be cement dust in the bed?
She kept working at the code but didn’t let the test results wander far from her thinking. She hoped something would ping in her brain, but it continued to annoy her that she had something so unique and couldn’t put it together.
It wasn't twenty minutes later that she heard the knock at the door. It wouldn't be Donovan. He'd still be out and he wouldn't knock anyway. So she did a better job than they’d done before and closed all the notebooks and the screen on her laptop before heading to the front door.
Putting her eye to the peephole, she saw that her visitor was Marshawn. She hadn’t needed to hide things from him. He already knew that they were FBI agents, and she wondered if he'd stopped at his brother's house next door. Had he told LeDonRi
c about her and Donovan? How much? Did maybe even Maggie know? She could only hope he’d held to their agreement. Tomorrow, the PD would be following him, much as they had with Jivika, though that hadn’t been able to save the woman’s life. Eleri worried for Marshawn and his carefree attitude.
As she opened the door and said his name, she noticed he was holding a good-sized duffle bag, and she frowned. Stepping back, she motioned him to come inside. A bad feeling was settling in … but they’d checked him out. He had no motive in the case. “What's going on?”
“I changed my mind,” he told her with a sigh and a Marshawn smile. “I want to take you up on your offer for protective custody.”
Trying to cover her sigh of relief, she wondered at his sudden change of mind. She then worked to hide a second sigh, this one of frustration. This would have been a lot easier if he could have decided it an hour ago. Her expression must have shown, because he explained.
“I thought about it.” He rubbed his hands along the sides of his jacket, a nervous gesture certainly. She would have to hide her irritation a little better. “I watched the girls leave, and I thought I would be okay with that. And I do have this huge project that I’ll probably miss out on. But I got home and I had to ask myself what was really more important: the project or my children. They've got to be scared out of their minds.”
Eleri understood. Sometimes people didn’t know what they wanted until they realized they’d made the wrong decision. She smiled. “They looked like they were holding together pretty well. We’ll have to wait for Donovan to get back before we can take you out to the house. So you’re stuck with me for an hour or so. Can I get you anything to make you comfortable while you wait?”
He shook his head at first, but then seemed to change his mind. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“Sure.” She rattled off the options they had in the fridge.
Marshawn asked for a can of coke, probably having noticed hers, and she headed around the counter to fetch it for him, talking while she went. “We won't wait until morning to take you to the safe house. We’ll get you back with your girls as soon as we can. But I can’t take you right now. Even I don’t know the location.”
Handing him the drink, she watched as he nodded his thanks. But there was something in the way he nodded that Eleri couldn't decipher. Was he upset that it would take so long to get to his girls? Or what?
“Here.” She motioned him to have a seat at the table. Though she wanted to open the notebooks and continue to do the work, she couldn't. Despite everything she and Donovan had already told the group tonight, Marshawn didn't know anything new. He shouldn’t see what she might discover, and she couldn't reveal the coding in the notebooks. So she couldn’t work while they waited.
Even so, he reached out to flip the front cover on one, and Eleri had to shoo him away. “I'm sorry, those are FBI property, and I can't let you read them.”
Standing up and walking around the table, she carefully tucked them all into her bag, along with her laptop and Donovan's and put all their work aside. “Come on into the living room,” she offered, thinking they would have to stare at each other for an hour. She grabbed her can of soda and led him further into the house.
He sank into the couch and talked about the girls, about how good Curie had been for them. About how Emersyn and Madisyn had both gotten advanced placements in their classes, even here, even against the best and the brightest. Eleri could see the pride on his face.
She commented, “Yeah, both your girls tested into the high end classes. That’s quite an accomplishment.” And that was when she remembered—Marshawn’s name had appeared in the stack that Marshall Bennett did not remember accepting into Curie.
For a moment, she frowned but didn't say anything. She was hard pressed to make small talk for a while, but she couldn’t send the man away or do research while he was here. He needed to stay within her sight. If he was accepting FBI protective custody, then she was currently the one delivering it.
She stood up to get her holster and her gun from where she’d set them on the table earlier. It would not do to have someone burst in and try to kill him while her gun was across the room.
As she slid her shoulders into the straps, she noticed she felt a little bit wobbly.
That was the first sign.
Oh shit.
Turning, she faced Marshawn, who was standing and watching as she walked across the room. He looked sad.
Eleri felt the rage boil up in her, but it was too late. She couldn’t grasp the thoughts passing through her head, but she’d unfortunately solved their case. Just about twenty minutes too late…
56
Immediately, Eleri pulled her gun, though her hands weren't steady and her grip didn't feel solid. He’d drugged her. She was going to be his next murder. She couldn’t hope that he’d only drugged her but didn’t plan on killing her, too.
In the back of her head, the thought slipped by that there was cement dust on Jivika Das’s pillowcase. It was important, but she couldn’t hold onto it. Instead, her mind slid to the next thought—he’d watched her pack up the notebooks. This fucker knew exactly where all the information was …. And that she and Donovan had the code cracked and were translating it. They’d done all the work for him!
“Why don't you come back and sit down, Eleri?” he said, motioning to the couch behind him.
But she shook her head at him, raising the gun toward his center mass. She would kill him if she had to. Unfortunately, she didn't have quite enough information to justify pulling the trigger yet.
Dammit!
She needed more evidence, and she probably had less than a minute to find it. Her reflexes might completely give out on her at any moment.
What was the right thing to do? Try to stay calm and have the drug diffuse through her system more slowly, buying her some time now. Or hyperventilate, let her adrenaline wash over her, and see if she could metabolize it faster than normal?
Would it be fast enough? She didn’t know. Probably not. But her hands were shaking and she’d already forgotten the first option. She shallowed out her breathing so as not to be obvious about it and sped up her heart rate, choosing the only option she remembered. She flexed her muscles though she didn’t move from her stance, grateful for the cooler weather and the long sleeves she wore. She pressed her lips together to look as though she were mad as hell rather than thinking as fast as she could when she couldn’t quite function at her usual rate.
“How did you do it, Marshawn?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s exactly what's happening now. You know.”
But she didn't. She still hadn't really figured out how he'd done it. She was afraid she was going to find out too soon.
“Why did you do it, Marshawn? Why did you kill them?”
“It’s obvious—because the idea is worth billions and I need it. I have a loan shark after me. It’s for my girls. Marat was old. I asked him to share it and he wouldn't. He wouldn’t even give me a finder’s fee for hooking him up with Jivika.”
That hadn’t been in the notebooks. Was it real? Or a lie he was telling himself now to justify killing people? Eleri's brain swam. But was it from the cognitive dissonance of this kind man who smiled so often telling her that he had killed an inventor just to steal his project—or was it a result of the drugs? Eleri couldn't tell.
She couldn’t shoot him, so she would have to arrest him.
She headed back across the room but found her legs too mushy to work fully. Her voice barked at him to sit down and put his hands behind him. Thankfully, that was rote after all the training the FBI doled out.
But Marshawn just shook his head and refused.
She threatened him with the gun, and she should have pulled the trigger. But even now, she couldn’t put the pieces together well enough to justify lethal force.
Her brain slipped again, but this time it told her, he’d just admitted to killing Marat Rychenkov. She had a split second to make a decision. Sh
e did have enough information.
She pulled the trigger.
57
After finally pulling into the driveway at the safehouse, Donovan stepped out of the van and entered the code for the garage door. Once it slowly lifted, he hopped back in and pulled forward.
Though the space was intended for two cars, the van was almost too long to fit, and he had to finagle it within inches to get the garage door to come down behind them. That was important. He didn't want any neighbors or lookie-loos to see the number of people he was letting out of the van—or even worse, their faces.
The ride over had been relatively quiet once their questions had been thwarted repeatedly by, "I can't tell you that," and eventually, "I'm sorry, that's above your pay grade.”
He and Eleri had answered pretty much everything they could back when everyone had been meeting at the Mazur's dining room table. The children's initial glee at being important enough to warrant FBI protection had faded as the drive wore on. It was now late at night. Whether it was past the high schoolers' bedtime or not, Donovan had no idea.
Inside, they all scoped the place out and said hello to the two agents already waiting. The kids were most interested in sleeping arrangements. The house had four bedrooms. Though Donovan had initially started to suggest arrangements, it was Kaya Mazur who seemed to understand what the children needed, so Donovan stepped back.
The two waiting agents stepped forward and shook hands, introducing themselves to Nate and Kaya as Omar and Lisa. Then they stayed quietly out of the way as the family got settled. When Donovan raised an eyebrow that Kaya had left one of the bedrooms empty—seemingly purposefully—Kaya nodded at him and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, "It's for Marshawn, when he comes."
Though Donovan frowned, as Marshawn had clearly decided not to take advantage of the safehouse, he looked to Kaya rather than asking his question out loud.
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