She lets go of the gun.
“Good timing,” she says. “We may be onto something.” Her eyes dart among the half dozen open windows on her screen. For her this is like a game of Sudoku, establishing patterns by supplying missing pieces while trusting all along that those pieces fit. Computer traffic and data flow is no more random than vehicles in a city at rush hour. It appears chaotic, but every vehicle’s driver has a destination; there is a logic to the routes they take. So it is with each piece or packet of data: someone directed it, someone else received it. For her to break every encryption used by Kreiger would take months, perhaps years. So she allows his machine to do this for her; she merely captures the incoming stream, and mirrors the resulting images on his screen, reading or viewing, or listening to it, just as Kreiger does.
Knox starts into the first of two liverwurst sandwiches he’s brought with him and chugs down a beer while sitting on the side of her bed.
Grace does not look up from her screen. “The hacker who dropped that kiddie porn on us? That happened after I was already drilling him . . . data mining him.”
“I love it when you talk sexy,” he says through a full mouth.
“I trapped the MAC address and have had it tagged since. It just surfaced again, five minutes ago.”
Knox stops chewing, cheeks like a squirrel.
“On Kreiger’s laptop,” she says.
“Simplify,” he says. “Spying for Dummies.”
“I had established a defense against a particular hacker. That hacker engaged Kreiger’s laptop, not mine.”
“Hacking Kreiger?” Knox places the sandwich down.
“No. It is not adversarial. A text message was sent via Skype. Today’s date. Eleven P.M. This was followed by the number three. Meaning unknown.”
“A meeting? Fahiz?”
“We can assume the computer in question is in some way related to the man we call Fahiz. As to the purpose of the message: a meeting, a conveyance? It could be something as benign as a television program on Channel Three.”
“We haven’t got until eleven o’clock.”
“Yes. Of course. I only meant to point out that whoever hacked into my laptop has contacted Kreiger.”
“A rug shipment would have little reason to go out at that late hour,” Knox theorized. “What about the number? The three?”
“If it involves Kreiger’s laptop, I will most certainly pick up on it. Otherwise . . .”
“Sarge should have fought for more manpower. He rolled over. I didn’t expect that.”
“The client dictates the endpoint.”
He flashes her a disapproving look. He doesn’t want to be read from the manual. Knox’s size, his barely constrained power, can terrify her at times. She tries to never show him that he has such an effect on her, but wonders. It’s important that Dulwich see her at least as Knox’s equal.
“Where is David?” She had expected him to follow in behind Knox.
“Switching out rentals.”
“At this hour?”
He explains the events at the manufacturing compound.
“We found it? You withhold such a thing from me?”
“We . . . I need to watch the place this morning. For the girls arriving.”
“The white van will not arrive.”
“Exactly.”
“Fahiz will be notified.”
“Possibly.”
“Their mobiles . . .”
“Would help.”
“You cannot attempt this alone. It is foolhardy, John.”
His smirk tells her she’s misused a word, or amused him with her choice. “They’ll call the two in control of the van first. One’s dead, the other’s in police custody by now.”
“We have their mobiles,” she says.
“Yes,” Knox agrees.
“They will do this before contacting Fahiz.”
“Of course,” he says.
“What am I missing?” She can see it in his eyes.
“The same thing they are: the van.”
—
KNOX REACHES DULWICH at the off-airport Avis counter and lays out the plan. The painfully long silence that results suggests Dulwich’s resistance.
“Brower can handle this.”
Knox ends the call. Not because of the string of expletives that jump to his tongue, but because he’s receiving an incoming call from a number his phone doesn’t recognize.
He’s sitting in the parlor of the apartment, the doors shut to the bedroom where Grace has fallen asleep with her laptop atop her.
“Yeah?” he says. Waits. Is about to repeat himself when his dulled brain kicks in.
“Don’t hang up,” he says.
“You bastard!” Sonia says.
“I had to reach you.”
“You . . . It’s so unfair.”
“A horrible thing to do,” he admits.
“You gave me hope. You used her initials.”
“I had to reach you. We raided the dormitory. Ten girls. All safe now.” He hopes to appeal to the journalist.
“You tricked me in the most horrible way imaginable.”
“We’ve located the knot shop. Have you heard from Fahiz?”
“You are a monster.”
“I’m an operative for a private security firm.” He gives that time to sink in. “My employers are backing out of the op, shutting us down today. If we’re going to find Berna and Maja, if we’re going to stop Fahiz from packing up and doing this same thing to other girls someplace else, then we need each other. You and me. Now.” Against his better judgment he adds, “You want to talk about a story . . .”
“You think me so crass?”
“Fahiz has the balls to leave his number with the police so he’ll be notified if they close in on his own operation. You’ve contacted him,” Knox states with certainty. He waits. Nothing. “If you go to him alone, it’s the last any of us will see of you.” He adds, “That’s unacceptable.”
“You think me so stupid?”
“Fahiz agreed to a phone interview,” Knox speculates. “He’ll trap your number. Your location.”
“You played upon my emotions with that classified ad. My niece has been missing four years now. How could you do that?”
He reminds himself that she wants Berna alive. She wants Fahiz punished. Why, after discovering he tricked her, has she stayed on the line?
He’s overly tired. He’s allowed himself to believe she cares about him. It takes him added time to process her voice sounding apologetic instead of accusatory, time to realize that she still hasn’t hung up. She’s kept him on the call. A trapdoor opens beneath him and he falls.
You think me so stupid? echoes in his head. Sonia isn’t interested in a story. She wants Berna back. Fahiz has agreed to a trade. Sonia knew exactly who had placed the ad. She’s offered up Knox in exchange for the missing girl.
One glance out the window confirms it. A sedan double-parked at an angle. The heads of two men running toward the sidewalk.
He moves as if he’s rehearsed this a thousand times: a chair is used to wedge the apartment door; he’s into the kitchen, stripping the refrigerator of its shelves and drawers.
“John?”
He’s awakened Grace.
The crisper drawers go under the sink. The shelving goes under the bed as he scoops up Grace and runs her into the kitchen. He deposits her into the refrigerator in the fetal position, places his gun onto her lap. “Count to three after you hear it. Then open and shoot.”
Grace stares back with koala eyes. Fresh from sleep, she cannot process any of this.
“Breathe shallowly. Not much air in here.” He shuts the refrigerator’s French doors, entombing her.
Grabs a knife on his way to the window as the first jarring blow is absorbed by the apartment door. He opens the kitchen’s only window and slides out on his belly so his chest is against the brick. Jabs the knife into the grout and, hanging by one hand, pulls the window shut with the other.