There’s no warrant.
She told herself that as she waited in line at Harris County jail.
She had to risk it. Had to see Danny one more time before there was a warrant-and regardless of what Derek said, her best guess was that there would be one. She didn’t know if Gary was pulling those strings or not, but it would be just like him, to reduce her options down to the one path he wanted her to follow.
Soon there would be no going back to Emily.
She’d taken the logbook and passports with her. There was no place she felt secure leaving them. Not in a safe- deposit box under a name Gary knew. Not in her apartment, with its cheap alarm system and personal safe she’d installed in the closet that would be far too easy to crack or steal.
Instead, they sat in a locker here in the lobby of Harris County Jail.
It won’t be for long, she told herself. Just long enough to get through the lines. The line for the deputy. The line for the metal detector. The line for the visitation room.
Just long enough to find out what Danny wanted her to do with the logbook.
This would be her last chance before leaving town tomorrow with Caitlin. Maybe her last chance to visit Danny in Harris County period, if Emily had to disappear. Suddenly turning up here as Michelle-too big a risk.
Her turn at the first Plexiglas window and the deputy behind it. She put the slip of paper with Danny’s information and her Emily driver’s license in the aluminum trough, and waited.
There’s no warrant.
The deputy looked at her license first. He was heavyset, with a shaved head and thick neck. He glanced at the license, gave her a long look up and down.
“Oh, you cut your hair,” he said, with a smile she didn’t like. “Makes you look real different.”
She nodded and forced a smile back. Maybe he was just trying to be friendly, and anyway, she needed this to go smoothly.
He faced his computer. Entered in her license number. Waited for the results. She stood there, willing herself to stay calm.
He put her license aside. She tried to keep her face arranged in the same neutral expression. To not show her relief.
The deputy picked up the piece of paper with Danny’s information and typed in the SPN number.
“Not available,” he said after a moment.
“What?”
“Not available,” he repeated, impatience edging his voice.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t understand.” Stay calm, she told herself. Swallow the panic that rose in her throat. “Not available… can you tell me why?”
He shrugged. “No information. Takes the system a day or two to update sometimes. Check back then.”
“But…”
He pushed her license plate into the trough. She’d been dismissed.
Smile, she told herself. You need his help. “It’s just that this is all pretty new to me. Can you tell me what that generally means?”
“Could be sick and in the clinic. Most likely pulling chain.”
“Pulling chain?”
“Transferred.” The look he gave her now, the curled-lip smirk, there was no mistaking the contempt. “Like I said, check back in thirty-six to forty-eight hours.”
She nodded and picked up her license, her hand trembling. “Thank you,” she said, gripping the license, feeling its plastic edges cutting into her fingers, into the meat of her thumb. She turned to go.
“You look better with the hair long,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You’re in Houston?”
“Of course I’m in Houston, isn’t that obvious?”
“Okay, Emily, try to calm down.”
“Calm down? Did you hear anything I just said? They transferred him someplace, or he’s sick or hurt and in the clinic, and they wouldn’t tell me a fucking thing!”
Michelle had waited until she got back to her apartment before calling Derek. Now she paced around the tiny living room, which felt far too small to contain her rage.
“Okay. Look, I understand you’re upset. It’s probably some kind of… administrative error, or computer glitch. It happens. Have you talked to Marisol?”
“No, because as we’ve determined, I’m in Houston, and it’s almost 9 p.m. here.”
“I’ll call her. We’ll deal with this first thing in the morning, I promise.”
“Okay.” She felt suddenly exhausted, like someone had pulled a plug and all her energy had drained away, leaving a wash of toxic chemicals behind. Her shoulders ached. She flopped down on the couch, the stiff fabric that reminded her of indoor/outdoor carpeting making her bare calves itch.
“Emily, so.” Derek sounded a little tentative. He was probably worried about setting her off again. She’d never lost it with Derek before. Not like this. “Since you’re in Houston… we should think about setting up that meeting with the DEA. The sooner the better. Marisol can act as your counsel.”
“I’m not staying in Houston.”
“How long will you be there?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m… I’m going to be in transit for a few days. I’ll call you from the road.”
“Emily, you need to listen to me. Seriously. We need to have this meeting. If you keep stalling, you’re just giving them an incentive to look at you more closely. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. Because it starts making Jeff’s case look bigger than it is, and there’s nothing the feds love more than turning a simple case into a multi-defendant conspiracy. One where they can add charges and years onto a potential sentence. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She wanted to cry. Or laugh. A conspiracy? she wanted to say. You have no fucking idea what kind of conspiracy this is. Or maybe you do, and you’re just playing your part, in case someone is listening.
“I do understand,” she said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Tomorrow she’d be in San Francisco, where Derek’s office was. They had the Safer America event on Thursday and a free day scheduled on Friday. If she had to, maybe she could slip away from Caitlin for a while, and meet with the DEA there.
“We think it’s a transfer,” Marisol said.
“You think?”
“We were able to determine that it’s nothing medical, he’s not in the clinic, he’s not in Ad-Seg, and they moved over a hundred prisoners yesterday because of overcrowding, so don’t worry, he’s fine. We just don’t know exactly where he is yet.”
It was just after 10 a.m., and Michelle was getting ready to leave her apartment and drive to Caitlin’s house to meet the town car that would take them to the airport.
“I don’t understand,” Michelle said. “How can you not know? How is it they don’t keep better track of these things? It’s crazy!”
“I know. You’d think it would all be computerized, like they’d have barcodes or something, but there’s still an awful lot of stuff that gets entered by hand, and they don’t make it a priority for us to know. Believe me, you’d be surprised at some of the stuff that happens.”
“Not really,” Michelle said.
After she hung up, she did one last final bit of packing. She opened the safe in the closet and got out the cash she’d stashed in it, and then she retrieved the rest of the cash that she’d kept in the suitcase there.
She decided to put most of it in her checked luggage. If she got ripped off, she got ripped off, but her checked luggage was less likely to get searched.
The logbook and the passports she’d keep close.
Too bad about the.38 she’d bought from the guy in the trailer park with the shih tzu. Declaring she had that in her checked luggage as required seemed like a sure way to get flagged for a secondary search, and she needed to keep the money safe.
She’d need the money if she had to run.
“What a beautiful hotel!”
“Glad you like it,” Michelle said.