“Leaving so soon?” asked the woman.
“Yeah,” said Lydia. “I don’t think this is my cup of tea. No pun intended.”
The woman offered a wan smile. There was something so cold about her, something so stiff.
“We all find our way,” she said.
Lydia wondered briefly if that was true. Did everyone find their way in this world? Didn’t some people get crushed, or left behind? Or was that the way they found, their way, if not the way they wanted.
Two large men in the New Day uniform of blue jeans and white tunics were waiting outside the door. They wore the same cool, smug expressions. But all of them had those vacant eyes. They and the woman stayed close as she walked to the door. She felt their eyes on the back of her neck and she fought the urge to run or turn and punch one of them in their empty faces to see if they were really flesh-and-blood people. Out in the cold, they stood on the top stair leading to the church.
“Good-night,” Lydia said and walked up the street. The blonde lifted a hand in farewell.
Lydia pulled her coat tight around her and walked quickly north. She passed Dax sitting in the Rover but didn’t look at him. She could still feel their eyes on her. Dax didn’t look at her either; obviously he sensed something was wrong or saw the three standing in the doorway, watching her leave.
Jeffrey crossed from the church building through the breezeway with glass walls into the taller condo building. He pushed through a light-colored wooden door and entered an empty foyer where the only sound was the buzzing of fluorescent lights. The floors and walls were crisp white, the high ceilings a robin’s egg blue. The empty reception desk that stood in front of the entrance was a white lacquer semicircle. The space was antiseptic, meant, he thought, to communicate purity, cleanliness. Then he remembered what Matt Stenopolis had told Lydia about the “cleansing” period new members were required to undergo. The place gave him the creeps and an uneasy instinct whispered that they should get out as fast as possible. He paused for a second, glancing around for cameras, but didn’t see any. He walked over to the reception desk, on which sat a multi-line phone, a clipboard, and a cup of pens printed with the New Day logo.
Jeffrey realized when he held the pen in his hand that he’d seen the logo often on items like coffee cups, notepads. It hadn’t really clicked for him when he’d seen the logo on the van. But now he recalled seeing it on advertisements on the subway for things like depression counseling, addiction recovery, breaking the cycle of child abuse. The light blue line drawing of sunbeams reaching through cloud cover on a white background. He thought of the website and the brochures Dax had taken. It was outreach. Like the pedophile who picks the child with the lowest self-esteem, or the rapist who picks the smallest, most defenseless woman, they were trawling for people in the most pain, people who’d give almost anything to feel better.
The list of visitors was blank. But Jeffrey could see that heavy handwriting on the page above had left an impression on the blank sheet that must have been below it. He held it up to the light and tilted it, hoping to make something out. But his eyes were not great to begin with, so he gave up quickly. He took the sheet, folded it, and put it in his pocket.
The sounding of a soft bell startled him. He turned to see an elevator bank to his right. The lighted display above one of the doors indicated that the car was in a downward descent. He looked around for a place to hide.
Lydia walked nearly two blocks as quickly as she could without looking as if she were afraid or in any kind of a rush. She passed some shops that were closed for the evening, a small café, a copy and mailing center, a pet store. The neighborhood was an awkward mix of businesses, private homes, and condo buildings. Some of the homes were old and regal, adding a quaintness to the area which otherwise would have been like any other modern city block. They stood proudly beside the larger, newer apartment buildings that had cropped up, looking a bit out of place but refusing to give ground.
When she was out of sight of the church, she made a quick right and dashed between two condo buildings and followed an alley that ran parallel to the way she had come. She turned off the alley and cut through someone’s lawn and set off a motion detector as she passed, a floodlight lighting up the yard, revealing a rusted swing set and a sandbox filled with weeds. She moved quickly through a side yard and crossed a small dark street, underneath a canopy of towering elms. The night was dark and once she was off the main street, the streetlights there gave off little more than an orange glow. The neighborhood was quiet. She could see the blue flash of television screens and orange lamplight in bay windows.
She came up behind the New Day building and crossed the yard quickly, edging the bushes on the perimeter and cutting across where the distance from the bushes to the building was shortest. She saw a door without handles and hoped it was the same door she’d opened for Jeffrey. She couldn’t be sure, she felt turned around and disoriented. She put her fingers between the frame and the door and tried to pull, but it was stuck fast. She couldn’t budge it. Either someone had found the tape and locked the door, or it was too heavy for her small fingertips-or it was the wrong door.
She moved along the wall looking for another door in the same general area, feeling along the masonry. She was sure now, seeing the front of the building, that the door she was at was the right one. She went back and tried it again. She couldn’t move it. She felt her heart start to race as she realized she wasn’t going to be able to get back into the building. That Jeff was in there alone, thinking she was in there, too. She looked around for something to try to pry into the space between the frame and the door but there was nothing except some large rocks and a few thin branches.
Jeffrey picked the lock on an inside door and slipped into a room just as he heard the elevator doors slide open behind him. Leaning against the wall, he listened to the sound of feet approaching. But whoever it was passed by the door, their shadows flashing on the thin white strip of light that came in under the door. Then there was silence.
When he could breathe again, he looked around to find himself in what looked like a security nerve center. The lights were dim and the room was cool. There was a wall of locked glass cabinets housing rows of computer servers. He walked around the wall and came to an alcove containing twenty closed-circuit monitors in five rows of four. An empty seat that was still warm and a half-consumed bottle of water told him he wouldn’t be alone for long.
Images of long empty hallways lined with closed doors, elevator banks, wide shots of the building’s exterior, the auditorium where Trevor Rhames was doing his preaching, flashed in intervals on the black-and-white screens. As he watched he saw Lydia being escorted from the building by a blonde woman and two big men. He watched until she was off camera. He knew she’d try to come back through the door they’d left open and that he’d have to hurry if he was going to meet her there.
He sat at the computer monitor beside the security screens and moved the mouse. The dark screen came to life and a menu of options popped up in front of him. He clicked on the file that said “Camera Views” and found a list of subcategories. “Hallways and Exterior Views” was already highlighted. He chose a folder named “Interior Rooms” and the images on the screens changed.
He let out a long breath. “Oh my God,” he said, just as he heard the shutters begin to come down and the alarms start to sound. Then the knob to the door started to turn.