The kid ran a hand through a thick, silky shock of jet-black hair.
“Okay,” he said. “You, Mr. Mark, and Mr. Bond are private investigators. You were following leads on the disappearance of a girl.” He stopped and checked his notes. “Lily Samuels. You were planning on gaining entry to the New Day Farms to search for her when someone claiming to be an FBI agent named Grimm approached you and your associates. He told you that Lily Samuels was working for him when they lost contact with her. He wanted you to go in and try to retrieve Lily Samuels and provide proof that The New Day was stockpiling weapons so that the resultant publicity would make it possible for them to take down an illegal organization that was being protected by highranking members of the government.”
“She could still be in there,” said Lydia. “There could be an innocent girl in there.”
Her desperation was making her loud but Agent Hunt didn’t say anything; he just looked at her like he was trying to figure out what her angle might be.
“A lot of the people in there could be innocent. Brainwashed, trapped. Do you understand?” she said when he remained silent.
He shook his head, wrote something in his little notebook. She took a deep breath, tried to chill out a little, trying to quell the combination of anger and anxiety doing battle in her chest.
“Okay,” she said, trying to sound calmer. “If he wasn’t a federal agent the way you seem to be implying, then how did you know we were in there? Why did you come in after us?”
“We’ve had the compound under surveillance for about six months, gathering evidence in preparation for a raid scheduled next month,” he said. “We heard gunfire and explosions, then a fire broke out. We had to move in tonight or never.”
“How convenient. So you’re claiming that the gunfire, explosions, and fire all started before you ever stepped foot onto the farm.”
“You’re saying different?” he asked, and something in his voice sounded cold as steel to her. He suddenly didn’t seem so young.
She paused, looked at the ceiling above her.
“I fell down a hole, lost consciousness, and woke up in a concrete cell,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes. “I don’t know what happened.”
“So you say,” he said, returning her gaze.
Uh-oh, Lydia thought. Time to shut up.
“Lawyer,” she said quietly. The kid gave her a look.
“Give me a break,” he said, like she was asking him to fetch her a cup of coffee.
She pressed her mouth into a thin, tight line and crossed her arms in front of her chest, causing herself a surprisingly sharp pain in her ribs. She shook her head to indicate that she wouldn’t be saying another word.
He held her eyes for a moment and was too young to hide his exasperation. He got up suddenly and marched away from her, exited the rear of the van and locked the doors behind him.
She leaned back in her chair and suddenly wished she had a better knowledge of the Patriot Act. How long could they hold them without evidence and without charge? She started to wonder if maybe “stubborn smart-ass” wasn’t the best tack to take. She wondered what Dax and Jeffrey had said and how much trouble they were all in. What she needed to do, she figured, was to call Striker and have him send down one of the firm’s lawyers. Or maybe more than one. Three lawyers. They were going to need three.
These were the things on her mind when the chrome handles on the rear door of the van started to turn and one of them opened, letting in a swath of humid air. Lydia sat up in her seat and was about to start getting loud about wanting to call her lawyer, when she saw a face she didn’t expect step into view. All the words she had been planning to say deserted her, died between her throat and her mouth.
“Hi,” said a painfully thin young girl with her hair shorn close to her head.
Something came alive in Lydia, something that was hope and elation, anger and confusion in one ugly tumble.
“Lily,” she breathed. Her lost girl found.
Twenty-Six
Jesamyn climbed into the cold interior of her Ford Explorer, gunned the engine, and blasted the heat. She had three stitches on the side of her face, right beneath her eye. She turned down the rearview mirror so that she could take a look at them; she kind of liked them. Like the bruises she often got in kung fu, big purple and brown flowers of blood beneath her skin, she saw this as a badge of honor, the mark of a battle fought and survived. She was glad Dylan had agreed to leave and go to her mom’s to help her get Ben ready for school in a few hours. Her mother hated Dylan with the passion only a mother can muster for the person who hurt her child. But she was able to stay civil for Benjamin’s sake.
She felt fatigue tugging at the lids on her eyes as she backed the Explorer out of Matt’s driveway. Matt’s parents and Theo had come out in the commotion and she had had to tell them that Matt was on the run. Detective Bloom had found the files Matt had left on the kitchen table, and Matt’s mother had wept inconsolably. Now she saw the living-room light glowing in the row house next to Mount’s. She wanted more than anything to bring him back to that place, safe and sound, proven innocent.
She hoped Bloom wasn’t just paying her lip service about talking to the suspect. But she suspected he was just trying to get her to shut up. She was going there anyway; she’d make a huge scene if she had to. She was about to merge onto the highway when she saw the darkness in the backseat shift. Her heart thumped as she pulled onto the shoulder suddenly with a screeching of her tires, ripped her gun from its holster and thrust it behind her, slamming the vehicle into park with her free hand.
“Hands where I can see them,” she yelled, motivated by her own fear rather than a desire to intimidate.
“Take it easy,” said the darkness. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep or I would have said something before you started driving.”
Her fear drained away and she sank back into her seat, the adrenaline rush leaving her shaking at her core. “Jesus Christ,” she sighed, leaning her head back against the upholstery. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“I’m sorry,” said Mount.
“You are a major, major fuck-up, you know that?” she said, turning to look at him. “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking, I guess. I was acting. I saw her. I saw Lily.”
“What? Where?” she said. He looked exhausted, pale with blue canyons of fatigue under his eyes, dark stubble on his jaw. There was something in his eyes that didn’t thrill her. For a second she wondered, has he lost it?
“On my street, in front of my house. I went out after her but she was gone.”
“Were you dreaming?”
“No. I saw a woman. I’m sure of that. I’m not sure it was Lily. But I was certain of one thing when I saw her: that someone was fucking with me and if I didn’t do something about it, I was going to spend the rest of my life in jail.”
“So you went to see Clifford Stern?” she said, guessing, because that’s what she would have done.
“I didn’t know where else to go. They cleared out the church in the Bronx. Jude Templar was gone. I knew Stern was lying. There was no other reason for him to lie or to be a part of that set-up unless he had a connection to The New Day. I figured I could scare him into telling me the truth.”
He leaned back in the seat, put his feet up, and rested his head against the glass.
“They knew,” he said. “That’s the scariest thing. They knew enough about me to know that I’d show up there, trying to get the guy to come clean. They sent that girl, whoever she was, to make that call, and knew it would cause me to act. Don’t you think that’s frightening?”