He comes closer. We stare at each other.
He nods to me, just the slightest shift of his head. Some glimmer of understanding passes between us, and I know not to stop or ask questions.
Whatever he was doing with the phone is none of my business.
I keep moving and so does he.
Neither of us says a word.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
I DRIVE THROUGH THE RAIN.
The truck’s tires fight for grip on the steep mountain road that leads up and out of Camp Liberty.
Then I see it. The roadblock is up ahead.
I speed right up to it, hoping they will open the gate without question, then I have to skid to a stop at the last moment when they do not. I roll my window down as one of the guards runs toward me with his gun drawn.
“Jesus, you scared me,” he says when he recognizes my face.
“You heard?” I say.
“How is he?” the boy says.
“Bad,” I say. “I’m going for meds.”
“I can’t open the roadblock until I call it in,” he says.
“Do whatever the hell you want,” I say, “but hurry. If he dies, it’s on you.”
His eyes roll back into his head for a second as he takes that in.
“Open!” he shouts to his partner, they yank the tire strip out of the road, and I race away.
I take the long curve that heads out of sight around the mountain. The second I know my brake lights are beyond the view of the compound below, I pull to the side and snatch my iPhone from my pocket.
I put it in secure mode and dial Father’s number.
This is standard procedure after a mission: Call Father, report the successful conclusion of the mission, and receive follow-up instructions.
The Program has been offline since the night at the community center, but maybe that was a test, some kind of challenge designed to measure my ability to act independently. If so, Moore’s death will be the test’s logical conclusion. Father will answer now, The Program will be back online, and everything will return to normal.
The line rings on the phone, but nobody picks up.
Father is not there.
My hope fades.
I feel foolish now, but I dial Mother’s number. The master line. I have to see this through.
The line does not connect.
It was stupid of me to use this phone again, even dangerous. If The Program has suffered a security breach, then I may have just telegraphed my location to whoever is responsible for the breach.
I slam the phone down sharply, the front right corner impacting with the dashboard of the truck. This is a failsafe action built into the software of my phone. The accelerometer measures the angle and force of the blow and sends a signal to the battery that causes it to overheat. The battery burns through the interior of the phone, destroying it.
I roll down the window and fling the neutralized phone into the woods. It will never be used again.
I have completed the mission, but what now?
That’s when I think of Howard and the multiple text messages he sent to me.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
I’M EXPECTING SILENCE.
That’s what I realize as I knock on the hotel room door in Manchester. I’m expecting silence or worse, a strange face to appear in the door, asking me what I want.
Nothing has been right this mission. Nobody I can trust.
I knock and move away from the door, bracing myself for whatever may come while moving my body into a strategic position from which I can strike most effectively.
Mother has taught me to react to situations as they arise, preparing ahead of time then improvising based on the facts on the ground.
So when the door opens, I am ready for anything.
Anything except what I find.
Howard, blinking as if I’ve awoken him from a nap.
“Thank God,” he says when he sees me. “Did you get my texts?”
“Things got complicated. I couldn’t respond.”
“I thought something bad had happened to you.”
I shake my head, but then the memory of Francisco pops into my mind.
Howard is looking at me strangely.
“Did something happen?” he says, tension appearing around his eyes.
I try to respond, but I cannot.
I don’t know what Howard sees exactly, but his smile fades.
“You’d better come in,” he says, and he steps back from the door, giving me a lot of space.
I walk past him into the hotel room. As I do, I scan him for weapons. I do it automatically, my mind registering the fabric of his shirt under the arms and around the waist, the flow of material around his ankles, the weight of objects in his pockets.
I treat him like he is a potential danger to me. And then I do the same with the room, bracing before turning corners, checking both hotel suites and their bathrooms, then inspecting window and door locks.
Howard stands back and lets me do it, watching me the whole time.
In fact I do it twice, two full passes through the space, double-checking and searching my brain for anything I might have missed.
When I’m done, I stand in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do next.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Howard says.
I realize I’m rocking on my feet, unsteady.
I look at the chair. It doesn’t look right to me. There’s something about chairs that I do not like, something dangerous flagged in my memory.
I sit on the edge of the bed instead.
“I’ll get you some water,” Howard says.
“I’m okay,” I say, but he goes anyway, rushing to the bathroom and coming back with a glass of water. I drink it down in one long swallow, and he gets me another. I drink that, too. I hand him back the glass.
“It’s done,” I say.
“Done?”
“My mission. I finished.”
“Are you talking about Moore?”
“He’s dead.”
“Did you—”
I nod.
“That means you can go home, Howard, and I can go…”
I try to think of where I will go next, but the truth is I have no place to go. Without The Program giving me instructions, I have no direction.
“I have to tell you something,” Howard says, his face growing troubled. “The reason I was texting you.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t respond to you.”
“Listen to me,” he says. “I decoded the micro SDHC card.”
I forgot about the card, the one I took off the leader of the freelance team.
“What did you find?”
“The card contains a file with information about the location of your safe house.”
“Who would have access to that information?” I ask.
Howard doesn’t say anything.
I think about the chip, the sophistication of the design that Howard described to me. The idea of hiding a device inside another device. It’s The Program’s MO.
“Of course, The Program had the information,” I say without Howard asking, “but they would never share it with anyone outside our circle.”
He opens his laptop and turns it toward me. “The data on the chip was encoded with a digital watermark. I tracked it back to an anonymous communications control hub.”
“What does that mean?” I say.
“It’s the same hub that is the source of the secure numbers you gave me from you iPhone.”
My mind is racing, trying to find a flaw in Howard’s logic.
“The Program,” Howard says. “It hired those men to go to the safe house.”
“That’s impossible,” I say.
The Program is my employer, my commander, my life.
They’re not good people, Francisco said.
He tried to warn me. He tried to give me an option.
“You’re sure?” I ask Howard.
“I triple-checked,” he says. “The Program transferred all the information to the SDHC card.”