Go-Between (22 page)

“I was afraid you'd say no. Besides
. . .
I knew you'd find out anyway.”

He chuckled. “Well, you were right about that.”

He stood up, looming over her, his body blocking much of the light from the lamp on the dresser.

“So what was so important you had to run out here on a weekend?”

Her mouth was so dry it was hard to speak. “We were having a problem at the restaurant.”

“And you couldn't handle it over the phone?”

“Not if I wanted to make sure it was handled.” She sat up straighter. Body language. Try not to act scared. It's what he wants. Don't give it to him.

“I know you don't give a shit, Gary. But the restaurant's important to me.”

Get the gun. She was touching the grip. If she could pull it closer, just enough to get her finger on the trigger.

“You said I could go back to it when I'm done with Caitlin. I need to know I have something to go back to.”

Her index finger touched metal.

“You're not going for a gun, are you, Michelle?” His voice was soft.

“No,” she said.

“Because if something happens to me, Danny's never getting out. You can trust me on that.” He took a step closer. “You wouldn't do too well with that, now, would you?”

She could feel a tremor in the mattress as his knees touched the side of the bed.

“I know what kind of woman you are,” he said. “You can't stand being without a man.”

Her hand was wrapped around the grip now.

He smiled. “The things I could do to you. I bet you'd like it.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger.

“Don't try it,” he said. “You won't make it.”

If he moves, I'm trying.

He didn't move. It was hard to see his face in the near dark, but she thought his eyes were fixed on hers.

“I'm not gonna hurt you,” he said.

“Back up, then.” She said it slowly, forcing out each word, her voice hard and harsh to her own ears.

He hesitated. Then lifted his hands. “All right.” He took two steps back. “I just came here to make sure we're on the same page, that's all.”

Watch his hands, she thought. If he goes for a gun
. . .

He sat back down in the chair. Put his hands behind his head and leaned back.

“I'm telling you, you really have an aptitude for this kind of thing, Michelle. A lot of women, a lot of men, for that matter, me showing up like this, they'd just fall apart. But you
. . .
you really hang tough.”

He suddenly straightened up. She flinched.

“Now, now,” he said. “Calm yourself down. You want a glass of that wine you poured out? I tasted some—I thought it was really good.”

She shook her head. He shrugged. “Your choice. So, tell me about Caitlin.”

Breathe, she told herself, her mind a blank.

“What about her?” she managed.

“How's she doing? Where's her head at?”

Was it over, then? Had he had enough fun for now?

Just answer the question.

“I think she's doing better. We've been going to the gym. To yoga. She's not drinking as much. That's what you wanted, right?”

“I want you to keep her on a leash. Make sure she's sober enough to do the events and to stay on message.”

Did he know about Caitlin's doubts? About her meeting with Troy Stone?

“Okay,” she said. “I'll do my best.”

“Anything she's said or done that makes you think she wants to change directions?”

Her heart sped up again. If she told him, what would that mean for Caitlin? If she didn't
. . .

Wouldn't Gary already have an idea? She couldn't be his only source of information.

If she lied, he'd know.

“Mostly
. . .
I think she wants to make a change in her life. Doing Safer America, it's almost like she's constantly reliving what happened to her. I think maybe she's ready to try and be someone other than the tragic victim.”

Gary frowned. “We're going to have to keep an eye on that.”

She felt that sickening plunge in her gut, the one that came with a betrayal. But there was nothing she could have said that wasn't a risk.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Keep me posted. If Caitlin starts to go off the reservation, let me know.”

“Okay.”

“And speaking of
. . .
” He stood up. Slowly. “Next time you get the urge to make a little jaunt like this, you run it by me first. Because if this happens again? I'm really going to start to wonder if you're being straight with me.”

She nodded. “It won't happen again.”

“Good. Because you know what? I really like working with you. It's been kind of a challenge, breaking you in, but I'm having some fun with it.”

He backed toward the door. Paused in the doorway. “Maybe
you
ought to think about making a change. Leave that old victim behind.”

“That's what I was trying to do before you fucked with my life,” she blurted out.

“You think too small.” He reached for the doorknob and started to close the door behind him. “Let me know how it goes in San Francisco.”

The door shut.

She stayed where she was. Brought the gun out from under the pillow, her hands shaking. She strained to listen, for doors closing, for car engines starting and tires crunching redwood bark, for signs that he was really gone.

Chapter Twenty

Just after 2
a.m.
Whatever Gary had done to the alarm system she doubted she'd be able to fix, but she couldn't see much point in worrying about it now.

She got up, put on a zippered hoodie and went out to the kitchen. A second wine glass sat on the counter, about a quarter full. That son of a bitch. He'd come into her house, taken his time. Drunk some of her wine and watched her while she slept.

She picked up his glass and hurled it across the room. It smashed against the sliding door and shattered. She stood there, breathing hard, staring at the ruby-red drips running down the glass door and onto the floor.

After a minute or two, she got out a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess.

What she said to Gary about Caitlin, that would have consequences. But then, every moment she worked for Caitlin was a betrayal of a sort.

You're not loyal to Caitlin, she told herself. You can't afford to be.

She had to keep her priorities straight.

She needed to figure out what to do with Danny's logbook.

She'd left it under her pillow, for now. She couldn't be sure what kind of bugs Gary had planted in the house, if he'd left a spy cam or two behind. But he didn't seem to know about her trip to retrieve what Danny had stashed in the woods. He didn't know about the logbook. If he'd known, he wouldn't have left the house as easily as he did.

He would have made her pay.

That was the only advantage she had right now.

So, act normally. Whatever “normally” was for a person in her situation.

She poured out one last glass of the Chateau Montelena. While she drank that, she dumped the rest in the sink and washed the decanter, rinsed out the bottle and put it in the recycling.

After that, she took a quick shower and changed into a fresh T-shirt and the light pair of slacks she'd worn on the trip from Houston, and layered on the hoodie. Went back into the kitchen and put on some coffee. She drank a half a cup and poured the rest into a travel Thermos for the drive to the airport.

It was 3:15
a.m.

Now for the logbook.

The ruck and the tote were still sitting by the bed, the tote between the bed and the ruck.

Make the bed, she thought. You wouldn't want to leave the house with the bed unmade, would you?

Since she'd slept on top of the covers, she wouldn't need to do much, just tidy the sheets and blankets and put the comforter on top. She tossed the pillows onto the floor, the two on Danny's side, and then the two on hers, first the extra and then one she'd slept on, and with that, the logbook.

She tugged and straightened the covers, spread out and smoothed the comforter over them. Retrieved Danny's pillows and propped them up against the headboard. Then went to her side of the bed to do the same. She stood close to the wall and prayed that if anything was watching, her body hid what she was doing.

She grabbed the top pillow and put it on the bed, against the headboard. There was the logbook, sitting on top of the other pillow. As she grabbed the pillow with one hand, she picked up the logbook with the other and slipped it into the laptop compartment of her leather tote. Took in a deep breath and placed the second pillow on the bed.

3:22
a.m.
Still too early to leave, unless you had a reason to flee.

She forced herself to drink some more coffee. Brushed her teeth. Walked into the living room. Every creak in the house seemed magnified. She could hear the wind in the redwoods, the seeds and needles falling from the canopy to the ground, sounding almost like rain.

Enough. It was time to go.

She was early, even
after stopping at an ATM to deposit $3,000 to her Emily account and dropping off the rental car. Arcata/Eureka was a small airport, looking something like a Holiday Inn lobby version of a rustic lodge, and there wasn't much of anything on the post-security side to do. The one restaurant here was on the second floor pre-screening. But she wanted to get this over with, now, while there wasn't much a line.

She carried Danny's logbook in her tote, $4,376 cash in her wallet.

Her Michelle phone in its signal-blocking bag, her Michelle driver's license and two credit cards, the two fresh passports, one of the $10,000 bundles of cash, all those were stashed in the interior pockets of the Patagonia jacket she'd packed at the bottom of the ruck.

If they searched her bags
. . .

You got through Gary, she told herself as she approached the TSA officer. You can get through this.

She smiled at the TSA officer, a young man who looked very bored. “Good morning,” she said, and handed him her Emily license.

He looked at it, looked at her, scribbled something on her boarding pass and waved her through.

The x-ray line.

She put the ruck down first, then her shoes and hoodie, her iPad, and finally, her tote. She didn't want to be separated from that tote any longer than she absolutely had to.

Don't stare at the woman stationed at the x-ray monitor, she told herself. Just walk into the scanner when they tell you to. Stand on the yellow footprints. Raise your hands above your head, like a criminal, as the curved plastic door slides shut.

Wait.

The door opened, and she walked out the other side.

“Ma'am?”

It was the TSA officer stationed on the other side of the x-ray machine.

“I'm going to need you to open this bag.”

The ruck.

Oh Christ, she thought. Her heart pounded. She was sure that if he looked, he could see the pulse in her throat.

“Sure,” she said.

She unzipped the main compartment. He gestured at the camera bag, packed on top of the jacket. “Open that, please.”

She did. Oh, Christ, the money in the camera bag. Why had she packed it? Why couldn't she have just let it go?

“Turn on the camera.”

She switched it on, and it booted up.

“Okay,” he said.

Relief flooded through her like cool water. She turned off the camera, replaced it in the Hadley bag and zipped up the ruck. Grabbed her hoodie and started slipping on her espadrilles as she waited for the iPad and tote to emerge on the conveyor belt.

iPad. She picked it up. Tote.

“Ma'am?”

Oh, fuck.
“Yes? Do you need me to
. . .
to
. . .
?”

“You don't have to put your tablet through separately. Just laptops. That's a tablet, right?”

“Right,” she said. She managed a smile. “Thanks for letting me know.”

She sat in the
small waiting room on the other side of security and wondered: What should she do with Danny's logbook?

What had he said that last time in jail?

I wish I could protect you. I don't have a lot of options.

Maybe this book was one of them. A weapon she could use.

There was no place she could think of that felt safe to hide it. If she kept it with her at all times, that carried risks as well.

She had the one flash-drive copy, on the same drive to which she'd copied the Safer America tax-disclosure documents.

Maybe I should make another copy, she thought. Mail it to someone before I get to Houston. Gary might be watching her, might be watching mail going out of her apartment or Safer America, but dropping something in a mailbox while in transit between two terminals in an entirely different city seemed like a pretty good bet.

There were all kinds of electronics stores at San Francisco International. Surely she could buy another flash drive and maybe a cheap tablet to use to copy it. Maybe the iPad she carried was safe, if she turned off the WiFi. But maybe it wasn't. She couldn't be sure.

Who to mail it to? Who did she trust?

The problem was, anyone she trusted—her sister, for example—there was no way she wanted to put them at risk by sending them this thing. She had to assume that Maggie was monitored anyway.

Sam?

Danny might trust Sam, but she didn't. Since she'd gone to him for help, he'd done exactly nothing for Danny or for her, at least so far as she knew.

And thinking of that last jail visit, it wasn't until she'd said she hadn't heard back from Sam that Danny told her to get the book.

Maybe Danny didn't trust Sam either.

There was no way she was going to pull that trigger until she talked to Danny.

Who, then?

Derek?

He'd always done a good job for them. He seemed to be representing Danny to the best of his ability. But he was so close to it all. She didn't know who else he worked for, where his ultimate loyalties lay. The information in that book might be more than enough to make a deal to get Danny out. Or it might be something he wouldn't want anyone ever to see.

There were plenty of people who wouldn't want anyone to see it.

Maybe Danny wanted to come clean, let the world know all about what he'd done. But the logbook was also a bargaining chip. One that might get them both out of this mess.

What if she tried to make a deal with Gary?

The thought made her shudder. If he knew she had the logbook, he'd kill her. He'd kill Danny, too.

If he thought he could get away with it.

When she'd met Gary in Houston, she'd tried that bluff, that Danny had valuable information, that they'd made “arrangements” to get it out there if something happened to either of them. Gary hadn't bought it then, but it seemed that he was still worried enough about what they knew to make a better deal with her.

Now, she really did have the goods. If she could actually make those arrangements
. . .

She shivered again. Pulling that off with Gary would be like swimming up to a hungry shark with a bucket of bloody chum and hoping she could get out of the water fast enough.

First things first. Make another copy. Figure out who to send it to.

There was a Best
Buy vending machine not far from her gate at SFO's Terminal 3. It actually dispensed iPads, iPods, cameras, chargers, smart phones, noise-cancelling headphones, gadgets costing hundreds of dollars.

And flash drives.

She used her Emily ATM card and bought an iPad, two flash drives, and a portable charger. There was a United Club in this terminal, and she had a pass from a credit card. Gathering her purchases and luggage, she made her way there.

The club didn't have great food, but it had bananas and bagels and coffee, views of the airplanes and runways, and plenty of electrical outlets. “Do you have any stationery, anything I could write a quick letter on?” she asked one of the agents at the club counter.

Airline logo stationery in hand, she took a seat in a club chair by the window.

As the iPad charged, she sipped her coffee and thought about who she should write.

Maybe her Michelle lawyer in Los Angeles, Alan Bach. She'd found him to be honest and straightforward, and he'd done what he could for her. And he wasn't involved in Tom's business, so she had to hope that when Gary had cleaned up her late husband's mess, Alan hadn't been on his radar.

She liked him enough that she almost didn't want to send trouble his way.

Too bad she didn't know anyone she hated whom she could also trust.

Finally, she started writing.

 

Dear Alan,

It has been a while since we spoke. You handled my situation after the death of my husband, Tom Mason, 2 ½ years ago. I'm

 

She stopped writing. She really couldn't say she was “doing well.” She crossed out “I'm” and wrote:

I've had a number of changes in my life. The enclosed is something that I'd like you to hold onto for two weeks. Please don't open it before then. Sorry to sound mysterious, but I'm in transit and it's complicated to explain. I'll be contacting you shortly and will send you a retainer for your trouble within the next few days.

Many thanks—I've always appreciated how helpful you were to me during a very difficult time.

If that first note came across as melodramatic, she could only imagine what he'd think of what she had to write next.

 

Dear Alan,

If you are reading this and you haven't heard from me otherwise, the flash drive contains very sensitive information. I know for a fact that it's all true, and that it's dangerous information to have. I'm sorry to have put you in this position but I couldn't think of anyone else to give it to. For your own safety please send this information to as many news outlets as you can. Use a VPN if you email it. Send it to some hackers if you know any, to those sites that publish classified information. The best way for you to be safe is for as many people as possible to have this information too. I know how crazy this sounds but please believe me and do what I've said as quickly as you can.