Nothing’s guaranteed—not future plans or justice or love or goodwill or the integrity of groups to whom you swear your allegiance. Not the good guys winning or the truth prevailing and certainly not life, the least guaranteed thing of all. As I walk up the street to my car, I’m crumbling, these thoughts a swirling storm cloud in my head. . . .
The collective killed the Duvals. We killed the Duvals. Innocent grieving parents, one of whom was a member of our group. We didn’t kill them to avenge a child’s murder from more than forty years ago. We killed them because 1219 told her husband about us and he was probably going to talk. This is the organization I’ve entrusted with my life, my conscience, my daughter’s memory.
I start up my car and pull away from the curb, a parked black Prius starting up as I pass it, its headlights blinking on like an animal waking up. I listen to my phone’s GPS as I drive—it’s a little tricky, getting back to the thruway—but my mind isn’t on the road. In my head, I’m flicking through my options, all of them bad: I can confront 0001 with what I know. But what good would that do? She’ll either come up with some other clever lie I can’t refute, or set the other numbers against me and I’ll wind up like the Duvals. I can’t go to the police—I’m a murderer. And even if I were willing to turn myself in, spend the rest of my life in jail, and get Wendy charged as well (which I’m not), what evidence do I have that I killed Gary Kimball as part of a group, beyond a site on the dark web that can be taken down on a dime?
Oh, and I’m dependent on antianxiety meds, the only therapist I ever had died from a fall down a flight of stairs, and there’s a viral video of me losing my mind at a public event, taken just before my own arrest. I’m not what anyone would call a reliable witness.
I could message 0001 when I get home and tell her I want to leave the group—no hard feelings, no secrets revealed. I just want to move on with my life, I could say. I’m ready now.
But can I? How can I move on after all I’ve done and knowing what I do now? How could 0001 allow me to do that? When I first joined the collective, she had been very clear about the rules: 1) we must commit fully to our cause, and 2) tell no one about it. If Natalie had been killed for breaking the second rule, I’d surely meet the same fate for breaking the first. . . .
“Help,” I whisper. And like an answer, an idea comes to me, the thinnest shred of one, anyway. I know someone with FBI connections. And she also happens to be the only person in the world who might understand. . . .
I make a right onto a quiet residential road and pull over to the side, turn on my hazard lights in case it’s illegal to park here, and open the Reddit app on my phone. I go to the Alayah subreddit and think. It takes me a while to recall what Wendy and my code blue message is—it feels like a million years ago—but then I remember: Anti-Alayah means watch your back. Pro-Alayah means meet at the Exit 19 park and ride. I thumb in the words, and post:
Queen Alayah is too good for Pilot Pete and she always will be! YAAAASSSS!!
That’s about as pro as it gets.
The Kingston park and ride is two hours away, and if she gets the message and it’s safe for her to do so, Wendy will be there within an hour of my arrival. “Here’s hoping,” I whisper.
It’s not until I’ve crossed the Mario Cuomo Bridge and I’ve been driving at least a half hour on the thruway that I really take notice of the car in my rearview mirror—a black Prius. It’s been in my line of vision since Croton. And not only do I believe that it’s been following me, I’m nearly positive it’s the same Prius I saw leaving the Weisses’ house at the same time I did.
I suppose it isn’t just the dead that have been watching me.
There’s a lot of traffic around the Prius and me—it’s been stop and go since the bridge. The late-afternoon light being the way it is, I can only see the driver’s outline in my rearview, but once I get an opening, I move into the left lane and make a point of staring into the car as I pull alongside it. The driver’s wearing enormous sunglasses, bright red lipstick, a red scarf around her neck, and she has a big head of yellow-blond hair that could easily be a wig. I’ve clocked you, bitch. I see you. And even though I have no idea what she looks like underneath this strange disguise, I say it out loud, clear enough for her to read my lips. “I see you.”
The red lipstick stretches into a toothy smile—a rictus joker grin. I see you too, she mouths. Sister.
I turn back to the road, my heart crashing into my ribs. Anxiety kicking in. Okay. Point well taken.
I push forward, and the Prius slides in behind me.
I see the glint off her sunglasses in my rearview, and it replays in my head, that bloodred mouth, that baring of teeth. “Get away from me.”
When I turn back to the road, I’m racing for the bumper of the car in front of me. I pull to the right and switch lanes just in time, avoiding hitting it but cutting off a truck. Its horn blares, and I shift into the right lane, and then the one next to it, my eyes peeled for the Prius. Lost you, you psychotic . . . But there she is again, maybe a car length back, two lanes to the left.
How can a Prius go that fast?
It’s now in the lane next to me, the bumper parallel to my own.
“What the hell?”
There’s a clear stretch ahead of me, and it feels like a gift. I jam my foot into the accelerator, taking my Subaru up to eighty-five, then ninety, shifting lanes whenever I can. In my rearview, I can see the Prius surging forward. I move into the fast lane and take it up to ninety-five.
I’m scaring myself. This isn’t me. Emily and Matt used to tease me about what a boring, by-the-book driver I was, hands always at ten and two, never more than five miles over the speed limit, and though I’ve certainly been a lot more reckless in recent years, a car chase is not me.
Is it? I flash on three weeks ago, riding the bumper of Edward Duval’s Porsche, pulsing with anger at a man I didn’t know, then five days ago, on the steadiness of my hands as I pushed the Mercedes into the lake. It is me. Now it is. The collective changes you to suit its needs, magnifying the ugliest parts of your broken faith, weaponizing you. Who knows what Rictus Grin was like before she gave into her grief and rage and became a monster? She was somebody’s mother once. That much, I know.
I’m going close to one hundred. I can’t look for the Prius. I have to keep my eyes on the road. I shift one lane to the right and swerve around an eighteen-wheeler like this is just some big video game. Its horn wails.
Once I reach a less congested area of the thruway, I search for the Prius in my rearview, then in both of the side mirrors and through the windshields, front and back, my breathing shallow until finally, finally I feel as though I’ve escaped it.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I slow down to seventy and take the center lane, as though none of this had ever happened. As I pass the Harriman exit, Woodbury Commons spread out beyond the trees, I let my mind travel back to the time I first met Luke there, at Applebee’s—a simpler, sweeter time, when my marriage was still on life support and I had never played a role in anyone’s murder.
How can I fix this? Can I fix this? Can Wendy help me? Please, Wendy. Please show up at the park and ride. . . .
The short burst of a police siren slaps me out of my thoughts, the flashing lights in my rearview like some maniacal Christmas toy.
Oh sure, now I get pulled over.
I shift into the right lane, then onto the shoulder, making sure to put my blinker on as I do it. By the book. Thoroughly respectable middle-aged lady in a suit. I’m not sure when this cop started following me, but I feel like I’ve been going seventy long enough to merit acting confused when he asks if I know why he pulled me over.
It’s worth a try anyway, though I don’t really care. Traffic tickets used to give me serious agita, but considering everything else I’ve been through today, this feels like a much-needed time-out. I roll my shoulders and crack my neck, and when the trooper’s uniform fills my peripheral vision, I open my window readily.
“Yes, Officer?”
“License and registration, please,” says the cop—a powerfully built woman in mirrored aviator glasses that cover most of her face.
I think about asking her why she pulled me over as I get my driver’s license out of my wallet and then open my glove compartment for the registration. But then I figure, what’s the point? There’s something almost welcoming about the normalcy of a speeding ticket. And my record is spotless—well, outside of my drunk and disorderly and disturbing the peace charges of earlier this month. And those were mere violations.
As I hand it all over, I try a cheery smile. “Here you go, Officer.”
She takes them in a gloved hand, gives the license a quick read. “Get out of the car.”
“Wait, what?”
“Get out of the car.”
She opens my door and steps back, her hand resting on her holstered gun. “No sudden movements,” she says.
What is happening? I get out of the car slowly, my hands spread and raised. My knees feel weak and wobbly. I may fall. Don’t fall, don’t fall.
“Move around to the back of the car.”
“Officer, I’m sorry. There must be some—”
“Not going to ask you again.”
I start to move.
“Not so fast.”
I do as she says. Must have seen me speeding. Must have been following me for a while. Or else . . . Oh God . . .
“Do exactly as I say. Place your hands on the left rear bumper. Wide stance. Legs three feet apart.”
They found Kimball. They must have. I feel her gloved hands at my neck, my shoulders, down the length of my back, around my waist. She pulls at my hair, jams her hands in the pockets of my coat. She tells me to take off my shoes.
“What?”
“Kick off your shoes. Do not move your hands.”
Does she think I keep a stiletto in my heel like some James Bond villain? But I say nothing. I do as I’m told, my head bowed, my stockinged feet on the icy road, the cold burning into my bones.
She stands behind me for a long time, saying nothing. I start to shiver uncontrollably. Do something. Arrest me. Read me my fucking rights. I want to say it. To scream it. Flag down a car. Run into traffic.
I feel her moving closer, her boots scuffing the macadam.
Then I hear another sound. The snap of a holster. The release of a safety.
“Please,” I whisper.
She says, “Why did you go to Olivia Weiss’s house?”
“What?”
“Stay still or I shoot.”
My teeth chatter. I can’t form words.
“Why did you go to Olivia Weiss’s house?”
“I . . . I was . . . Her brother . . . I was a wit—”
“We know what you were,” she says. “We know what you are.” And it all comes together, the pieces arranging themselves in my head. We.
“Did you tell Olivia Weiss about the collective?”
I close my eyes. “No.”
“We’ll find out if you’re lying.”
“I swear I didn’t.”
“Then why did you go to her house?”
“I . . . I wanted to . . . I was just . . .”
“What?”
“Curious.”
“Curious?”
A car whooshes by, the sound of it lingering in my ears. Then another whoosh, and another. The roar of silence. My breathing is shallow. Panic attack. Stop. Calm down. Think. “Yes.”
“What the hell were you curious about?”
“Her brother.” My voice quavers. “He lost a child. Like I did. Like we did.”
The trooper doesn’t speak. I keep my eyes shut, holding my breath, until finally I hear the safety clicking back on.
“If you don’t do what you’re told to do,” she says, “it ruins things. Not just for us. But for the memories of our children. All of our children. Do you get that?” I hear her take a step back. “Look at me.”
I do. I turn around and look straight at her, my face stretched and distorted in her fun house–mirror glasses, her hand resting on the holstered gun at her hip. “Do you?”
“Yes. Yes, I get it.”
She watches me for a while, then places my license and registration on the trunk of my car and gives me a sweet, pearly smile. “We’re letting you off with a warning, ma’am.” She thwacks a finger against the broad brim of her hat as I stare at her, frozen. “Please try to be more careful next time.”
After she leaves, the panic attack revs up. I spend several minutes doubled over on the macadam, my veins throbbing, threatening to explode.