IT TOOK an hour for Kevin to drive her to Montclair under cover of darkness, but he refused to answer her questions. He parked on a side street near the center of town, and from there they went on foot, following sidewalks past lit-up homes squeezed together in tight rows. Despite his infuriating silence, when Rachel said, “You lied to me, didn’t you?” he said, “Once or twice.”
“Had a change of heart?”
Kevin smiled at her. “Did you really cry in front of David?”
She rubbed her face, blushing.
She knew where they were headed, and remembered how, in the summer, the street outside the house had been full of cars. Now, there were no cars lining the street, and the driveway was empty. The house itself was dark.
“Where are the Ferrises?” she asked.
“Florida,” Kevin told her as he jangled a key ring in his hand. “And, no—they don’t know.”
He stuck the key in the front door, unlocked the deadbolt, and pushed it open. He let her in first; then, once he closed the door, he turned on the light.
The entryway windows, she could now see, had been covered with cardboard. The doors to the other rooms were closed, and when he opened the pocket doors leading to the living room, she was faced with the enormous space she remembered from last summer, lit up, the high windows covered in more cardboard. David Parker stood by the fireplace, looking nervous, while on the sofa Ingrid Parker, her hair chopped short and a soft layer of mother’s fat filling out her cheeks, was breastfeeding a chubby baby girl, who, Rachel calculated, was about three months old. Then she remembered, and said the name aloud: “Clare.”
But the mention of her daughter’s name did nothing to soften Ingrid. She looked at Kevin. “This is a mistake.”
“It might be,” Kevin admitted.
“It’s not like things are getting better here,” David cut in. “And going to the cops isn’t an option.”
“You’re so fucking impatient,” Ingrid said. “You always were.”
“You want to raise our daughter in a boarded-up house? Hidden away from everyone? That’s crazy. She might be able to help us out of this.”
Though they were arguing about her, they were arguing as if Rachel weren’t standing right there, hearing everything.
“Cool it,” Kevin said to them both. “This is the situation now. All right?” David and Ingrid acquiesced, falling silent. To Rachel, Kevin said, “Come on, have a seat.”
Slowly, so as not to startle anyone, Rachel took a comfy chair that faced the fireplace and sofa. Clare’s cheeks were pink, eyes closed in milk-sucking bliss. “Is she healthy?” Rachel asked.
“Gassy,” Ingrid told her, almost defensive. “But otherwise, yeah.”
“You have a pediatrician?”
Ingrid hesitated. “She has her shots.”
“Good,” Rachel said, then tried to look at David and Kevin, but her gaze was continually drawn back to the baby, as if Clare contained her own gravitational force.
Visibly irritated, Ingrid said, “What I need, more than a pediatrician, is an internet connection.”
“Yeah, right,” said David. “So you can rally whatever’s left of your troops.”
“So I can Google advice on her health.”
Kevin sat next to Ingrid, breaking into the domestic dispute. “Rachel? I know you’re tired, but you’re gonna have to start. You know that. We don’t say a thing until you tell us the truth. Why are you driving across the country looking for Ingrid?”
“I told you—”
“You didn’t tell me shit.”
David headed to a spare chair. All eyes were on Rachel, in particular Ingrid’s. She had that new-mother fatigue, but there was also the fierceness of a mother’s perpetual adrenaline, the kind that could take down a lion. Her gaze was so intense that, were Rachel clear-headed enough to fear anyone in that room, she would have feared Ingrid.
“A week ago, an attempt was made on my life back in Seattle. I think it was the Bureau.”
Kevin leaned back, not taking his eyes off her, and both David and Ingrid looked to him for some kind of confirmation. He leaned forward again, elbows on his knees. “Okay. We’ll dig into that later. How does that lead to here?”
“Vale and Johnson, those agents who came with Jakes to visit you,” she said, then turned to David. “The same two who told you I was off my rocker. They spent seven hours that same day debriefing me about last summer. The whole thing.”
Kevin shook his head. “But didn’t you write a report on that?”
“Not much of my report ended up in the final draft. Or so they told me.”
Silence descended again as Kevin thought through what all of this might mean. When he finally shook his head, disbelieving, she said, “I know, me, too. But it’s true.”
“But why come looking for me?” Ingrid asked.
“Because that was one of their most urgent questions. Where is Ingrid Parker? They wanted to know why you didn’t come in when the amnesty was announced. They said they wanted to talk to you about Bishop.”
Ingrid had developed a defiant streak after months on the lam, but even that couldn’t hide the fear that bled into her features. She looked at David, who nodded. He told her, “You called it.”
“Martin called it,” Ingrid corrected, then turned to Rachel. “He told me that the Bureau would be after me, once they knew we’d spent so much time together. He said that once they knew what I knew, they might even try to kill me.” She shook her head, using her free hand to rub her forehead. “And look at me now. In a room with two FBI agents. How stupid am I?”
Kevin, overcome by nervous energy, stood again and walked to the cardboard-covered windows. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought a moment, then turned back to Ingrid. “You need to tell her.”
Ingrid didn’t like the sound of that. “I don’t need to do anything, Kevin. You said it yourself—there’s no proof. And until there’s proof it’s dangerous to spread my story around.”
“I said it’s self-defeating. I said if you post it online it’ll just be another conspiracy.” He nodded toward Rachel. “But there obviously is proof.”
“Proof of what?” Rachel asked.
Kevin ignored her and crossed back to Ingrid. “They’d only try to kill her if there was proof.”
They argued a little longer, and Rachel tried to decipher the detail-free points everyone was making. “Look,” she said finally. “It sounds to me like we need each other. But I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s happening. So can you please tell me your story?”
Ingrid held Clare tighter, working her way through a decision. Rachel understood the anxiety: Ingrid wasn’t simply putting her life at risk; she was putting her baby’s life at risk. But something had to be done, so Ingrid turned to face her squarely and said, “Remember Jerome Brown?”
Rachel did. The young father in Newark. He’d been all over the news back then. “What about him?”
“He’s as good a place to start as any.”