I was up again, pacing around Ariana, who listened, glazed, from the patio chair. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her sweatshirt pulled over them, the parka flaring out to either side. It wasn’t raining, but moisture flecked the air. Two in the morning and counting, and my heart rate showed no signs of slowing down. “The fear, then the relief—even fucking gratitude. And then it starts all over again. It’s like a drug. I can’t take it. I don’t care that it worked out this time—”
“We don’t even know that,” Ariana said.
“What do you mean?”
“Delivering cash to a woman in Indio? What if it was a scam?”
“How? It wasn’t our money. I was just playing Santa Claus.”
“I’m not saying you were the target.” She watched her words sink in. “What happens if someone shows up at that woman’s door and asks a favor of her? A favor to be repaid?”
“I’m the one who gave her the money.”
“But it wasn’t your money. She doesn’t owe you.”
Nausea crept into my stomach, an ice-water trickle. I sank slowly into the chair opposite Ari. I could tell from her face that she felt bad. Her hand rooted in her purse and produced a roll of Tums. That purse was like the stomach of Jaws—she was always pulling out a pair of sunglasses, a new shade of lipstick, a waffle iron.
Chewing a tablet, Ariana double-checked the cigarette-box jammer and pushed forward—“If there are no strings attached to that cash, why wouldn’t they just give it to her themselves? For all you know, that money puts her in danger.”
“I think she’d take that risk,” I said quietly. “So her granddaughter wouldn’t die.”
“But she didn’t get to make that decision.”
“Because I made it for her.” I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, my groan turning to something like a growl. “But what the hell was I supposed to do? Go to the cops? Thinking it might kill that woman?”
“Not then. But now. Why not now?”
“They’ll find out. Given what these guys have shown us so far, do we really want to see how they retaliate when they’re pissed off? Plus, are you forgetting that a seven-figure lawsuit might be hanging in the balance, pending my cooperation?”
“So you keep doing this?” she asked. “Following orders blindly from an all-powerful boss you don’t even know? Waiting around like some clown in a Beckett play? For how long?”
“Until we get the settlement agreement from the studio. Until I figure out an angle into this. Into them.”
“And in the meantime? These aren’t your lives to tamper with.”
“It’s not that easy, Ari.”
“There are probably thousands of kids in this country with that girl’s heart condition,” she said. “Millions of people with millions of problems. What makes her life any different from anyone else’s?”
“Because I can save hers.” I could feel the knots up the back of my neck. Ari lifted her eyebrows, and I held up my hands, half in apology, half to slow myself. “I know it sounds like this is some kind of God complex—”
“Not even, Patrick. It’s a God complex by proxy.”
“But these people are hostages, even if they don’t know it. That girl was entrusted to me, like Beeman. She’s been made my problem, my responsibility. When I’ve been given a bag of money to save her life, how can I not leave it for her?”
“You don’t show up to begin with, that’s how. What’s that line from WarGames?”
I cast out a sullen sigh. “ ‘The only winning move is not to play.’ ”
She nodded solemnly. “Look, we both agree we need to break through on this thing. And to do that, you can play your game all you want. Just don’t play theirs.”
I stared over the sagging fence at Don and Martinique’s dark bedroom window, the curtain at rest. A bedroom like ours, a house like ours. Our quiet little neighborhood, all of us with a story to tell. And yet the scale of what I was confronting, the danger, had gone suddenly out of whack. How had I come unhinged from this ordinary life?
“You’re right.” I lifted my hands, let them slap to my thighs. “As long as I keep taking the bait, they have me trapped. I’ll stop. No more checking e-mail. No more following their instructions. Whatever that brings on, it brings on.”
“I’ll be here for it.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “It’s the only good choice left. You have to call their bluff.”
She rose and headed inside, her head bowed.
I sat for a few moments with the crickets, looking out to where the yard lost itself in darkness. I mumbled to the shadows, “What if they’re not bluffing?”
I lay beside my wife in the quiet dark of the bedroom. She’d fallen asleep maybe an hour ago, leaving me to study the ceiling. Finally I got up, went into my office, and unplugged my cell phone from its charger. On the built-in camera, I watched the ten seconds I’d managed to capture of the QuickTime video from them.
View through a windshield. Car driving. The recording stopped well before the alley and the Honda.
I downloaded the clip into my computer and enlarged it to fill the screen. A passing semi with daytime running lights swept through the field of vision, playing tricks with the light across the windshield. A dab of silver at the bottom of the glass caught my eye. I backed up the recording, froze the image. Not much more than a smudge at the base of the windshield. Leaning forward, I squinted at the finger-long reflection thrown up from the top of the dash.
The metal plate stamped with the Vehicle Identification Number.
It was blurred and faint, but perhaps the clarity could be brought up with the right tools. My first concrete lead. I ran a thumb across the tiny image, savoring it.
My cell phone emitted an Asian chime. Slowly, I turned and regarded it lying there next to the keyboard. Picked it up. A text-message alert, sender unknown.
A cold sweat crept over my body. My thumb moved before I could stop it.
E-MAIL TOMORROW, 7PM.
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.
THIS TIME IT’S SOMEONE YOU KNOW.