Eli
MUNCHING ON A Jamaican patty, Eli strolled through the condo to Danny’s workstation. He wanted her advice about Reece. Over the years, Eli had memorized hundreds of social rules and had learned to simulate somewhat normal eye contact. It was exhausting to act the way society expected, but he did okay. His challenge was that the subtext and hints hidden within average speech confused him. If a person beat around the bush, Eli missed the point. Deciphering facial expressions and body language was tough for him. If everyone talked plainly, life would be simple.
This afternoon at the office, Reece had told him that he was disappointed over Eli’s lie. He hadn’t fired him, so Eli considered the subject closed. But people seldom said what they meant. Human communication required the receiver to read nuances, which Eli couldn’t do.
Danny was an introvert and hated everyone, but she was great at decrypting emotionally saturated code. Eli possessed verbatim recall and could recite any conversation that troubled him. If Reece had concealed a secondary message, Danny would recognize it.
“I talked to Reece,” he told her between bites of his patty.
Danny ignored him. Her expression was grim as she studied one of the five HD monitors above her desk. Eli popped the last bite of meat-filled pastry in his mouth and peered over her shoulder. The display showed a satellite map. A blue dot flashed inside a pale red circle.
“Who are you tracking?” he asked.
Her eyes never left the screen. “We have a problem.”
It took a minute for him to recognize the aerial view. Woodland surrounded two clusters of buildings and a body of water was across a main road.
The muscles in his arms loosened and his legs turned to jelly. His jaw dropped and his cell slipped from his hand. “Who is it?” he croaked.
“Sam.”
Eli clenched the headrest of the chair. A sharp cramp bit into his stomach. “What? She should not be there. Why would she be there? This cannot be happening!”
“Well, it is. I hid an SMS tracker on her cell when she was here.” Danny tapped the blue dot. “That is Sam McNamara and we are in a world of shit.”
Eli flapped his hands and spun in a tight circle. “No! This cannot be happening. She cannot be there.” He wrapped his arms around his waist and rocked his body.
“Well, she is there.” Danny swivelled her chair so she could study him. “She’s been there for the past hour and a half.”
“What!” he screeched. “That cannot be right. This cannot be happening.” He tried to sort through a thick haze of confusion and panic. “Hack her phone. See if she texted anyone or made any calls.”
“I did,” Danny replied. “She made one outgoing call this morning to a lawyer’s office. It went through a main number. I have no way of tracking where reception transferred her call.”
“A lawyer?” Eli squawked. “His lawyer?”
Danny’s grim expression turned darker. “Stay calm. Yes, she called the firm. But they have dozens of lawyers. It could be a coincidence.” She stood and took a step toward him.
“A coincidence?” Eli shrieked. “Are you stupid?” He tugged on his hair, struggling to control his anxiety. “This is not good. This is very bad.”
“She’s working on a PhD in abnormal psychology. She might be there because of school.” Danny took a second step in his direction.
“Because of school?” Eli echoed. “You are an idiot. You were supposed to prevent this. You did not prevent this. This is your fault. You did this on purpose. You foiled my plans. You never wanted me to work with her. You have never understood why I had to do this.”
“Eli—”
“There is only one reason Sam McNamara would be at Millhaven. She knows.” Eli marched in place, his arms flailing. “How did this happen? You said this would not happen! You promised. You said she would never find out.”
Danny grabbed at one of his flapping hands. He swatted her. Emotions collided in his head. Flashes of colour distorted his vision. An insistent buzzing in his ears made it impossible to focus. His chest tightened and he gasped for breath.
“Eli, calm down. We’ll figure this out together,” Danny said.
“Calm down?” He clamped the heel of his hand over his twitching eye. A light of inspiration dawned. “She cannot get in unless she is on his visitor list. That is a long process and—”
“She’s a PI,” Danny interrupted. “With his lawyer’s support, she could bypass regulations and visit in a professional capacity.”
“This is not good. This is very bad.” Eli tugged at his T-shirt, crumpling the fabric between his fists. Hot rage choked him and he pummelled his forehead with his fist. Danny’s life was in jeopardy. Sam could not be investigating him. All his hard work and planning could not disintegrate while he stood helpless and dimwitted on the sidelines.
“We don’t know why she’s there,” Danny said. “Don’t act rash.”
Her continued calmness dispersed some of his spiralling anxiety. “Hack into the prison’s database. Find out who she’s visiting.”
“Eli, I can’t do that quickly,” Danny said. “I have to go around the firewall with a client-side attack. Without a foothold in the network, I can’t set up encrypted tunnels through the firewall.”
“Try again!” he shouted. He grabbed her arm and dragged her over to the computer.
“If she is visiting him, what will he tell her?” she asked. “He has much more to lose than we do. He might play with her, but he won’t tell her anything about us.”
Eli gyrated, aghast that Danny couldn’t recognize the threat. “Do you understand what will happen?” he hollered. “He’s going to—”
“The car’s moving.” Danny twisted in her chair and examined the monitor.
Tripping over his feet, Eli stumbled to her desk. The blue dot moved with steady pulses, heading west along a road that hugged Lake Ontario.
“She’s returning to Toronto,” Danny murmured.
Eli’s cell rang. He stared at it in horror.
“Shit,” Danny whispered, glaring at the phone. “She might not know anything. You can’t have a meltdown.”
Eli took a deep breath and answered, “Hi, Sam.”
“Hey, I need you to do something for me.” Her voice had a nasal quality, as if she had a bad cold.
“Okay,” he squeaked.
“Incubus owned a cabin. The address is in the file. Can you find out if it’s still there?”
Danny began typing in frantic staccato motions.
“Uh… yes,” he said. “I will call you back.”
“Can you do it now?”
He glanced at Danny. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. An aerial view of a dense forest filled the screen. She zoomed in but a canopy of trees hid the ground.
“The forest is too thick. The satellite does not show anything,” he said.
“I tried that. Is there any way you can find out if the cabin is still there?” Sam asked.
Danny licked her lips and glanced up at him, an expression of stark terror on her face.
Eli wrote on the whiteboard DO SOMETHING!
Her eyes darted between the five monitors. In rapid succession, she pulled up lines of code on one monitor and documents flashed on a second and third.
“What is going on?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” Sam said. “But I need to know what happened to that cabin.”
Danny poked his arm and waved at the screen, gesturing at him to read to Sam what she’d typed. Eli put the phone on speaker and put his finger to his lips. Danny scowled but remained silent.
“Well, Jerry Lutz’s lawyer filed a Statement of Claim against Toronto Police Service,” Eli told her. “He accused the forensic team of burning Lutz’s cabin.”
“Is there a fire marshal’s report?” she asked.
“The complaint says that the lawyer visited the property after Lutz’s conviction and found it burned. The fire department was not called at the time of the fire.”
“Possible. It was isolated,” she said. “Did police investigate?”
Danny typed on the screen. Eli leaned over to read. “No. Lutz withdrew the Statement of Claim two days after he filed it. That was the end of it.”
“So the cabin is gone,” she said.
Eli swallowed. “Where are you?”
“Outside Kingston. Did you talk to Reece?” she asked.
“Yes. He went back to the university.”
“But you guys are okay?”
“I have trouble interpreting people’s feelings,” he admitted.
“Reece says what he means,” she replied. “I’ll see you later.”
Sam disconnected and Eli stared at Danny, hoping he had read that conversation right.
“She doesn’t suspect anything,” Danny said. “For now,” she added ominously.
He released his breath in a rush. Things were getting much more complicated than he had planned. “We just need a bit more time,” he said.
“If you say so.” Eeyore’s pessimistic whine matched the woebegone expression on her face.
“You can’t live this way.” He clasped her hand and the warmth of her flesh against his skin calmed him. “And I can’t lose you.”