“I watched the first guard when he gave the elevator his code. Foolishly all the doors work off the same code. I’m sure it’s his personal code but it’s still a poor practice.”
The elevator stopped and opened onto a small foyer with an armed guard at a desk. Beyond the guard was another elevator.
Emerson approached the guard and said something in French. The guard took in their uniforms and nodded. Emerson signed the logbook, smiled pleasantly, and motioned Riley to the elevator.
They stripped their guard uniforms off in the elevator and were relieved to see a deserted hallway when the doors opened. They dumped the Mauritius shirts in a trash receptacle, walked toward an exit sign, and found themselves in the main lobby of Blane-Grunwald.
The front door to the building was roped off with crime scene tape, and beyond the big double-glass windows Riley could see police milling about in bomb disposal gear.
“Back door,” Emerson said.
Riley was way ahead of him, already having done an about-face. In less than a minute she was out of the building, walking toward the subway stop, and Emerson was matching her strides. She was on the platform for twenty seconds when a train rolled in, and she took it with no knowledge of where it was going. She just knew it was going to move her away from Blane-Grunwald a
nd the Federal Reserve.
“I have a plan,” Emerson said, swaying with the motion of the train.
“Oh boy,” Riley said. “Another plan.”
“I’m going off the grid.”
“Good plan. What about me?”
“You should go back to your life.”
“Which life would that be?” Riley asked.
“Life is a series of natural changes. Resisting change only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
“Gee, that’s really helpful…whatever the heck it means. Thanks a lot.”
The train eased into a station and Emerson pulled a wad of money from his pocket. He handed the money to Riley and moved to the door. “I’ll contact you.”
“No! Do not contact me. Erase me from your memory bank.”
Emerson stepped onto the platform, the doors slid closed behind him, and the train lurched forward. Riley got off at the next stop and studied the route map on the wall. She was in Brooklyn.
It was a couple minutes after midnight when Riley retrieved the key she kept hidden in a fake rock near a shrub next to the front steps and let herself into her apartment. So far so good, she thought. She hadn’t been stopped by the NSA. No sign of Rollo. No SWAT team waiting for her on the sidewalk in front of her building. If her apartment had been searched at least they’d been neat about it, because nothing seemed out of place. She poured herself a glass of wine, took two sips, and decided she was too tired to drink the rest of it. The day had been mind-numbing. Confusing, terrifying, exhilarating, and exhausting. Her purse had been left behind, so tomorrow she was faced with the chore of replacing her driver’s license, smartphone, and credit cards. She hoped she lived long enough to do it. She had no clue how she stood with Werner but she took it as a good sign that her apartment hadn’t been booby-trapped.
She had a nervous flutter in her stomach when she fell asleep and it was still there when she woke up in the morning. Her life was a mess. One day everything was on track and then WHAM! Emerson Knight.
Riley checked her email while she downed two cups of coffee and a bowl of cereal. Her mother had sent her a picture of the cake she’d made for Uncle Mickey’s birthday party. It was followed by a picture of Uncle Mickey eating a slice of the cake and a message that everyone misses Riley but is excited that she has her dream job in Washington, D.C.
Crap on a cake, Riley thought.
Her oldest brother, Lowell, usually sent her a conspiracy-laden tirade about the government being in cahoots with Big Oil, the Russians, and the Taliban, in no particular order. Today Lowell was going on and on about the Treasury Department and Big Gold. He said a rumor had appeared on the Internet just last night, claiming that the gold treasuries at the Federal Reserve were all fake. Bogus. Counterfeit. Nothing but hollow shells filled with tungsten.
Riley broke out in goosebumps. It was unusual for Lowell to strike a note so close to reality. Usually, he favored the black-op-helicopter-time-machine-was-behind-the-Kennedy-assassination type of theory. Lowell was part conspiracy theorist and part aspiring author. Sometimes it was hard to tell where his political rants stopped and his thriller plot took over.
Riley scrolled through the endless text where Lowell seamlessly floated between fact and fiction and finally gave credit to the origin of the fake gold disclosure. Lowell stated that his information came from an unimpeachable source, the well-known philosopher and mystic Mysterioso.
More goosebumps. Emerson had “outed” the Grunwalds through the blog he shared with Vernon. Riley clicked over to the Mysterioso site and read down. It was all there with names omitted. Emerson and Riley had become Mr. K. and Miss M., but the rest was there, in all its unbelievable glory. The car bomb, the infiltration of the Fed vault, drilling into the gold bars, finding the tungsten, escaping. It sounded like the ravings of a madman.
And it was all true.
If she hadn’t been there, she’d never have believed it, not for a second. No one would. Except nuts like her brother Lowell. She closed her computer and sat for a moment in numb disbelief before trying to continue on with life in its normal rhythm. She rinsed the dishes and put the cereal box back in the cupboard. She moved on to the bathroom.
She took a shower, applied minimal makeup, and stared into her closet. Now what? She asked herself. Do I put on jeans and a T-shirt and go home to Texas? Or do I get dressed in a suit on Monday, march into Blane-Grunwald, and act as if nothing unusual happened and I still work there? None of the above, she decided.