“Affirmative,” Watson said. “But they won’t get anywhere. Everything we fed them was done on stolen computers that are now in a landfill in Oxnard.”
“Suggestions, gentlemen,” Cobb said. “Options.”
Kelleher said, “We could go to Twitter.”
Cobb considered that for several seconds, said, “No, I vote silence. Nothing unnerves people more than silence, especially people whose mundane lives are threatened. Every creak in the building, every sudden movement by a stranger, every loud noise gets reflected and amplified until every moment becomes tainted with fear and anguish. That’s what we’re after here, gentlemen.”
PART FOUR
NO EXIT
Chapter 73
AN HOUR EARLIER, just as dawn was cracking, Justine sat in her car down the street from Crossfit, watching the regulars filing groggily into the box, wanting to join them but feeling as if she’d betrayed them, betrayed herself by using the place as … well …
She’d hoped that a solid night’s rest would help her see things more clearly, more rationally, but now all she felt was confusion. Who was this person growing inside her whom she simply did not recognize?
Then she saw Paul and her confusion deepened. He was jogging down the sidewalk from the east toward the gym, that endearing smile plastered across his face. Her overwhelming impulse was to leap from her car. Part of her wanted to stop him before he entered and bring him back home to her bed. Another part of her wanted to confront him, tell him it was a horrible mistake brought on by a horrible incident, and that it could never happen again. Or at least not without their getting to know each other better. But the better part of her wanted to rest her head on the steering wheel and cry.
For much of her life Justine had felt in control of her emotions and actions, anchored in a way that helped her help others deal with the aftermath of trauma. Now she felt weirdly unanchored, beyond adrift, as if she’d been caught in a slowly twisting whirlpool that threatened to drown the person she’d always believed herself to be.
Fighting for air, literally feeling the panic of drowning, she threw the car into gear and, without looking, pulled out onto the street. Tires screeched on cement. A yellow low-rider pickup truck nearly sideswiped her, veered into the opposite lane, almost had a head-on with an approaching bus, but then swerved back into the lane beside her.
Justine almost threw up from the adrenaline that flooded through her.
The sensation got worse when an irate homeboy in shades and a wife-beater shirt hung out the passenger window of the pickup, started screaming at her, “Bitch, I should cap your ass for what you just did! There’s two kids in this car. You coulda killed us all!”
Justine suddenly couldn’t do anything but nod and start to cry. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed back at him. “I’m having a bad, bad day.”
The rage in the homeboy’s face lessened. “Hey, lady, pull over or something. Get a grip. You’re gonna kill someone if you don’t watch it.”
Justine did just that, wiping away tears, pulling off the street into a strip mall parking lot. She parked away from the cars near Starbucks, away from anyone else. Leaning her head on the steering wheel, she began to cry again, and let herself do it freely. The attack in the jailhouse had upended her in ways she just couldn’t explain, couldn’t control.
“I’ve got to see someone,” she decided, speaking out loud. “I’ve got to treat this like what it is, the—”
Her cell phone rang. She hesitated at first to look at the caller ID, fearing Paul, or even Jack. But then she did, and saw a number she did not recognize.
She cleared her throat, answered, “Hello.”
“Is Ms. Smith?” came a heavily accented woman’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar.
“Yes, this is Justine Smith. Who is this?”
The woman’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Is Anita. Anita Fontana. I work for—”
“I know who you are, Ms. Fontana. I remember. What’s wrong?”
A moment’s hesitation before the Harlows’ housekeeper said with increasing urgency, “We see them on the news, but we hear nothing except the children are okay. Mr. Sanders and Ms. Bronson won’t tell us what is happened, where the children are. They won’t let us see them. They won’t let us see Miguel or …” She wept. “Please help us.”
Whatever fugue state had gripped Justine now left her as quickly as fog on a wind. She heard the housekeeper’s anguish and from that found direction, strength. The people at Harlow-Quinn were way too controlling, she decided, way too Machiavellian, and it was about time she got to the bottom of why.
“Tell me where they’re keeping you,” she said. “I’ll come there, tell you everything I know.”
Chapter 74
ABOUT EIGHT THIRTY that morning, after showering, shaving, and changing in the washroom off my office, I entered the lab and found Mo-bot already at her workstation. She was gulping coffee, munching on a Krispy Kreme doughnut.
“Those’ll give you a heart attack, Maureen,” I said.