Chaos

CHAPTER 22

SHE’S BLASÉ ABOUT IT, claiming she spilled coffee and had to change her clothes.

I know when my niece is evasive. It’s as obvious as her rose-gold hair and as plain as the narrow nose on her intensely pretty face. I check my phone, mindful of the minutes creeping by, and still nothing from Harold or Rusty about how the tent is coming along.

Usually Lucy would volunteer right about now, asking if she could go check on them. Technical engineer that she is, maybe there’s something she could do to help. But she doesn’t offer and isn’t going anywhere. It’s obvious she has an agenda, has shown up unannounced for a reason, and I may as well see what it is as I wait, tamping down my impatience, glancing at my phone every other second.

I don’t want to hound Rusty and Harold. It’s not helpful if I continue interrupting them while they struggle with their erection, as Marino put it rather horribly the last time I checked. But probably I shouldn’t stand out here in the dark talking to my niece either. A better idea is to head back to the clearing and find out for myself how things are going. I want to make sure no one is overheating or needs anything, and I’m mindful of rumors.

I don’t want an ugly one starting about my sitting in the air-conditioning, relaxing with my feet propped up while everybody else toils in what feels like Death Valley after dark. I don’t want it said that I was taking my sweet time fraternizing with my niece, who thundered up to the scene in a Ferrari that costs more than a lot of houses. My mother still preaches that appearance is everything. These days she has no idea how right she is.

It doesn’t take much for people-especially cops-to question your competence and credibility. It takes less for them to wonder about your honesty, and even less than that to doubt your human decency. Any suggestion that I’m entitled or lazy could influence a jury in a negative way. The truth is almost anything can.

“Lucy, I need to head out and check on things…” I start to say, and she moves closer to me, touching my arm in a way that’s arresting.

“Let’s cool off and get something to drink,” she replies, and it’s not a suggestion.

I glance around at flashlights probing the distant night. I look back at the jeweled vehicle lights flowing along John F. Kennedy Street, and up at the steady traffic on the bridge. I survey the growing number of police cars parked everywhere. No one is inside them. I don’t notice a single person near enough to eavesdrop.

But I don’t doubt that Lucy feels the breath of the enemy on the back of her neck, and nothing I say is going to change that appreciably. It’s like people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. You’ll never convince them there’s nothing to feel anxious about. You won’t talk them out of their nightmares and phobias. It won’t help to wish them happy thoughts and sweet dreams.

Lucy’s early passions, triumphs, disasters and flirtations are part of her programming. Most indelibly etched are her Quantico experiences, what truly were the very best and worst times of her young adult life. With my blessing and under my direction she took a road less traveled and slammed head-on into a monster. Their collision was cataclysmic and I never saw it coming. Lucy’s not the same, and neither am I. No one would be.

Psychic injuries can become faults that like disk errors and other glitches aren’t always fixable. It’s disturbing to contemplate how often my niece’s hair-trigger responses aren’t warranted by what she’s convinced she perceives. Most of the time I don’t say much. I wait for her to have clarity, and she doesn’t seem to have that as often anymore. It’s gotten increasingly difficult to be sure what to trust. What’s real? What isn’t? Even Lucy doesn’t always seem to know, and if I could wipe the monstrous psychopath Carrie Grethen off the face of the earth it would be for that alone.

She’s managed to rob my de facto daughter of any peace of mind she might have had in this life, and I can’t seem to do much about it. God knows I’ve tried. God knows how much I regret the damage that’s been done. Were I really Lucy’s mother, I’d be a failed one. She’s the most important thing I should have gotten right.

I won’t forgive Carrie Grethen for that either, and it’s moments like this when I recognize how much I want her eradicated. Completely and forever. Like a plague. Like a scourge.

“All right.” I go along with Lucy’s request in a noncommittal way, revealing nothing important on the off chance we’re not alone. “We’ll duck out of the heat and grab a drink but we need to make it quick. As you’ve probably gathered, setting up is taking longer than I’d hoped.”

“Murphy’s Law.”

“Once we’re ready to go, I can’t stall.”

“He who waits.” Lucy chats away in slangy clichés, and it’s obvious she’s doing it for the benefit of whoever she thinks is watching us.

Lately it seems all I hear about is spying, tailing, peeping, trolling, spoofing, stalking, hacking, sniping, snooping. And maybe Carrie really is out here in the dark somewhere having a grand time monitoring our every word, our every move.

The more I think about her, the more I seethe, and I say nothing else to Lucy. I’m silent as I enter my personal access code in the digital keypad on the trailer’s side door.

“BE CAREFUL.” MY NIECE’S cinnamon breath is in my ear, and I’m aware there are telescopic lenses that could capture the numbers and symbols I entered.

I know there are all kinds of skimmers that can grab data from a considerable distance. I couldn’t be more mindful that Carrie is adept in such things and so much more, and I’m worn out from the warnings. In addition to Lucy’s deadly projections I have to contend with Marino’s endless fear-biting hypotheticals about all the different ways I might be followed or stalked and for all sorts of far-flung reasons.

“I’m always careful.” I open the aluminum door. “Not infallible but certainly not cavalier,” I add as I step inside, and the cold air is biting.

Lucy follows me in, shutting the door after her. “I still think we should switch our vehicles to fingerprint locks.”

“I know you do, and maybe someday it won’t be so impractical.” The air-conditioning is a relief but I’m going to freeze.

“I just wish these suckers were armored. They should be.”

“That would be even more impractical. Are Janet and Desi okay?” I bring them up now that we’re inside the trailer’s metal stairwell, which isn’t bulletproof but at least no one can overhear our conversation.

“They’re at Logan driving around in circles because there’s no place to wait longer than a nanosecond.” She tugs on the door handle again, double-checking that it’s secure. “I told Janet not to head out so early but she did anyway, don’t ask me why. Mom isn’t close to landing yet.”

“Do we have an idea why?” I start climbing the steps.

Lucy is right behind me. “First there was a delay in Fort Lauderdale because of an unattended bag at the same gate Mom was using. So her flight took off more than an hour late because of that, and then she was sitting on the tarmac for a while.”

“And you know this how? I wouldn’t think a left bag at my sister’s gate would be trending on the Internet.”

“Mom’s been e-mailing updates to Janet,” Lucy says, reminding me that my sister can’t extend the same courtesy to me.

“And I guess it’s one of those situations where there’s not time to go home.” The hurt I feel is as old as time, but I won’t let it show. “She’d much rather have to turn around and go back,” I add.

“Also traffic is backed up in New York airspace like it has been all week because of the heat wave. Sea fog, thermals are a problem because the air is so much hotter than the water right now, and a lot of flights are on ground holds or are being rerouted. Depending on fuel, Mom won’t be landing until at least ten thirty.”

I check the time and it’s almost ten.

“And she’s got luggage,” Lucy says. “A lot of it.”

“Sounds like she’s planning to stay with you awhile.”

“I just hope her damn phone battery doesn’t die, and I’m worried about Janet connecting with her. Apparently Logan’s a real shit show, and you know Mom,” Lucy says as our feet thud dully to the top step. “Usually the last one on the plane. Good luck with her bags being there, and Janet can’t possibly go inside to help.”

“It’s going to be a very late night for Desi.”

“He’s been texting me that the traffic is terrible. State troopers are herding everyone, barely letting you stop your car when you drop off or pick up.”

“Well I’m sure he must be excited about Dorothy’s visit,” I comment halfheartedly as we enter the bright white Formica and stainless-steel galley.

“Yes, since she spoils him rotten. Have you talked to Benton?”

“Not since the Faculty Club,” I answer, and Lucy’s green eyes have that distant look I know so well and have come to dread.

She may be here in the flesh but in spirit she’s somewhere else, some remote emotional space she doesn’t share. Beautiful, brilliant, in her midthirties but much younger than that in many ways, and compared to most of the population, Lucy has every advantage. How sad that an obsession would become the path of least resistance for an overachieving highflier like her. Not that there’s anybody like Lucy, and her uniqueness is part of the tragedy.

What a waste that she naturally gravitates to Carrie’s isolated hateful place like water seeking its own level. Lucy believes she’s the captain of her own ship, the master of her own fate. That she has free will. But I’m not so sure anymore.

“Why? Have you talked to him?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says, and I would remove this curse from her if I could.

I would take it upon myself if it meant freeing Lucy. I would do almost anything. And strangely I think of the woman on the bicycle and what she said to me before she rode across the blistering hot street:

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

But what if it does kill you? That’s what we should be asking because Carrie isn’t making us stronger. It’s too late. We crossed that divide two years ago when she let us know in the worst way imaginable that she’s still alive. Since then we’re on the side of diminishing returns as she’s chipped away, bled and maimed us while we flail in a state of perpetual sensory deprivation.

We don’t see or hear Carrie. We don’t experience her unless it’s on her terms, and her greatest gift is her implied nonexistence. Saying she did something heinous has become rather much like saying the Devil did. Except I have provable scars from her, and a lot of people have died.

“I’ve been curious about what Benton’s doing.” I sound calm, which isn’t at all how I feel. “He got a call from Washington about the same time Marino called me about this case. How did he seem to you?”

“Hard to tell. I’m pretty sure he was in a car when I reached him,” Lucy says.

“A car? Or his car?” I lean against the countertop across from her. “I’m wondering if he’s with other FBI agents, if something’s happened. He mentioned the terror alert’s been elevated and includes Washington, D.C. And also here, the Boston area.”

“He didn’t offer what he was doing or who he was with,” she says, and in the bright light I can make out the subtle bulge of the pistol beneath the cuff of her right pant leg.