End of Secrets (14 page)

That night—in fact, early the next morning—Kera stood on a sidewalk beneath a street lamp squinting into the shadows. Beyond the curtain of light was only darkness, and nothing of that darkness distinguished itself from the rest. She moved several paces in each direction and looked again, scrutinizing the shadows for details that did not materialize. It was four
AM
on a Wednesday, two weeks to the day that the mural had appeared.

She retraced her steps to the intersection and turned left on the cross street. There, adjacent to the parking lot, she found a short length of sidewalk, maybe ten yards that fell in the gap between lampposts, from which she could make out the broad, colorless mass of the building. She spun around to scan the structure across the street; it was half car garage, half warehouse. All the windows were dark.

At four thirty she went around the corner to the Village Tavern and spoke to the bartenders winding down from the Tuesday-night shift. They all knew about the mural, and two of them figured they must have walked right beneath it, oblivious, after closing down. A few others had seen it Wednesday afternoon when they came back into work. But nobody had noticed anything suspicious early Wednesday morning.

At five thirty she was back on the street and approached a vendor setting up his cart for breakfast. Kera bought a coffee from the man and asked if h
e’d
been here at the same time two weeks earlier.

“Sure. Made a killing that morning. I ran out of doughnuts and muffins by nine. Never seen anything like it. And then they paint over it same day and no more crowds.”

“When did you first notice the mural?”

“I do
n’t
know. It was just getting light, like now. I went to the corner to buy a paper, and I saw it on the way back. The lights,” he pointed up at the streetlight. “They clicked off and then I notice. The whole building—alive like an explosion!”

“Did you see the painter?”

He gave her a look. “No, no. The whole wall painted. No people.”

“You do
n’t
remember anyone suspicious coming or going that morning?”

He shook his head. “I notice nothing until the lights go off. And then the crowds start coming.”

Sipping her coffee, Kera walked across the street to get a closer look at the lower reaches of the building. The streetlights clicked off, and she made a note of the time—5:49
AM
. She wondered what the buildin
g’s
owner planned to do with this wall. There was enough light now to see what had become of it. The cit
y’s
whitewashing job had turned it into an ugly rectangle of uneven white paint framed by dirty bricks. She wondered whether they would repaint it to match the street-facing facade. It was probably only a matter of days before they got an offer they could
n’t
refuse from an advertiser looking to cash in on the sit
e’s
new allure. She saw the irony in this, thick as the white paint that had started to reflect the first light seeping out of the navy sky. The city would tolerate an ugly white wall, and it would tolerate a wall dressed with brand names worn by airbrushed models. But the mayor himself had mobilized a crew to paint over the artis
t’s
mural.

Kera had turned for the subway to head to work, her head down, thinking, when she noticed the writing on the lip of the sidewalk. The phrase ran parallel to a crack in the concrete, the last three words rolling over the curb and into the gutter.

Have you figured it out yet?

FOURTEEN

A long, sleek table ran like a spine through the center of the secure conference room. The two interior walls dividing the room from neighboring offices were made of opaque frosted glass. The outfacing walls, which formed one corner of the buildin
g’s
twenty-seventh floor, were made of pristine sheets of one-way glass that came to a point like the bow of a ship sailing into the heart of Times Square. The view out the conference room windows was almost entirely of enormous, flashing advertisements. Inside, a half-dozen flat screens were mounted on slender posts around the perimeter of the room. In addition, a screen folded up out of the tabletop.

The director and CEO of Hawk sat at the head of the table, his back to the view. Dick Branagh had been a three-star army general with a reputation for operating so discreetly and efficiently that the only time anyone thought of him was each time the latest of his swift promotions was announced. Today, he was jacketless and tieless, his collar open at the neck. His hair was receding and going a little gray and thin, but he was handsome for sixty, despite the fact that he never appeared to be having a good time. At this moment, his expression fell on the displeased side of blank. Kera and Jones had taken up straight-backed positions to the directo
r’s
right; Gabby sat across from them and to Branag
h’s
left.

Behind the director, in the distance across Times Square, the population clock on the ONE billboard read 7,374,169,448.

Then 7,374,169,449.

Then 7,374,169,450.

“W
e’v
e identified a person of interest,” Gabby said. “We believe this man, Charlie Canyon, seen here on street surveillance cameras, met with each of the missing subjects in the months leading up to their disappearances. Our lead agent on the case is Kera Mersal. She can summarize what w
e’v
e learned since we started tracking him last week.”

Kera lifted her shoulders an inch higher and swiped her tablet to life. When Director Branagh looked at her, she nodded, trying to appear more confident than she felt. With all Hawk did in the service of homeland security, it was hard to imagine Branag
h’s
interest in this case. She certainly had not expected her first meeting with him to be about a handful of artists who had gone missing on American soil. To steady her anxiety, she reminded herself to just focus on what she had prepared. For the past five days, she had lived not her own life but Canyo
n’s
, observing him in real time as he moved about the city. She had examined his routines, his purchases, the company he kept, the moments when he thought he was alone and unwatched.

“The subject is extremely private. He has no presence on any social networking sites, and his name returns no major search-engine results other than his employe
r’s
directory. He keeps to himself and rarely indulges in nightlife. The exceptions to this are semifrequent appearances at the Empire Hote
l’s
rooftop bar, where we believe he rendezvoused with our missing subjects. Otherwise, Mr. Canyon spends as many as twelve hours a day at the offices of
AM
+ Toppe, a powerful PR agency, where he appears to be something of a prodigy. His job description is a little vague, but the best I can gather, he consults brand campaigns in the entertainment, tech, and fashion industries.” She set down the tablet. “What we do
n’t
know is why he appears to be the only person to have met with our four subjects. We could speculate—”

“Le
t’s
not,” the director said. Kera was taken aback by the softness of his voice. Sh
e’d
expected it to have a gruffer quality. She understood now, though, that he was a man who rarely needed to raise his voice. Sh
e’d
yielded to him immediately. “Go back to the missing people for a second. What are your working theories there?”

Kera and Jones exchanged an uncertain glance. “There are none that w
e’r
e comfortable with, sir.”

“But the
y’r
e alive?”

“I
t’s
possible, yes. If tha
t’s
the case, the
y’r
e living entirely off the grid.”

“Are they fanatical?” the director asked. “What were they doing before they vanished?”

“The
y’r
e not religious, if tha
t’s
what you mean. In fact, I could
n’t
find an example of religious expression among any of them. The
y’r
e creative types—” Kera started to say, realizing that a meeting with the director was not the place to try to articulate something for the first time. She had, in fact, noticed a similar quality in all of the missing people, the lawyer included—not in their title or day job, but in the dedicated way they pursued the work of their choosing. “The
y’r
e passionate, I guess you could say.”

“Extremist is another word for it,” Gabby said. “Passionate people have hobbies. These people have either killed themselves or the
y’v
e abandoned their lives and gone into hiding. Tha
t’s
something entirely different.”

“We do
n’t
know
what
the
y’v
e done,” Kera pointed out.

“What
do
you know?” Director Branagh shot back.

“Well, three of the subjects were connected to the ONE Corporation,” Kera said. She saw Gabby and the director exchange a glance, but she could
n’t
interpret it. “Rowena Pete was signed to ONE Music. Cole Emerson, the filmmaker, had his last documentary distributed by a ONE subsidiary. And the novelist, Craig Shea, was published by ONE Books. The lawyer has no connection to ONE, as far as I know.”

“What about Canyon? Is he connected to ONE?”

“Not in any way I know of, sir.”

“You said Canyon met with the subjects before they vanished, but you have not said that he is responsible in some way for their going missing.”

“It would be speculation—” Kera started, but then stopped herself. He wanted proof, and she knew they did
n’t
have it. “We believe, sir,” Kera said, feigning confidence, “that those meetings are related to the disappearances.”

“And yo
u’v
e deduced that from these images?” the director said, gesturing at the flat screen.

Kera felt her face flush. “Tha
t’s
right.”

“Because all I see is a guy going to get a drink after work.” The directo
r’s
graying eyebrows underlined his forehead, that great canvas of expression, expansive now in middle age and wrinkled most deeply in the areas that illustrated displeasure. He leaned forward as if h
e’d
heard enough, and pressed both of his palms flat on the table. “I do
n’t
care about these artists. And I do
n’t
care whether you care about them either. But one thing we should all care about more than anything else is our reputation. We cannot afford to look incompetent because w
e’r
e unable to locate not a solo terrorist hiding in a hole in Yemen—which, by the way, w
e’r
e pretty good at doing—but four human beings who were essentially our neighbors. What happened to them? The answer cannot possibly be this difficult to figure out.”

Kera withered. Humiliation burned her cheeks. She felt as if sh
e’d
been jerked out of orbit and now faced the scalding friction of reentry. She was angry for letting herself walk into this meeting with so little to show for her work. She might have said, “Yes, sir,” or at least nodded, but in any event, the director stood up to leave, and then Gabby followed him out the door.

When they were gone, Jones let out his lungs next to her.

Kera looked out the window. The population clock ticked over to 7,374,171,852. She did
n’t
know why the numbers made her uneasy; it was just a stupid advertising gimmick. She looked away, thinking. There was something else that made her uneasy too. She had an urge, one she was
n’t
proud of, to be back in front of the surveillance monitors in the Control Room. She wanted to know what Charlie Canyon was doing. Being away from him was like leaving the room for too long during a television commercial break; she felt anxiety for some unknown, breaking development she might be missing.

It was 11:18
AM
. Canyon typically took lunch well after noon, usually takeout that he brought back to the office. But he often came down to the street about this time late in the morning for a second cup of coffee.

“I do
n’t
think we should assume that Rowena Pete was the last,” Kera said.

“The last?”

“The last person to go missing. What if there are going to be more?”

Jones looked at her. “Why do you sound hopeful?”

“Because it could help us. If we can figure out wh
o’s
next, it might lead us to the others.”

Jones leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples as if this, finally, was the thing about this case that he could
n’t
wrap his head around. “I
t’s
one thing to look for missing people. I
t’s
something entirely different to look for missing people who are
n’t
even missing yet.”

“True. But now we know at least one place these people might go before they disappear.”

He nodded, though not optimistically.

“I know, i
t’s
a needle in a pile of needles, coming at it like this. But we can do it the old-fashioned way.”

First, he gave her a look that said,
What are you talking about?
Then his face went blank, and she recognized the moment when her idea caught traction.

“I want to talk to him,” she said.

“You want to approach Charlie Canyon with this list of names and ask him where they all went?”

“Not exactly. Look at this.” She picked up her tablet. “Judging from Charlie Canyo
n’s
credit card statements, he goes to that bar most Fridays after work, right? This time, I want to be there. And I want to get close enough to see and hear what the surveillance cameras ca
n’t
.” She was on her feet suddenly, her tablet and phone tucked between her hand and her hip. “Just like you said, the computers ca
n’t
tell us everything we need to know. I want to get in there close.”

“You want to go
tonight
?” he said, but before h
e’d
finished she was already in the hallway. “Wait. Kera?”

She did
n’t
stop, only looked back over her shoulder to say, “I do
n’t
know about you, but by the time we meet with Branagh next, I intend to have something to tell him.”

He watched her walk away until sh
e’d
made the turn at the end of the hallway and was out of sight.