End of Secrets (17 page)

Kera allowed a few seconds to slip away. She might have taken a longer moment to weigh what to do next—interview the artist? Keep an eye on Erica?—but she already knew. She had to follow them. As she struggled to squeeze through the bodies, she caught a glimpse of Bolíva
r’s
beanie just before he and Canyon disappeared through the doorway. She reached the top of the stairs and stopped, her head cocked as she listened. Nothing. Just the din from the party downstairs, underscored by the soft punches of the bass line. Out of the basement, the comparative silence made her alert. With her eyes still adjusting to the darkness, she felt her way around the decommissioned taxis and pushed through the aluminum door.

The West Side Highway hummed a half block away. The bike was still locked to the fence at the buildin
g’s
corner. The pale fluorescent light buzzed overhead.

But the street was empty in either direction.

She walked a block before she pulled out her phone and checked for a signal. The bars indicated full strength. She rang Jones to say she was safe and sound but could
n’t
talk. He was irritated with her. “Did you see my texts? You could have at least checked in to let me know you were OK.” She could
n’t
talk, she told him again. The streets were too quiet. Someone might overhear their conversation if she tried to explain everything now. She told him that sh
e’d
fill him in tomorrow.

Parker answered almost immediately when she called him. She said she was on her way home. He did
n’t
ask from what. The quiet blocks creeped her out, and she stayed on the line—without telling him why—until sh
e’d
walked several blocks east and was climbing safely into a cab.

At home, after saying good night to Parker, she Googled Rafael Bolívar.

J. D. Jones was furious with Kera.
Sh
e’d
fill him in tomorrow?
What she should have done was come in right away, tonight, and explain to him what had happened. Then they could file the case notes together. What she should have done was not go into that building in the first place.

After a few minutes fuming by himself in the Control Room, though, Jones realized that none of that was why he was angry with Kera. In fact, he was angrier with himself. The feeling had snuck up on him suddenly while he waited to get word from her after sh
e’d
disappeared into the building and slipped out of contact. The minutes had passed. Then an hour. And all he could do was sit there in front of his screens, worrying. The problem was what he was worrying about. He should have been worrying about whether her cover had been blown, or whether the information she brought out of that building could be trusted, or whether
she
could still be trusted after pulling such a hasty move. But as each minute went by, he worried only about her.

Instead of logging out and going home, he sat at his workstation and thought about how dangerous this feeling was. He was too self-aware not to contemplate it, but contemplating it seemed to lend it credibility. And that threatened to spoil the cut-and-dry professionalism he brought to his work.

He thought briefly of Annie, his ex-wife. It seemed to be the only reference point. He had loved her, whatever that word had meant to him then. But in the three years that spanned from date number one to divorce, he was never sure that h
e’d
truly understood her. He knew for certain that he had never let her understand him. In a marriage emotional delinquency like that signaled a character flaw. Tha
t’s
how it must have looked to everyone else, anyway. He was just a computer nerd whose paycheck came from installing software that he would have been able to crack in under a minute. When he was
n’t
at work, he spent hours at his home computer. That had been where he was most productive. But no one, including his wife, ever cared about that. Not once, as h
e’d
struggled through high school and menial computer jobs, had a teacher or colleague ever suggested that there were important, meaningful careers for someone with his talents.

At his job now, the ability to isolate himself and avoid close personal connections almost seemed noble. It was a sacrifice he made in order to serve his country. And that had been why h
e’d
taken this job, had
n’t
it? To sacrifice and to serve. To do something that would have made his brother proud. The job with Hawk was, for the first time in his life, something that Jones recognized as having real meaning. It had been both a higher calling and a refuge. And it kept his personal life simple.

Until Kera Mersal had walked into the Control Room.

Watching her now, Jones noticed that Kera had called her fiancé immediately after sh
e’d
gotten off the phone with him. Jones stayed at his workstation until he saw on HawkEye that Kera was safely home. Then he left, hating himself for wondering whether Kera and Parke
r’s
relationship would prove to be as impossible as his own marriage had been.

SIXTEEN

“Where have you been?” Gabby wanted to know the next morning when Kera appeared in the conference room thirty minutes late. Jones, who was slumped in a chair across from her, looked up when Kera entered. As usual, his eyes did all of the talking; h
e’d
been worried about her. Once he saw that she was OK, he looked away in anger.

“At an auto body shop on the West Side Highway,” Kera said.

“You drive a car in the city?” Gabby said.

“No. It was—I was there last night. I wanted to go back and check it out.”

“And?”

“I do
n’t
know what to make of it. Today i
t’s
—i
t’s
like i
t’s
just an auto body shop. The basement is full of tires and car parts.”

Gabby gave her an odd look, and Kera realized that what sh
e’d
said was
n’t
as strange as her tone implied.

“Last night everything was different,” Kera said softly. “It was completely transformed.”

“I see,” Gabby said, though it did not sound like she did. She looked down at the screen of her tablet. “I saw your report here, and I have to say it does
n’t
make much sense to me. You were at this auto body sho
p . . .
for an art show?”

The three of them were seated around one end of the long table. Gabby was at the head seat, between Kera and Jones. A pop-up flat screen at the center of the table displayed its default image, the
Global Repor
t
’s
home page. Kera kept staring at the small type under the masthead.

T
HE
G
LOBAL
R
EPORT

T
HE DIGITAL NEWS ORGANIZATION THAT CURATES AN INSIGHTFUL BLEND OF THE WORL
D’S
BEST ORIGINAL AND AGGREGATED NEWS STORIES.

“
I’m
sorry. What?” Kera said.

“It was an art show? This thing last night?”

Kera nodded. Gabby clearly had not read her report.

“What exactly were you doing there?”

“I was following Charlie Canyon and Erica Foster, a bartender who works at the Empire Hotel.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gabby said. Jones said nothing. “You followed them in?”

Kera nodded. “I made a judgment call.”

“You made the wrong call. Where were you during all this?” she said to Jones.

“The Control Room.”

“Where you both should have been. Did you advise her to go into that building?”

Kera did
n’t
look at Jones. She did
n’t
want to see him cover for her—or betray her. “No. I told her to get out of there.”

Gabby turned back to Kera. “And you did
n’t
listen, placing yourself in danger and the investigation at risk. I specifically said no tails. Digital surveillance only.”

“Ther
e’s
a blind spot,” Kera said.

“A what?”

“There are about twelve blocks on the west side where we do
n’t
have video surveillance,” Jones said.

“A blind spot,” Gabby muttered, as though frustrated that this could
n’t
be blamed on Jones and Kera.

The mention of the blind spot reminded Kera of how she could
n’t
get a signal on her smartphone or tablet while sh
e’d
been in the basement during the party. This morning, though, when she went back and was given a brief tour by the confused manager, the signal had been strong. She knew this because sh
e’d
snapped a few photos and the
y’d
uploaded immediately to HawkEye over the network.

“There was no way to see what they were doing in there without following them,” Kera said.

“Wh
o’s ‘t
he
y’?
Who was at this gathering?” Gabby said to Kera, who was distracted. “Kera?”

“Yeah?”

“How big was this party?”

Kera shrugged. “Fifty people, maybe more.”

“Let me guess. None of our missing subjects were there?”

Kera shook her head. “No. But there were a few interesting sightings. Rafael Bolívar, the media mogul and tabloid sensation—”

“Hold on. Rafael Bolívar was there? At this basement party?”

Kera looked up. That this, of all things, should capture Gabb
y’s
attention was peculiar. She nodded. “He was. So was Natalie Smith.”

“Who is she?”

“A filmmaker. Tha
t’s
an ad right there for her new documentary.” Kera pointed out the window at the giant
America
billboard across Times Square. She added, almost to herself, “Canyon said the studio is planning to drop the film. I think I left that out of my report.”

“Wait, you
spoke
to him?”

“He spoke to me.”

“How do you explain your decision to fraternize with a person of interest in a classified case?”

“I told you. I made a judgment call. It was an opportunity to see what our surveillance network ca
n’t
.”

“Maybe on your second date, h
e’l
l tell you where all the bodies are. Yo
u’r
e bordering dangerously on operational malpractice. Both of you. I want another briefing tomorrow morning. You have twenty-four hours to learn something that impresses me about this case.”

Gabby pushed back to stand, plucked her tablet from the table, and set off toward the hallway. Her movements were a little too exaggerated, Kera thought, almost as if she were enjoying this.

“Did you know that ONE hired seven people from the NSA this week?” Kera said to her, still looking out the window. She heard Gabby stop in the threshold. In her periphery, Kera saw Jones lift his eyebrows.

Since sh
e’d
been called to Rowena Pet
e’s
town house, promoted to agent, and then assigned to the
A
TLANTIS
case, Kera had nearly forgotten about ONE and the twelve Wall Street quants the
y’d
hired. But her computer had
n’t
. In preparation for the meeting with Travis Bradley, sh
e’d
programmed the computer to run an automatic, daily analysis of news stories and other indicators linked to ONE, looking for patterns or new behavior. It was an entirely routine practice. The new alert had hit her in-box overnight. Two NSA data analysts and five cybersecurity experts had jumped ship to ONE. “That whistle-blower you sent me to meet with last month was right. It looks like the ONE case is heating up.”

“There is no ONE case,” Gabby said, glaring at her. “And until you locate these people, you do
n’t
have the luxury of thinking about anything else—not ONE, not what you want for lunch, not whether you need to go to the ladie
s’
room, nothing.”

Kera acknowledged this with a nod, but she did
n’t
turn to look at Gabby. A few seconds later, she heard the deputy directo
r’s
heels clapping down the hallway away from them.

“Are you all right?” Jones asked.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I did
n’t
sleep much last night.”

“What was that thing about ONE?”

“Just something she had me look into before all this. I thought it was nothing. Now
I’m
not so sure.” Kera exhaled heavily, feeling suddenly exhausted. “What?” For a moment, Jones looked as though h
e’d
been about to say something, but then he glanced at the open door and seemed to think better of it.

“See you back in the Control Room?” he said.

Kera nodded. Sh
e’d
spent most of the last twenty-four hours either in the Control Room or out tailing Charlie Canyon. She had
n’t
been in her office since before lunch the previous day. She went there now and stood at her desk, studying the four note cards on the wall, each displaying the name, age, occupation, and alleged fate of the missing people. Meeting Canyon had not helped in the way she thought it might. He was different from what sh
e’d
expected. And now the case felt even murkier to her than it had before. She could
n’t
tell if she was overthinking it or not using her imagination enough. If she were back at the agency, sh
e’d
go to Lionel, and h
e’d
help her talk it through. But here, she was on her own. Gabby was no mentor; the only communication Gabby had with her was to give her deadlines.

Kera switched on her laptop. The photo sh
e’d
taken in the bathroom stall at the party had synched up with the others. She looked at the photos, four of them now, like echoes of each other across the city:
Have you figured it out yet?
She tapped the screen and the photos disappeared. They were a distraction. This case was booby-trapped with distractions—the basement party, the artist known as It, maybe even Canyon. She made herself read each note card again, straining to see a pattern she had
n’t
noticed before.

When she was done, she sat at her desk and looked out the window. It was that brief time of day when the midday sun was high and bright enough to diminish the flashy advertisements that walled Times Square. It was only a matter of time, she thought, before advertisers found a way to block out the sun and give their brand-buzzing wattage a round-the-clock advantage. She panned across the commercial thicket and then up to its apex, finding the ONE billboard. The population clock was difficult to read under the su
n’s
glare, but she could see the digits clearly enough to understand that the number was getting larger and larger. More potential consumers coming into the world every second.

Lowering her gaze, Ker
a’s
eyes settled on the
America
billboard and she thought of Canyo
n’s
comment about the film—that the studio would pull it from theaters. It had struck her then as an odd comment for him to make to her, and she had
n’t
been able to shake the feeling that h
e’d
been trying to tell her something. Or maybe she was reading too much into nothing, and this was just another distraction. The
America
billboard was still prominently displayed over Times Square. Clearly, the studio was charging full speed toward the fil
m’s
release.

The studio. Even as she spun toward her computer to check, she knew that the studio distributing
America
would be owned by ONE. The search engine confirmed this for her a few seconds later. But so what? ONE owned at least a third of all major films. It was
n’t
even a coincidence. It meant nothing.

The Fredericksburg High School yearbooks were in a package outside her front door when she got home that evening. Sh
e’d
ordered three of them—1996, 1998, and 2000—so that sh
e’d
have enough material to work with over the range of years she estimated Jones could have been in high school.

Taking advantage of the fact that Parker was
n’t
home yet, she sat on the couch with the yearbooks and flipped directly to the index pages. There were listings for students named “Jones,” but after looking at the corresponding photos, she eliminated these as possible matches—or even relatives—of the man she knew to be J. D. Jones. With this obvious tactic out of the way, she grabbed the
200
0 book and began flipping through each page, looking for a familiar face among the male students.

She did her first double take when she got to the sophomores. There was a picture of three male students, two of them wearing football jerseys, posing in the aisle of a bus. The luggage racks above them were stuffed full of sports bags. Kera stared at the face of one of the boys wearing a jersey. The dark eyes, the shape of the nose—perhaps it approximated a resemblance, but was it anything more than that? Nearly halfway through the thick volume, sh
e’d
already studied hundreds of faces and began to wonder if her eyes were playing tricks, seeing what she wanted them to see. The caption said the studen
t’s
name was Sean Carr. She made a note of it on her tablet, but kept searching.

She finally found him among the juniors. He was not in any of the photographs depicting members of sports teams or other extracurricular groups, but there he was near the end of the pages that featured rows and rows of head shots. She had no doubt that it was Jones. The held-back smile, the dark-brown hair that encroached upon his face; this was the teenage version of the man she knew. Under the picture was the name James Carr.

She glared at the name, surprised to find that the rush sh
e’d
expected to feel at this breakthrough was offset almost entirely by the confirmation that Jones had indeed kept the most basic thing from her: his name. Given their line of work, this was a small, impersonal betrayal. But a betrayal nonetheless.