“Couldn’t be anybody else?”

“Depends on the context, but it’s a pretty rare name.”

“The context is, the man who’s being tortured in the video we got out of that cabin says he was hired by someone named Rivard. We already know Absalom specializes in blackmail. Somebody that rich could be a hell of a target.”

“Could be,” Mike agrees. “You’d better be goddamn sure before we go after that particular pale whale. You sure you want to keep involving her?”

“I’m sure.” Her means Gwen. Mike isn’t convinced of her innocence. Like most people, he can’t fathom how she couldn’t have known something, since Melvin was bringing victims home to the garage just on the other side of their kitchen wall.

That’s where we differ. I got sucked under on the Internet. I got indoctrinated by the echo chamber of like thinkers who set out to believe Gina Royal was guilty, and I swallowed it completely. I was blinded by my own hatred to the extent of planning just exactly how to kill Gina Royal. Not a merciful end. One that would deliver back to her all the pain and suffering that Callie had endured.

I had a cold, hard lesson in how easy it could be to lose your way, get lost in the shadows of your own rage and other people’s delusions. I understand how Gina Royal might have been blind to her husband’s horrors. She had been innocent. Too innocent to understand the depth of evil on the other side of that wall.

But I know Mike won’t understand that. Not yet.

“You still with me, son?” Mike says. He means son in the sense that other people say brother. We’re similar ages, though he comes across as much older. “’Cause you’re keeping me from my bed.”

“Not your wife?”

He laughs. “Vivian’s dead asleep. After all these years of me being a field agent, she can sleep through a bomb blast, bless her. Don’t make for much spontaneous late-night fun, though.” He sobers quickly. “Don’t let that woman get too close to you, Sam. You’ve got a weakness.”

“I know,” I say. “See you in the morning.”

“Hell, yes, you will. Now go to sleep.”

He hangs up.

I shut down the computer, take out the USB, and after a moment’s thought, put it in a zippered pocket of my backpack. I take the pack with me into my bedroom, then shut and lock the door.

I don’t want Gwen getting up and doing the same thing I just did. I’d rather spare her that, even though she might hate me for it.

Only one of us needs to live with those images. I’ve got the thing that matters out of all that pain.

Ballantine Rivard. Rich, eccentric old man who retired years ago from the company he founded—Rivard Luxe—and hasn’t been seen outside his tower fortress since. No obituaries that I could find before I called Mike Lustig. The man was still alive and kicking.

Tomorrow we are going to find him and ask him why he hired a man to infiltrate Absalom.

And what he knows about Melvin Royal.

 

Gwen and I have coffee out of warm, heavy mugs downstairs in the B and B’s dining room. It’s far too early for breakfast to be ready, but we wolf down the rest of the now-cold, still-delicious blueberry scones from the night before. The proprietor’s up, and presents us with our carefully folded clean laundry, which we add to our packs, and we’re gone long before the first light of dawn even begins to blush the horizon. As Morningside House disappears behind us, I hope they do well. They deserve to. Maybe someday, we’ll come back for a real weekend retreat, once all this horror show is done.

The drive to Atlanta goes smoothly, and we’re already inside the city limits when Mike Lustig finally calls. He gives directions to a downtown coffee shop, which mostly involves various iterations of “Peachtree,” and when we find it, it’s almost exactly 10:00 a.m.

Mike’s sitting calmly at a table in the busy place, with a huge to-go cup sitting in front of him as he checks his phone like the twenty-or-so other people in the place. He’s not visibly FBI just now; he’s wearing a nice sports jacket, black pants, and a dark-gold tie. The jacket almost disguises the gun he wears in a rig at his hip, but every cop, local or state or fed, has that same habit of scanning the room like a laser, looking for anomalies. The scan catches and holds on us, and he nods at me.

“Hey,” he says. “Get your own damn drinks. I don’t even have a budget for my own.”

I take a risk. I leave Gwen at the table with him and get in line for the coffees; I make them simple and keep an eye on the table. To all appearances, Mike and Gwen are having a civil conversation.

Appearances are wrong.

I get there with the coffee and set Gwen’s down in front of her, and I see the hard shimmer in her eyes. I’m familiar with that look, and the unyielding set of her chin. They’re staring at each other without speaking, and I slip into the chair to make it a triangle and say, “So I see we’re getting along.”

“Oh yeah,” Mike says to me in an offhand kind of way that I know from experience means nothing in particular. “Ms. Proctor here was just telling me in detail why I don’t know how to handle her ex-husband. So you go on, ma’am, and tell me all about how to do my damn job.”

I can’t tell if Mike’s actually mad, or just pretending to be. Mike has made an art form out of separating how he looks from what’s inside; back in the war zone, he was able to smile like a son of a bitch and drink all night with the guys, and then tell me as we were staggering home that he’d spent the whole night wanting to scream and rip his eyeballs out. I was never able to hide it that well.

“Let’s not,” I say, then take a too-fast, too-big swig of boiling-hot coffee. My tongue stings and goes mercifully numb. “You got info for us about this warehouse address?”

“Yeah,” he says. “You want to tell me how the hell Ballantine Rivard figures into it?”

“Wait,” Gwen says. “You mean the Ballantine Rivard?”

Mike gives me a questioning look. “You got that video for me?”

“Yep. But I wouldn’t watch it here,” I tell him. Mike is wondering what I’ve told her. I confessed going through the recording on the drive over, and we’ve gotten that inevitable argument out of the way. She’s made it clear she’s not happy with my choice to take that on for her, but she understands why I did it. “She knows I watched it.”