“Ryan? Did you tell him?”
“No, no, no way.” Ryan shook his head in a newly jittery way, and Jake could see he was hiding something.
“What? What happened? You’re a terrible liar, Ryan. I can see it all over your face. Did you tell him something? Anything?” Jake tried to control his fear, but it was impossible. “If you did, tell me now and we can deal with it. Don’t hide it from me. We’re in this together.”
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t say anything, not a word!” Ryan raised his voice, but Jake could see that he was protesting too much.
“Then what is it? What’s bothering you?”
“We smoked up, that’s all, Dad. I’m sorry—”
“You got high at school?” Jake asked, appalled.
“Yes, I’m sorry.” Ryan raked his hair back with a shaking hand. “Caleb told me it would help me mellow out for practice, and it really did. It did. It got me back in control.”
“No!” Jake practically cried out, feeling suddenly like everything was circling the drain. “Ryan, I did this to help you. It defeats the whole purpose if you start to fall apart. If you start to cut classes. If you start getting high. That’s not you. That never was and never can be—”
“I know, Dad, I know, I’m sorry—”
“You can’t do this to yourself, you can’t.” Jake found himself grabbing the open American Pageant textbook and smacking the page, so loudly that Moose woke up, blinking. “Ryan, this is what you need to think about. This is what you need to focus on. Your schoolwork. Your game. Yourself.” Jake picked up the laptop. “Not this. Not Kathleen Lindstrom. Not her mother. Not how nice they were.” Jake was about to put down the laptop when he glanced at the screen, and did a double-take. The group photo that had been on the screen was larger, because he must have hit a button when he picked up the laptop. The enlargement enabled him to see something in the company photo he hadn’t seen before. He looked closer and couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Dad? What is it?”
“Nothing,” Jake answered, but he was lying through his teeth. He set the laptop on the bed and struggled for emotional control. In the back row of the group photo stood a line of employees, and on the end, half-hidden by the row in front of him, was a face that Jake recognized instantly.
It was Lewis Deaner.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Jake left Ryan in his bedroom, then hurried into his home office and closed the door, stricken. He felt the situation ebbing away from him. He flashed-forward on Ryan’s becoming depressed, obsessed with Kathleen, spiraling downward, letting his grades and the team fall by the wayside. It could end in suicide, as if Ryan was doomed by the very actions set in motion to save him. Jake wasn’t about to let that happen without a fight.
He hustled to his desk, logged onto the Internet, sat down, and typed in the name of the company he had seen on Ryan’s laptop. The company website popped onto the screen, and it read GreenTech Enterprises in kelly-green letters. Directly below that was a candid photo of Kathleen Lindstrom, sitting at a laptop on a desk, evidently at the GreenTech office. The photo was framed by a black memorial border, and next to it was a paragraph:
GreenTech mourns the passing of Kathleen Lindstrom, who was the victim of a hit-and-run accident last Friday on Pike Road in Concord Chase. Kathleen was the beloved daughter of web designer Grace Lindstrom, and Kathleen worked for us part-time, impressing our entire office with her intelligence, charm, and beauty. She even started us running at lunchtime and we lost a total of 76 pounds combined! She will be profoundly missed, most especially by her devoted mother, but by all of us whose lives she touched. GreenTech and its employees are posting a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for her death, and if you have any such information, please call the authorities …
Jake looked away, because he didn’t want to focus on Kathleen now. He wanted to focus on Deaner and understand how Deaner was connected to her. Jake hadn’t realized that they could have known each other. He scanned the left side of the website, which listed categories for several different pages; IT Support, Web Design, GreenTech Web Hosting, GreenTech Consultancy, About Us, and Contact Us.
Jake skipped to About Us and clicked the link. Onto the screen appeared the group photo that had been on Ryan’s laptop. It showed about thirteen employees lined up in three rows, and the last person in the last row on the left was Deaner. Jake clicked on the picture to enlarge it, double-checking, and it was definitely him: a short, slight, and bespectacled man, his appearance as nondescript as blackmailers ever got. It must’ve been a recent picture because he had the same thinning hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and oddly controlled expression.
Jake hit a button to return the picture to normal size, then read the caption below, which contained the employees’ names. He scanned them quickly to reach the name of the man he knew as Lewis Deaner, but the first name on the row wasn’t Lewis Deaner, but Andrew Voloshin. Jake blinked, absorbing the information. So Deaner’s real name was Voloshin and he wasn’t a freelance writer, but worked at an IT company.
Jake returned his attention to the photograph and spotted Kathleen Lindstrom in the second row, only two people away from Deaner/Voloshin. Kathleen was standing next to her mother Grace, an attractive woman with curly brown hair. They had their arms around each other, the both of them smiling happily at the camera, wearing almost identical outfits, an artsy T-shirt and skinny jeans.
The photo stopped Jake in his tracks. He could see how close Kathleen and Grace were from their body language; they looked like a mother and daughter who were best friends. Tears brimmed in his eyes, and he felt the deepest ache welling up in his heart. He couldn’t imagine how grief-stricken Grace would be, bereft over a beloved daughter that had been taken from her, so young and so violently. Jake was the one who had taken her young life, as surely as if he had been at the wheel himself, and he felt the full weight and agony of his guilt. He knew how much he had compounded his sin, by lying about it every day since then and by compelling Ryan to lie, too. He’d traded Kathleen’s life for Ryan’s future, and he would never, ever forgive himself. He’d played God, so he couldn’t even ask God himself to forgive him.
He wiped his eyes with his arm, and tried to swallow, but couldn’t. He refocused on the screen, trying to get his thoughts back on Deaner. It was obvious from the photo that Deaner knew Kathleen and her mother. It was a small company, so it couldn’t have been otherwise. Jake wanted to know what they did for GreenTech, so he scrolled down and scanned the company description, which read:
Our offices are in Shakertown, and we’re one of the few companies in the Delaware Valley who offer greener computer services—including solar-power, low-power and low-material-use computer systems, IT support, and green-web-design services. We’ve been in business over ten years and we’re growing! Call us anytime for an estimate to meet your IT needs, in a way that helps you, your business, and our planet!
Jake considered it, vis-à-vis Andrew Voloshin. It seemed consistent with Voloshin’s manner and appearance that he was some kind of IT guy. He logged back into the search engine, then went to White Pages, and plugged in the name Andrew Voloshin and Concord Chase PA, because Deaner had said he lived in an apartment in Concord Chase. The screen changed and read, your search has yielded no results, so Jake tried again. Voloshin worked in Shakertown, so Jake plugged in Andrew Voloshin and Shakertown PA. The screen changed, showing the question, Did you mean this Andrew Voloshin? Underneath was an address with the phone number:
Meadowbrook Mews
37 Meadowbrook Lane
Apartment 2C