Jane tried, “I’m not—”
“Where do you want to go?” Andrew was already heading to the closet for their jackets.
Jasper had his hand in his pocket. “Do you need some money?”
“No.” Jane didn’t have the strength to fight both of her brothers. “I need to find—” She was aware that Barlow was listening. “Air. I need some air.”
Barlow asked, “Not enough of it in the backyard?”
Jane turned away from him. She did not wait for Andrew. She grabbed her purse off the table. She walked out the front door, down the front steps. Jasper’s Porsche was parked beside the garage.
“I’ve got it.” Andrew had jogged to catch up with her. He reached down to open the door.
“Andy—” Jane grabbed his arm. Her knees felt weak. She could barely stand.
“It’s okay,” he said, trying to help her into the car. “Just play it cool.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t understand. They know.”
10
They were too afraid to speak openly in the car. Jasper was not a part of this, but only they knew that. The FBI or CIA or NSA or whoever could have planted bugs in any of the crevices inside the Porsche. Even the car phone could be tapped.
Before Oslo, before every branch of law enforcement had swept down on the Presidio Heights house, before Agent Danberry had cornered Jane in the backyard, it had felt ridiculously paranoid when Nick had told them to assume that every familiar place was monitored, that someone was always going to be listening. To speak openly, they were supposed to find a park or a random café. They had to sneak down alleys and walk through buildings and say the passwords and know the interrogation techniques and practice self-defense and drill themselves over and over again so that they had their stories right.
The stories had been too right.
Jane could see that now. As she replayed all the conversations with all the agents over the last five days, she could see how their interrogators had registered certain phrases, certain gestures, in their notepads, to compare later.
I pretended to recognize the woman whom I thought was Dr. Maplecroft.
Only one of us had darker intentions.
I wanted to speak to an American after being in Germany for so long.
“Pull over,” Jane told Andrew, fear twisting her stomach into knots. She pushed open the door before the car fully stopped. Her boots skipped across the pavement. They were inside the city proper. There was no grass, just concrete. Jane had no choice but to vomit on the sidewalk.
I met Laura Juneau at the KLM lounge at Schiphol.
I could tell she was an American by the way she was dressed.
Jane retched so hard that she was on her knees. Her stomach clenched out dark bile. She hadn’t been able to eat more than toast and eggs since the murder. The tea that Nick had given her this morning tasted like bark as it burned its way up her throat.
Nick. She had to find Nick so he could explain how they were all going to be fine.
“Jinx.” Andrew’s hand was on her shoulder. He was kneeling beside her.
Jane sat back on her heels. She wiped her mouth. There was a tremble in her fingers that she could not get rid of. It was as if the bones were vibrating beneath her skin.
Theyknowtheyknowtheyknow . . .
Andrew asked, “Are you okay?”
Her laugh had an edge of uncontrollability.
“Jane—”
“None of us is okay.” Saying the words inserted some sanity into this madness. “It’s all closing in on us. They talked to Ellis-Ann.”
“I kept her out of this. She doesn’t know anything.”
“They know everything.” How could he not see this? “My God, Andy. They think we’re in a cult.”
He laughed. “Like the People’s Temple? The Manson Family?”
Jane wasn’t laughing. “What are we going to do?”
“Stick to the plan,” he said, his voice low. “That’s what it’s there for. When in doubt, just let the plan lead the way.”
“The plan,” Jane repeated, but not with his reverence.
The stupid fucking plan. So carefully plotted, so relentlessly discussed and strategized.
So wrong.
“Come on,” Andrew said. “We’ll find a café and—”
“No.” Jane had to find Nick. He could solve this for them. Or maybe he already had. Just the thought of Nick taking control immediately soothed some of her jagged nerves. Maybe what had happened with Danberry and Barlow was part of a larger, secret plan. Nick did that sometimes—made them all think they were about to walk into the path of an oncoming train, only to reveal at the last minute that he was the cunning conductor braking at the last possible moment to keep them out of harm’s way. He tested them like this all of the time. Even in Berlin, Nick had asked Jane to do things, to put herself in danger, just to make sure she would obey.
He had so much trouble trusting people. Everyone in his family had turned their backs on him. He had been forced to live on the streets. He had managed to pull himself up entirely on his own. Time and again, he had trusted people who had hurt him. It was no wonder that Jane had to repeatedly prove herself.
They were like yo-yos he could snap back with a flick of his wrist.
“Jane,” Andrew said.
She felt Danberry’s words echoing in her head. Was she like a yo-yo? Was Nick a con man? A cult leader? How different was he from Jim Jones? The People’s Temple had started out doing wonderful things. Feeding the homeless. Taking care of the elderly. Working to eradicate racism. And then a decade later, over nine hundred people, many of them children, were killed by cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Why?
“Jane, come on,” Andrew said. “The pigs don’t know anything. Not for certain.”
Jane shook her head, trying to banish the dark thoughts. Nick had said that the police would try to separate them, that their psyches would be poked and prodded in the hope that they would eventually turn on each other.
If nobody speaks, then no one will know.
Did Nick really believe the crazy-sounding things that came out of his mouth, or was this how he pulled Jane back in? She had spent six years of her life chasing after him, pleasing him, loving him, fighting with him, breaking up with him. She always went back. No matter what, she always found her way back.
Snap.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Jane let Andrew help her up. “Take me to Nick’s apartment.”
“He won’t be there.”
“We’ll wait for him.” Jane got back into the car. She searched her purse for some tissue. Her mouth felt like it was rotting from the inside. Maybe it was. Maybe everything was rotting, even the child they had made.
She anticipated Nick’s wry reaction—problem solved.
“It’s going to be okay,” Andrew turned the key. The Porsche fishtailed as he pulled away from the curb. “We just need to drive a bit. Maybe we’ll swing by Nick’s?”
Jane was confused by his avuncular tone, but then she realized that Andrew was talking for the bug that might be in the car.
She told him, “Danberry compared Nick to Donald DeFreeze.”
“Field Marshal Cinque?” Andrew gave her a careful look. He instantly got the portent of Danberry’s observation. “Does that make you Patricia Hearst?”
She said it again, “They think we’re in a cult.”
“Do Hare Krishnas drive Porsches?” Andrew didn’t realize that she wanted a real answer. He was still speaking for the benefit of a phantom listener. “Come on, Jinx. This is crazy. The pigs don’t like Nick, which is understandable. He’s being an asshole for no reason. Once they figure out he’s playing them, they’ll move on to investigating the real bad guys.”