Amanda stared at Melissa through wide, unblinking eyes. The agent relaxed her stance.
“I know you’re not a malicious person, Amanda. I don’t want to see you incarcerated any more than I want to see you dissected. If you cooperate with us, if you help us solve all these deaths and riddles, we can work out a special arrangement. You can be our ally instead of our prisoner.”
“You expect me to believe I’ll walk free someday?”
“I can’t imagine we’ll ever be out of your life. But with time and trust, the chains will come off. This I promise.”
Amanda peered down at her lap. “I want to believe you.”
“But?”
“It won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Because at some point you’ll ask me where my friends are and I still won’t tell you.”
With a soft and frustrated sigh, Melissa pulled a new photo from her pile. It was an extreme close-up of a small silver panel. A sixteen-letter code was etched across the surface.
“What is that?” Amanda asked.
“It’s a Serial Registry Pin. Every communication device has one. On Friday, September 17, you left your handphone facedown on the coffee table of your hotel suite. Our drills captured the image. Through the SRP, we got a trace warrant. After that, we just had to wait for you to use your phone before we could pinpoint its location. Ten hours ago, upon your arrival at the health fair, you sent a text message to David. This is how we got you.”
Amanda’s heart thundered. “What are you saying?”
“Through your phone, I got an emergency trace warrant on David’s number. Turns out Nemeth was just a stone’s throw away.”
“No . . .”
“At 3 P.M. this afternoon, my team raided your four-bedroom house on the lake. I don’t need to ask about your friends.”
Amanda gritted her teeth. “You’re lying. You would have told me if you had them.”
“You think I’d tell a woman who can smash walls that her sister’s in the next room?”
“Is she?”
“Of course not.”
“Stop playing games with me!”
“You first.”
“Show me they’re here. Show me they’re okay. Then I’ll talk.”
“If I trusted you, Amanda, I might agree to that. Since I currently don’t . . .” She chucked a blank notepad on the couch. “You tell me everything you know about Azral and Esis, Evan and Rebel, and then we’ll address the matter of your companions. If you’d like some extra-credit goodwill, you can tell us all about Peter Pendergen too.”
Melissa smirked at Amanda’s slack surprise. “Of course we knew about him. We’ve been watching him for two weeks now. We’ve had another team staked out at your rendezvous address in Brooklyn. You never had a chance.”
She tossed Amanda a pen. “I’ll leave you alone. If you need anything, speak to the camera.”
Melissa closed the door and shambled down the hall to the tiny office where Howard sat. He furrowed his brow as she crawled across the surface of his desk, spreading herself out in front of him like a buffet. Andy Cahill never did that.
“Uh, you okay, boss?”
“No. My back hurts.”
“Sorry to hear that. You need anything?”
“Just ten minutes on a hard surface.” She covered her eyes with her forearm. “I don’t think she’s from around here, Howard.”
“Yeah. I’m getting that sense.”
“I would laugh like a jackal if this turned out to be the world’s most elaborate prank. I would not be bitter at all.”
Howard checked Amanda on the monitor. “She’s just staring at her fingers now.”
“Huh. I guess they do work.”
“Her fingers?”
“The generators. She’s finally testing them.”
“Jesus. You really poked the lion, didn’t you?”
“She’ll cooperate,” Melissa said. “She knows she doesn’t have a choice.”
“You going to tell her the truth?”
Melissa exhaled wearily. It was a mean trick she’d played on Amanda, though technically she didn’t lie. Her team did raid the lake house in Nemeth today, but Melissa failed to mention that it had been abandoned in a hurry, with David’s handphone found smashed to bits on the floor. The other four fugitives were still at large, somewhere out there in the rain.
—
At 9 P.M., Theo arrived at the office, secured to a wheelchair by gray iron cuffs. His appearance was a throwback to his alcoholic days—ashen skin, sunken eyes, disheveled hair. He wore the same dark blue jumpsuit as Amanda, though his buttons had been misfastened by one.
Despite his haggard appearance, the augur never felt better in his life. An arsenal of powerful relaxants had cleared the maelstrom in his head. For the first time in days, he was free of all pain, free of visions. His relief gleamed like sunshine over every dark facet of his current predicament.