And Rachel was right; it is not in there.
“I’m telling you, something is going on, and it’s happening right under our noses.”
“I mean, we could search her home,” Rachel says. “Any judge would grant the warrant if we suspect her of breaking the deal.”
“There’s also the possibility that Fullerton committed insurance fraud. We should look into his finances and talk to Susie. Maybe she’s ready to snitch on Avery when we tell her about the photos we got from her,” I say. “Also, Avery, she’s too good. She wouldn’t have anything about it lying around. Not abracelet, nor an elephant skin. I would have seen the latter. She had her proudest possessions on display in that studio.”
In my mind, I walk through the studio again. There was definitely no elephant skin.
“By the way, that studio is a fortress,” I say. “You can only enter with a sensor, and I am quite sure by now she has a chip implanted in her arm.”
“A chip to open the doors?”
“She held her wrist against sensors. No phone, no nothing in her hands. I tell you, that studio will be a pain to get into, and I don’t even want to know what happens when someone enters forcefully.”
“She’s not gonna self-destruct the art,” says Rachel. “It means too much to her.”
“True,” I say, and get lost in my thought.
“There is only one way,” I say after a while. “And what’s that?”
“I have to make her trust me enough to lower her guard,” I say.
Rachel draws up an eyebrow.
“Sure you wanna do that?”
“No,” I say, because it stands against everything I am. But if it makes me catch her in the act of violating the deal, I will. Because with all that happened yesterday, I am certain she is manipulating me, playing me to get what she wants.
And with that, I silence the conscience that tries to talk me out of it.
I don’t see Avery all week. I track her with the ankle monitor, and she is in her place, not going outside once. I thought she’d go for another run or at least go out to have some food, but thesignal only moves within a couple of meters of her studio here and then.
I still remember that run. A run that kept me awake and made me follow her by bike to find out what she was doing. Like a crazy person.
No, not crazy.I tell myself.Your gut feeling has never misguided you.
I try to wrap my head around everything she has told me, given, done, and shown me, and compare it to what I know about her. I even go so far as to get my old notes from university.
Everything she does is somehow consistent and yet completely unpredictable. She is a consistent walking contradiction.
My phone rings.
“Jane,” I say when I answer. “Perfect timing.”
“How come?”
“I am combing through my thesis about her, comparing data.”
“I’m sending you a profile,” she says. “Handle it with care. I believe it looks very interesting, but none of this is fixed, because at this stage we usually work with biomarkers and questionnaires, not just external framing. But it gives a glimpse.”
“Thank you, Jane,” I tell her. “Let's have lunch soon.”
“Sure,” she says. “We’ll be in Europe for two weeks, but afterward, we’d love to.”
We.
She always talks in we now.
