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While Dia was on her way to Durante to visit her parents, Haven awaited a visitor of her own. She sat in the living room of the quiet apartment, the notebook from the federal agent laying on her lap. She had flipped through it countless times, rereading passages as she hoped the words would somehow change.
They weren’t, though. Every time she looked at them, they seemed to get worse. It was all there in black-and-white, everything she had promised to never tell spelled out with utter simplicity.
She felt like she was going to be sick.
There was a knock after a while, firm and determined. Haven set the notebook down and opened the door, her heart hammering against her rib cage. Dr. DeMarco walked in without a word and she closed the door behind him. “I’m sorry to bother you . . .”
“You’re not bothering me,” he said, pausing in the living room. His eyes lingered on the wall splattered with art and photos before he turned to her. “I’m glad you called. Where is it?”
She pointed to the table where the notebook lay. “I had no idea they had it.”
Dr. DeMarco picked it up and sighed. “I did.”
She gaped at him. “You knew?”
“Agent Cerone showed it to me. He thought I would crack if I knew what you’d written.”
Her stomach dropped so hard it was like she had taken a ten-story fall, stopping just shy of slamming into the concrete. She swayed, needing to sit down. “You read it?”
“He read a few passages to me, but I couldn’t help that.”
Her head swam as she ran through possibilities of what he might have heard. “I’m sorry. I really am. I was upset when I wrote some of it and—”
“Don’t apologize,” he said, shaking his head. “You have every right to feel how you feel.”
“But they know the truth,” she said. “The government knows about me now.”
“Yes, but there’s nothing they can do about it. You have an expectation of privacy with your diary. They can’t use any of it without your cooperation.”
Those words sent waves of relief through her. “They can’t?”
“No, but it doesn’t mean they’ll forget about it either. The journal may be inadmissible legally, but there are other ways for them to utilize it. And trust me when I say they will. They already are.”
“How?” she asked. “What can they do?”
“Exactly what they’ve done.” He held up the notebook. “He didn’t drop this off out of the kindness of his heart. He did it to get to me . . . to prove a point.”
“What point?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s between me and him.”
His voice was quiet, his tone clipped. She didn’t ask any more questions. She knew she wouldn’t get any more information from him.
“Do you have any more notebooks?” he asked. “Any more diaries?”
She nodded hesitantly. “A few.”
“Get them for me.”
A few turned out to be closer to a dozen. She lugged them out from her room and set them on the small table in front of Dr. DeMarco. He eyed them thoughtfully, surveying the covers, but he didn’t open a single one. “These will need to be destroyed. They’re too dangerous to keep laying around.”
“But you said they can’t use them,” she said.
“You’re right, but it’s not just the police you have to worry about. Some of this information, if it falls into the wrong hands, would be like handing an atomic missile to a deranged man.” He paused, shaking his head. “Completely catastrophic.”
She didn’t argue. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
Dr. DeMarco turned away from the journals after a moment and strolled over to the window. He looked out at the street below, the early evening sunshine bright on his face. “They know where you’re living now, so I suspect this is just the beginning.”
