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Not that I really believed any of that from Clarisse. She’s a liar, plain and simple. But there were elements of truth in what she said.
Normally, one could tell if someone was lying by the number of words they used in response to questioning. People telling the truth used far more words, because they were unafraid of being trapped in a lie. Those lying used far fewer words. They consolidated them as a cautionary measure because they were wary of being jammed into an inconsistency. They were making it all up, and that always allowed for a mistake to creep in if they hadn’t practiced enough. Truth tellers could be inconsistent as well because no one could remember everything. But a pro could tell the difference.
Ican tell the difference.
She tried to find some more information on Langhorne’s family, but there just wasn’t anything there. That actually made sense after what Marshal Beckett had told them. Doug and Francine Langhorne had vanished when they were old enough to voluntarily leave WITSEC. They had no doubt changed their names once more. That was a dead end.
She joined some dark web chat rooms using an untraceable online ID that she employed for her ProEye work. She had to be subtle about this because the last thing she wanted to do was warn anyone that someone was digging into their pasts. She dropped innocuous-sounding queries in some comment threads and then exited. She had an auto-ping that would alert her if anything interesting came out of these searches.
So now she had Clarisse on one end, Nathan Trask on the other, and a dead ex-WITSEC mob bean counter in the middle.
She grabbed her keys, snuck past the kids, who were enthusiastically telling Silva all aboutskirlsas potential pets, and drove away in her minivan. She had plugged the address into her navigation. It took her about an hour to get to Virginia Beach.
Holy shit.
Trask’s compound made Stormfield look small. But it was as unlike that place as it was possible to be. It was all glass and metal and concrete. It looked more like some funky-ass factory of the future than a home.
There was a big gate that looked like the one at the White House. There were men in suits by the gate. As she watched, one of them climbed into a golf cart trimmed in what looked to be some sort of gold leaf and raced off toward the house. A few moments later a chopper came into view, tracking over the ocean below. As she continued to look up it came to a hover over the rear of the mansion and slowly lowered like a descending elevator car, until it passed from her sight line.
The king had apparently arrived back at his castle.
She drove off, and later stopped for a cup of coffee. As she was sitting in her van, snuggled in her coat and drinking her Starbucks, a gentle, chilly rain began to fall. The next moment the phone rang. She looked down at it, not really wanting to answer it, but still.
Damn.
CHAPTER24
THE GOOD FOLKS IN GREENVILLE,South Carolina, had called late last night. Her mother had taken a turn for the worse. Clarisse wasn’t unduly concerned, since the woman took a turn for the worse at regular intervals.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she had said. “Tell her to hang on until I arrive.” She clicked off the line.
That had stopped the woman on the other end of the call in her tracks, she felt sure. Clarisse could imagine the silent gasp, the brow wrinkled in outrage at a daughter’s callousness.
Oh honey, if you only knew. And it’s complicated. You can care about someone and still hate them at the same time. At leastIcan.
With that last thought she picked up her Mickey Gibson phone and made the call. Clarisse had just downloaded an app on her computer that would analyze a person’s speech pattern and spew out findings on a variety of emotional measures including anxiety and fear, which Clarisse knew all too well.
“Hello,” said Gibson.
Clarisse eyed the screen to see if this simple greeting had caused any alarms to go off.
Nothing yet.
“You got the list. Have you checked it twice?”
“If you’re trying to be funny.”
“I thought it would work well for a mom with two little kids.”
“Christmas is a long way off,” noted Gibson.
Not for me, not if things go according to plan.“So what have you learned?” Clarisse asked.
“Nothing that I’m sure you couldn’t have learned already. But I did go by Trask’s house. It’s a fortress. I’m not sure what you expect I can do about it.”
“I wasn’t suggesting a frontal assault, if that’s what you’re implying. You’re a stealth girl, remember?” added Clarisse.
“I’ve been online. There’s a ton of stuff on the guy, but so what?”
