Present Day
As soon as I’ve finished packing up the woman’s things, we’re finally able to leave the Bernards’ house after promising to come back tomorrow to help plan the memorial service for James. That’s a visit I will happily let Ryan make alone, since I’d gathered everything I could on Lucca from there.
Ryan drives while I scroll Instagram, stopping on Southern Living’s latest post, which showcases a beautiful front porch complete with a white wooden swing and hanging ferns. It’s a gorgeous shot. Clicking the comment button, I type: What a perfect spot for a get-together with a glass of wine! It’s five o’clock somewhere!
I keep scrolling once my comment loads until I’m all caught up, then stuff my phone in my purse.
As soon as we enter Ryan’s house, he launches himself on the couch in the den, landing facedown. When I sit next to him, Ryan raises his head up just enough for me to scoot closer so he can rest it on my lap. His eyes fall closed as I gently run my fingers through his hair. Neither of us feels the need to speak.
As I stare down at him, I think about this latest development, now that the initial shock of their deaths has lessened.
There are only two options to consider.
First, the crash was a terrible accident that took the lives of two people. Second, killing them was a deliberate move by my boss.
My gut is saying it’s the second option, while my brain is trying to come up with the reasons why he would make that move. It didn’t look like she was finished with this job. Her training for this identity—my identity—was extensive, and it seems premature to take her out now. And why kill them instead of just pulling them from the job? I can’t get past the timing.
What does killing them accomplish? Lucca Marino from Eden, North Carolina, is dead.
I made no secret that I fiercely protected my true identity. In that first year, Matt would start every conversation with small talk when he would call to discuss my next job, and I was dumb enough to believe we were friends. My plans of reclaiming my identity to live as Lucca Marino were
the one constant topic. I even told him about the house I would build and the garden I would plant.
But her death does not stop me from reclaiming the Lucca Marino identity. It makes it difficult, but not impossible. Killing her off was an extreme move and not one Devon or I anticipated. Mr. Smith said she was sent as a reminder, but I didn’t need a reminder of how dangerous this game is.
Which brings me back to the possibility—and hope—that it really was an accident.
And then there’s Ryan.
What does it mean for this job if it wasn’t an accident?
His grip on me loosens and he lets out a soft snore. Today took a toll on him.
Slowly, I unlatch Ryan from my waist and slide out from underneath him, replacing my lap with a throw pillow. Between the hangover I know he had this morning and the stress of the day, he doesn’t even flinch.
A glance at the clock on the oven tells me it’s time to get going. I hope Devon will be waiting for me so we can go over everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours.
In six years of working together, Devon and I have come a long way. He knows exactly who I am and where I came from, and I have made the extremely short list of those he has trusted with who he really is and the details of his past. In fact, I believe there are only three of us on that list.
Pulling out my phone, I open Instagram. I have zero posts and a handful of followers who are mostly bots, but I follow Devon’s bogus account plus forty-seven others, 90 percent of them businesses or famous personalities that post every day. Out of the forty-seven accounts my bogus account follows, thirty-two of them are also followed by Devon’s. And even though I posted my comment on Southern Living’s latest post letting him know I needed to meet up with him tonight at five, he will answer me in a comment on a completely different account so no one would be able to link our comments as communication between the two of us.
His paranoia knows no bounds.
I can’t give him a hard time about that though because there is no telling how many times his protocols have saved us in the past and we didn’t even know it.
Scrolling through my feed, I stop when I get to the New Orleans Saints account and see the comment from skate_Life831043. This comment from Devon is the only one visible on my feed since we follow each other and also mutually follow this account, so I’m saved from having to scroll through hundreds of comments to find his.
His comment reads: Who Dat! That’s my 3rd favorite player right there!! #RightOnTime
First thing Devon does when I get the details on a new job is scope out five places where he’s comfortable for us to meet. The third one on the list he gave me when we got to Lake Forbing is the coffee shop on Main. His hashtags always either confirm the meeting time works or give me an alternative. I have thirty minutes to get there since he’ll be #RightOnTime.
I pull a sheet of paper off the pad near the fridge and leave Ryan a note that I’ve gone to pick us up some food, then slip out of the house.
I’m five minutes early, but I see Devon has beat me here.
It took two years for Devon to share the first personal detail about himself. We were going over blueprints for an office building I needed to get inside of after hours, and he recognized a name from a list of people who had offices on the floor I was trying to access. “He’s a tech guy. Spoke at MIT when I was there,” he had said. I didn’t want to pry, but I also wanted to learn as much about him as I could, so I attempted a joke, hoping to get more out of him. “Were you solving his complicated equations on the whiteboard in the hall?” His stare made me think I’d taken the wrong approach, but then he laughed. A real laugh. And that broke the ice between us. The details were still given to me in small pieces but now I have the full picture of who he really is.
Devon is sitting at the counter that runs along the entire back wall. These spots are mostly used by individuals or couples since the seating is not conducive to conversation with anyone other than the person sitting right next to you. He’s working one of those complicated kakuro puzzle books he loves and wearing those huge over-the-ear-style headphones, his head and shoulders moving to a beat even though I know there’s no music coming through the speakers.
His IQ is off the charts. If he’s awake, he’s got to keep that brain busy, like with the book in front of him. He started at MIT when he was seventeen, but he said he knew he wouldn’t last long there; not that he couldn’t handle the workload but more because he was bored out of his
mind. His words. What sealed it was when he was given an assignment to build a network system for a simulated online advertising company only to discover it was a real business and his teacher was getting his students to do all the work for his side gigs.
The free enterprise system being what it is, he went straight to the client and made a deal to sell it to him directly at a slightly reduced rate, then clued in every other student in the class, who followed suit.
Then he was in business. It didn’t take him long to find the most profitable work isn’t always legal. His greatest success was retrieving info people didn’t even know they needed, then offering it to them for an attractive price. He loves moving around in those dark places. Thrives on getting around systems meant to keep him out. And if you prove to be loyal to him, he will forever be loyal to you.
I order a cappuccino, then make my way toward him. I choose a stool that leaves an empty space between us. He doesn’t look in my direction when he says, “I’m tapped into the coroner’s office so I’ll have a copy of her dental records as soon as they are uploaded. I don’t think a match will pop but you never know.”
I give him a small nod but don’t look at him either. It won’t pop. Mr. Smith wouldn’t be so sloppy. I hate that we may never know who she really was.
“And we’re sure it’s really her? That she really died in that wreck?” This is something he would already have verified, but I still have to ask.
He nods and that’s all I need to know he’s sure that the body in the morgue is hers.
“I found the last set of instructions he gave her,” I tell him. Devon turns a page in his book as he asks, “What did it say?”
I pull it from my back pocket and slip it inside of a discarded magazine, then toss it in the empty space between us. He won’t take it until I’m gone. “You can see it for yourself, but he basically told her to make contact, search my room if she can. It’s pretty vague. And she did exactly as he asked. I left something for her to find.”
“I don’t like this. Not at all,” he says quietly. “You don’t think it was an accident?”
He shakes his head just enough to let me know he doesn’t.
“But why? Do you think she finished her job and we just don’t know
it?”
“Or she screwed up and he took her out.” “What do you think James’s part was in this?”
“Pawn,” Devon says without even thinking about it. “Extensive drug and gambling problem. In dire need of funds. Ridiculously easy to manipulate. Wouldn’t be surprised if Smith wasn’t behind the dad’s broken leg to get him here.”
Jesus. I hadn’t thought of that possibility.
“And do we think Ryan is involved in this more than just an unsuspecting mark?” We had a conversation before I was sent here and knew who the mark was. Also discussed the possibility that this whole job was just a ruse. Once we found out I was assigned to Ryan, Devon dug as deep as he could on him. Mr. Smith’s notes he sends on a job don’t compare to what Devon gives me. We learned about his business and how successful it has become. It made sense someone would want it. Mr. Smith had used Ryan’s transport services a few years ago to move things on a few jobs I was a part of, so it’s easy to see how Ryan was on his radar.
Devon’s shoulders shuffle back and forth a couple of times as if he’s trying to determine how he feels about this subject. “First, we know anything is possible, right?”
“Right.”
“So knowing anything is possible, it’s still a long shot in my opinion. Regardless of the shady shit Ryan has going on, he is too rooted in this community, which goes against everything Mr. Smith looks for in the people he recruits to work for him.”
I was a nobody without family or connections. There would be no flags raised if I disappeared. No one to seek out justice for me if things go sideways. That is not true for Ryan. He lives in a house where his neighbors have literally watched him grow up from infancy.
“We deal in facts and we don’t have any that point in that direction,” he says.
We sit in silence for a minute or so, both contemplating this latest development. Finally I say, “I cornered her in the kitchen. Told her I knew who she worked for. Told her she could very easily find herself in my position.”
His pencil stops moving for the first time since I sat down. “L, why?”
“L” is the closest he’d ever come to saying Lucca, since it’s such an uncommon name and anyone listening would assume my name is Elle. But
even with that precaution, Devon hardly ever addresses me directly, so I feel the weight behind it.
“I needed to know if she thought I was a random mark or if she knew I worked for him too. She didn’t, by the way. The surprise on her face was real. And it’s not like I discovered some big secret, since he already admitted to sending her.”
Devon’s pencil goes back to work, and he bounces his head to the assumed beat. “Smith’s greatest achievement is keeping everyone under him in line by keeping them blind to everything and everyone else in his organization. No one knows who he is, no one knows where they are in the chain.” Mr. Smith is the puzzle Devon has been working on for years.
“And the cops are aware of the name Evie Porter of Brookwood, Alabama,” I add in a near whisper, as if I’m confessing my sins.
This admission makes his face turn toward me. “Details?”
I fill him in on our visit to the Bernards’ house and the conversation with the police while he works diligently on the page in front of him.
When I finish, he says, “I don’t like this. I don’t like that I can’t see where this is going. I think we bail.”
This gives me pause. We have found ourselves in a lot of situations where a positive outcome seemed doubtful, but he’s never mentioned bailing before.
“And then what? We knew coming in he was pissed I didn’t get the blackmail info on Connolly back for him. We also knew he’s trying to determine if I actually was successful but kept everything for myself. If Mr. Smith wants to take me out, bailing won’t stop him, but it severely limits where I can go from here, especially now that Lucca Marino doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I still don’t like it,” he says. “You’re going to be a sitting duck while you wait for the next set of instructions. And what if they never come?”
“The only choice I have is to continue moving forward.” We both sit in silence for a minute or so, lost in our own thoughts. Then I ask, “How’s Heather?”
He ducks his head and I think he’s going to ignore me, but finally says, “Good. She’s good.”
“We stay the course, Devon. That’s the only answer.”
He hesitates just a moment, then says, “Got the details on the next big shipment coming through Glenview Trucking this Thursday. It’s in the
People magazine in front of you.”
“Good. I think it will confuse Smith when he sees I’m still working this job, even after that woman’s death.” Somewhere between the first and second round of delivering the information on Ryan’s business to Mr. Smith, I was regretting the part I was playing. Maybe it was the daydreams that Ryan’s home could really be mine or the wishing this identity was real, but in a particularly weak moment, I altered a few key data points on the financials and client names before turning them over. It’s not enough that Mr. Smith would notice, but just enough to give Ryan a fighting chance at keeping his business.
I plan to make similar modifications to this latest set of information before passing it along.
Devon doesn’t know I’ve done this and I feel bad keeping it from him. He would think I was taking an unnecessary risk. “I’ll drop it by the mailbox on my way home.”
Devon’s head turns just slightly in my direction. “That’s not your home,
L.”
I flinch at his words, then grab the magazine in front of me, shoving it
in my bag. I pick up my cup and stand from my stool. “I’ll be in touch.” Just as I start to walk away, he whispers, “Please be safe.”
