‘Unless I do the other project,’ he said. ‘But I think it’s a dead idea.’
She kept her face close to his chest. ‘What other one?’
‘About an interesting murder case in London, about twenty-five years ago.’
‘Whose murder?’
‘The guy was named Alexander Bast. He was kind of an uber-funky cool guy, very much into the art scene, very much into sleeping with young starlets, famous for his parties. Like Wong, he lost it all. In a scandal about drugs at one of his clubs. Then someone put two bullets in him.’
‘I thought you preferred your subjects living.’
‘I do. Dead people don’t talk well on camera,’ he said with a quiet laugh. ‘I thought about combining both stories. Compare and contrast two very different lives, find a common thread that gives an insight about success and failure.’ She heard his voice rise in excitement. ‘But it might not be commercial enough.’
She raised her face toward his. ‘Don’t worry about that, make the movie you want to make.’
‘I know what I want to make right now.’ He kissed her, they made love again. He dozed and she got up from the bed and washed her face.
She made no mention to Jargo, in the days ahead, of Jameson Wong or Alexander Bast or Jacques Cousteau.
‘He’s focused entirely on editing his current movie,’ she said the next week when she talked to Jargo. She had a cell phone that Evan didn’t know about; she kept it hidden in a pocket under the driver’s seat. She sat in the car, in the parking lot of a Krispy Kreme.
‘Stay on him. If he commits to another film, I want to know immediately.’
‘All right.’
‘I’ve deposited another ten thousand in your account,’ Jargo said.
‘Thank you.’
‘I wonder,’ Jargo said, ‘if you think Evan might ever consider working for me.’
‘No. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be good at it.’
‘It’s an unbeatable cover. A rising-star documentary film-maker. He can go anywhere, film about anything, and no one would doubt his credentials or his intentions.’
‘He’s interested in the truth. That’s his passion.’
‘And yet he’s fucking you.’
‘Recruitment’s not a good idea. Not now.’ She was afraid to argue further; afraid of what would happen if Jargo thought Evan was a danger to him.
‘I want you to be prepared,’ Jargo said. ‘Because you may have to kill him.’
She watched the line of cars slowly move through the doughnut store drive-through. The back of her eyes hurt. Jargo had never suggested such work to her before; mostly, before sliding into Evan’s bed, she’d worked as a courier for Jargo, in Berlin, in New York, in Mexico City. Never a killer. The silence began to get dangerously long, he would get suspicious. ‘If you say so,’ she said. There was nothing else to say. ‘Then I should get distance. I don’t want to be a suspect.’
‘No, you stay close. If it has to happen, you and he both vanish. You don’t stay around. You’re both dead and gone, and we build you a new legend. I can probably use you more in Europe anyway.’
‘Very well,’ she said. He told her to have a good day and then he hung up. She filed her empty reports with Jargo, manufacturing innocuous lies about what Evan’s next project might be, until Jargo had called her two days ago and said, ‘I want to know if Evan has any files on his computer that shouldn’t be there.’
‘Be specific.’
‘Lists of names.’
‘All right.’
An hour later she searched Evan’s computer while he was out running errands. She called Jargo. ‘I found no files like that.’ Evan had scant data on his computer other than scripts, video footage, and basic programs.
‘Check every twelve hours, if possible. If you find the files, delete them and destroy his hard drive. Then report back to me.’
‘What are these files?’
‘That you don’t need to know. Don’t memorize the information or copy the files. Just delete them and make sure that hard drive can’t be recovered.’
‘I understand.’ And she did. The files were what Jargo was truly worried about, probably files that connected back to Jameson Wong or the other potential film subjects.
But if Evan’s hard drive was to be destroyed, she had a sinking, awful feeling that Evan was to be destroyed as well.
Carrie washed her face again. Evan was gone, stolen by a man who might be very, very bad, and soon Jargo’s technical elves would find a trace of him and they would go get Evan from the man who had taken him. The files had been sitting on his system this morning, she had left without looking for them, and if Jargo doubted her word, he would kill her. She had to win back Jargo’s trust. Now.
Last night, Evan telling her that he loved her, seemed like a moment from a world that no longer existed, a pocket of time where there was no Jargo and no Dezz and no files and no fear or pretending. She wished he hadn’t said it. She wanted to hit him, to push him away, to tell him, Don’t, don’t, don’t, you don’t know anything, I can’t have a life with you, I can’t be normal ever again, it can’t ever be, so just don’t.
She had to harden her heart now. She had to catch Evan.
SATURDAY MARCH 12
8
E van opened his eyes.
He was lying on a bed. The cream-white sheets had been folded back; a thin cotton towel was spread behind his head. One of his arms was raised, bound to the bed’s iron-railing headboard with a handcuff. The bedroom was high-end: hardwood floors, a rustic but expensive reddish finish on the walls, abstract art hung to precision above a stone fireplace. A sliver of soft sunlight pierced a crack in the silk drapes. The door was closed.
He had been seconds from wrecking the car when Gabriel had grabbed him and hammered him. His tongue wormed in his dry mouth. A heavy ache settled in along his jaw and neck for permanent residence. He smelled his own sour sweat.
Mom. I failed you. I’m so sorry. He swallowed down the panic and the grief because it wasn’t doing him any good.
He had to be calm. Think. Because everything had changed.
What had Gabriel said? In your life, nothing is as it seems.
Well, one thing was exactly as it seemed. He was completely screwed.
Evan tested the handcuff. Locked. He sat up, pushing with his feet, wriggling his back against the headboard. A side table held a book – a recent thick bestseller about the history of baseball – and a lamp; no phone. A baby monitor stood on the far table.
He stared at the monitor. He couldn’t act afraid with Gabriel. He had to show strength.
For his mom, because Gabriel knew the meat of the story as to why his mom had died. For his dad, wherever he was. For Carrie, however she was mixed up in this nightmare. She knew he was in danger – how? He had no idea.
So, what do you do now?
He needed a weapon. Imagine the guy who killed Mom is here. What do you hurt him with? Look at everything with new eyes. New eyes. It was advice he gave himself when he was setting up scenes to shoot. He could barely reach the side table. He managed to fingertip the knob and open the drawer. His hand searched the drawer as far as he could reach: empty. The book on the table wasn’t heavy enough. The lamp. He couldn’t reach it but he could reach the cord, where it snaked to a plug behind the bed. As silently as he could, keeping an eye on the baby monitor, trying to quiet the handcuff from rattling against the metal headboard, he tugged the lamp closer to him; the base was heavy, ornate, wrought-iron. But at the angle he was bound, he wouldn’t be able to swing the lamp with enough force to cause serious hurt. He unplugged the cord, looped it neatly behind the table so it wouldn’t catch or snag. Just in case he got a chance. Lamps could be thrown. He peered down the back of the bed, to the floor. Nothing else but miniature tumbleweeds of dust.
‘Hello,’ he called to the monitor.
A minute later he heard the tread of feet on stairs. Then the rasp of a key in a lock. The bedroom door opened; Gabriel stood in the doorway. A sleek black pistol holstered at his side.