In the morning, Beth had risen before the children and spent a few calm moments considering her options. Local motels were out; their pursuers would be looking for any recent arrivals. They could go to the few friends she had in Garrison, but she wasn’t sufficiently close to any of them and her presence might put them in harm’s way. So she’d settled on the only man she felt she could trust who lived within reasonable walking distance. Once the kids had woken and feasted on a terrible breakfast of Cheetos and Hersheys, they’d set out for Pleasant Valley, which was about a ten-hour walk cross-country.
The kids hadn’t complained much in the morning, but after a lunch made up of the remains of the snacks Beth had taken from the site office, hunger had frayed tempers, and there had been a couple of difficult hours marching along quiet rural roads, bickering in the freezing cold. Beth had thought about hitching a ride, but every contact was a potential lead for their would-be abductors, and the level of sophistication they’d demonstrated in tracking her to the cabin suggested she was dealing with professionals. Finally, late in the afternoon, the kids had stopped arguing and lapsed into exhausted silence.
As they finally approached the outskirts of Pleasant Valley, a car roared by at speed and the driver sounded his horn. Was it a warning? Or a loud question: What the hell are you doing walking out here? The car disappeared around a bend, and Beth and the children followed at a slow, steady, and fairly miserable pace. A few minutes later, she caught sight of what she was looking for: a narrow driveway that ran north off Freedom Road.
“That’s it,” she told her children, and saw a glimmer of hope light up both faces.
They turned right and followed the trail through rough scrubland that had been seasoned with a scattering of icy snow. The trail bent right before straightening up, and there at the end, Beth saw the single-story home of an old friend.
He emerged from the house as they approached. Beth glanced around to see if she could spot the motion sensors that were likely to have announced their arrival. She wasn’t surprised not to see anything; he’d be too conscientious to leave such things anywhere they could be seen. Apart from grayer hair, wrinkles, and the fact he wasn’t in uniform, her former instructor, Ted Eisner, looked the same. He still had that ramrod posture that made him seem even taller than his six feet two inches. He was broad with a barrel chest, and wore a US Army branded T-shirt and green cargo pants.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, stepping off the porch in front of the house. “Elizabeth Singer. And these must be your kids.”
“Sergeant Eisner,” Beth responded.
“It’s just Ted now,” he said, stopping near the children. “And you are?”
“Danny and Maria,” Beth replied.
“Pleased to meet you, Danny and Maria. I used to work with your mom, until she decided she had better things to do with her life.”
The remark was delivered with a smile, but it was clearly intended to hurt. He was obviously still smarting.
“Not better,” Beth replied. “Just different.”
“I guess you could say that,” Ted said, looking her up and down. “So what brings you here, on foot and all bedraggled?”
Beth took a moment to think about how best to answer.
“Never mind,” he said, before she could. “It’s too cold to wait out here for you to figure out a lie. You’d better come inside and do it.”
He started back toward the house, and Maria and Danny looked at their mother uncertainly.
“You know Mom doesn’t lie,” Beth said. “He’s just being grumpy because we had an argument a while back.”
Ted glanced over his shoulder. “Come on, Singer. I might not feel the light of forgiveness much longer.”
Beth nodded at her children and the three of them followed the old man inside.
Chapter 8
I’d spent the day learning everything I could about Elizabeth Singer. Public records and Internet research told me very little, other than that she was the daughter of Donald and Mary Singer. Donald had filled in the rest for me. Mary had died ten years ago, and he’d dealt with his grief by devoting himself to his property empire. Elizabeth, or Beth as Singer told me she preferred to be called, lived outside Garrison, New York, and had two young children, who attended the local elementary school. I couldn’t find anything about their father, and Singer had said that he wasn’t in the picture. Beth didn’t have any social media presence, and her finances were unremarkable, except for one thing; as far as I could tell, she had no sources of income. Singer said he didn’t support her. He offered to regularly, but she always turned him down.
It was a little after six when I wandered down to Maureen Roth’s computer lab on the fourth floor. I’d recognized the importance of computer crime early on, and had ensured Private had the very best people and technology at its disposal. Maureen Roth, known to everyone at Private as Mo-bot, was a computer geek extraordinaire. Fifty-something, she was a salutary lesson in the unexpected. Her tattoos and spiky hair suggested a cold, hard rebel, but she had the warmest heart and was thought of by many at Private as their second mom, someone they could go to with any problems. The only thing that hinted at a softer side, and spoke to her age, were the bifocals she wore, which I always said looked as though she’d lifted them from a Boca Raton grandmother. She managed a team of six tech specialists in the LA office, and oversaw dozens of others in Private’s international units.
When I stepped into the super-cooled lab, I found her with Private’s chief criminalist, Seymour Kloppenberg, nicknamed Dr. Science — or Sci for short. He ran a team of twelve forensic scientists who worked out of a lab in the basement of the building. He was an international expert on criminology, and when time allowed, would consult for law enforcement agencies all over the world, ensuring Private stayed current with the very latest scientific thinking. A slight, bookish man, Sci dressed like a Hells Angel, which was where I think his heart lay because he was always restoring old muscle bikes.
These two had been with me since the early days of Private, and were often the first people in the office and the last to leave. Diligent and brilliant, I’d known them long enough to consider them good friends.
“Better stand up straight. The boss is here,” Mo-bot joked. She nudged Sci, who was leaning against her desk.
I smiled as I walked deeper into her lair. Computer servers, routers and black boxes whose purpose I didn’t know filled the racks that lined the walls. I could not help but imagine them as her minions, watching me. Judging me.
“I hear someone got you out of retirement,” Sci said.
“Time you stopped moping around like an old geezer,” Mo-bot added.
“That hurt,” I replied. “It’s true that I’m working a case, though, and I need your team to run a full background, but since they’ve clocked off for the day, you’ll have to do it.”
Sci laughed and Mo-bot pursed her lips. She was about to reply when my phone rang.
“Elizabeth Singer. These are her details.” I handed her a piece of paper, and answered my phone.
“Where are you?”
It was Justine calling me.