Chapter 38 Alice #2
“And Yuri?” Alice said to Carter. She could only inhale strawfuls of air at a time. “Did you know that the Daisy Sparkles guy was Yuri, Nika’s ex? He’s on our side.”
“Only from some crime scene photos Silvia showed me on the way here, from the apartment. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
“Crime scene photos?” Alice said, feeling like her heart was stopping.
“He didn’t make it, sorry. Nor did his window cleaner friend.”
“Oh, God.”
Florence shook her head, sadly. “When you ran into the bedroom, Yuri defended that door like it was his sworn mission. An honest-to-God hero.”
“Oh, no. He bought me time to get away? I mean, I figured they would catch me eventually, but…”
“Bought you time to set up the pendant and the tie clip so they would record everything?” Carter said, rubbing her arm. “I can’t believe he’s been in the U.S. this whole time.”
“You mean that actually worked?”
“Silvia couldn’t believe she was actually watching a livestreamed confession. And that woman has seen everything.”
“I remembered you telling me about them—the hidden camera, hidden microphone. I knew they were in your backpack. I figured I could use the tie clip as a hairclip, and I worked out how to turn them on, but the rest… I didn’t know if it would actually upload to anywhere.”
“Is that why you used the dictaphone?” Florence said.
“No, I figured they’d find that, but I hoped they wouldn’t suspect me of arranging anything more sophisticated, since it was so stupidly obvious.”
“I saw you turning them on,” Florence said. “Very discreet of you.”
“You knew?”
“Who do you think had them made for Carter?”
“A ‘book club’ friend developed them,” he said, air-quoting.
Florence swatted in his direction. “Oh, shush, you. Like we haven’t gotten you out of trouble more than once. They all dote over him as if he’s their son. You should see the baking he gets.”
“I was trying to interpret the expression on your face,” Alice said to Florence. “I thought you’d given up on me.”
“Not for a second. I was trying to keep a straight face so Tania would buy it. She sure underestimated you.”
“Nika wrote a line in the book: ‘Their underestimation of me will work in my favor.’ It kept running through my head.”
“I never underestimated you,” Carter said. “Well, not once I actually met you.”
“You know, I suspect the only person underestimating me was me.”
“And Tania,” he added, “which she will spend the rest of her days regretting.”
“Wait,” Alice said, trying to sit up and then thinking better of it, “you’re supposed to be in custody. Tania said they were going to poison you.”
“They tried. But guess the name of the guard who brought me food and water?”
“Tyler Wade,” Florence offered.
“Right there on his ID card. He showed me a photo of the two of you, tied up. Which killed me, but then I saw the pendant and the tie clip in your hair, and with Mom captured I knew it was up to me to get out and check it had uploaded—no one else has access. So I did. Plus, I knew you were wearing the ring, so I’d be able to find you. ”
“Easy as that?”
“Not all that easy, but I, ah, talked Tyler into seeing it my way, and then I ran into Silvia on the way out. Thought I’d been caught and that was the end of it but…
She’d gotten sidelined, and was pissed, so she heard me out, and we managed to grab my phone so I could locate you.
She’s got a hell of a lot to mop up, but boy is she motivated.
These guys have been making her look bad for years. ”
“I thought they tried to hack your phone, and everything got wiped.”
“So it would appear to them, but there’s a workaround.”
“And here you are,” Alice said, closing her eyes and feeling his breath toy with her hair. The rise and fall of his chest behind her back had to be the sweetest thing she’d ever felt. Warm and solid—and alive.
“And then something really interesting happened,” Carter said.
“What, it was boring up till then? Oh I forget—this is your regular day at the office.”
“Silvia got an email from your sister, forwarded from you. All the kompromat, and a webcam photo of the list. It was copied to The Washington Post, the FBI tips email, the main CIA and White House emails…”
“That was the other thing I did before they caught me—well, I set it to upload. The wi-fi was patchy from the apartment below and it was taking ages to send, and then I heard them coming for me, so I hid the laptop and hoped for the best. Hope you don’t mind.
I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it.
The tie clip and the pendant were a leap of faith, but I knew Kimberly would be only too happy to get involved.
I figured it might be too late to save us, but it might bring some justice. ”
“I don’t mind at all.” His deep voice rumbled down her spine.
“When I was sitting in that interview room, I was kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I had it in my head that I needed to get the whole picture first, to figure out who I could trust. I thought I could do everything myself. I thought I had to do everything myself. Turns out dragging you in was the best move I made. I think Silvia is eager to recruit you, just quietly.”
“Oh, I think my career as an international woman of mystery is well over.”
“So,” Florence said to Alice, with a wide grin, “that stuff you told Tania about sending the kompromat everywhere, that was true?”
“Yeah.”
“I was completely taken in—as was she. You told the truth but made it sound like a lie.”
“Reverse psychology, in a sense. The lesson I was just about to teach at school when Carter, uh, arrived, was about subtext in literature and film—reading between the lines of what characters say. People always write teachers off, and I figured she would too. Plus, I’d read up on lie detectors when I was researching the book, on the physical giveaways that you’re lying, so I tried to mimic them, which wasn’t hard, given that I actually was panicking.
Usually I force this blank face when I’m churning inside, but just now I let my fear show. ”
“Oh, I always taught my boy to have a good deal of respect for teachers.”
“She really did,” Carter said, his body shaking with a laugh, which made Alice’s ribs hurt a little, but she was okay with that.
“And the security camera footage in your email, from outside the safehouse—where did that come from? We watched it on the way out here. At first Silvia and I thought it was the same footage we’d already seen, but then these other guys came into shot. ”
She explained about the dead drop, using as few words as possible, because it even hurt to talk.
“Ah,” Carter said. “And guess which tech at Langley handled the CIA’s version of the video when it first came in?”
“Not Leonard Poole?”
“The man himself. Silvia looked it up.”
“So nothing directly connects Tania to the murder?”
“Ah, I can fill that gap,” Carter said. “Nika’s shoe—the one with the blood on it—was still in the FBI lock-up.
It had a photo hidden in the heel—Tania handing something to two men—the same men who were caught on that video entering the safehouse.
Combined with the undoctored footage and the things she told you just now… ”
“The way you got her talking on tape,” Florence said, shaking her head in admiration, “even though she had just mocked you for thinking you could do exactly that. Pure genius. She wouldn’t have fallen for that if it’d come from me.”
“There was something I remembered from my book research—that people become agents for money, ideology, coercion or ego.”
“That’s right—MICE,” Carter said.
“She struck me as the ‘ego’ type. And I guessed with the need for secrecy she doesn’t get a lot of opportunity to boast. So I figured that if I gave her that, in what she thought was a closed loop, given that she was planning to kill us…”
“You did an excellent job of sounding terrified and desperate,” Florence said.
“Don’t get me wrong—I was both of those things. But I kind of doubled down on them.”
“It’s a shame she destroyed the original list. That would have been a key piece of evidence.”
“Oh, she didn’t,” Alice said. “That was the other thing I did while I was hiding in the apartment downstairs, waiting for the email to Kimberly to go through—I copied it onto another piece of paper, a page out of a notebook I found in your backpack. I scrunched and ripped it to make it look good. I’d only just finished doing it when they found me.
I figured they’d be looking for it—and the flash drive—and I didn’t want them searching me too closely, so I made it easy for them.
And it worked, thank God. They opened the closet, saw me clutching the backpack, hauled me out, found the list and the flash drive in the little zip pockets right away and thought they’d hit the jackpot.
I’d hidden the laptop at the back of the closet, but I could hear the damn thing whirring and I was so scared they’d look for it, but… ”
“But they underestimated you,” Carter finished. “So where’s the original list?”
“Where do you think?” Alice said, lifting up one shoe—Nika’s boot—and then wincing at the effort. Who knew how much you needed your ribs for?
Carter laughed. “You’re a legend.”
“You two take a moment to catch your breath,” Florence said.
“I’m gonna go and catch up with Silvia. Haven’t seen her for decades.
You think she’d like to be in a book club?
” She bent and patted Carter’s shoulder on the way past. “This schoolteacher of yours,” she said quietly, as if pretending Alice couldn’t hear, “she’s quite a match for you. ”
“Subtle, she is not,” Carter murmured as Florence walked away. “Do you think you can stand, if I help you? You’d be more comfortable sitting in a car—and we should get you to a doctor.”