comes back to life when he needs him.” Donnie’s voice catches. It’s hard to swallow. He notices Reeves staring at him. Donnie shakes it off. “I tell you what, I was bawling my eyes out on that Spirit Airlines flight. Dude next to me thought I was crazy.”
Donnie pushes down the emotions. He thinks of Benny when they left Chestertown to head off on their own after that awful visit to the drug house to say goodbye to his mom. On the bus, Benny had packed one of the Calvin and Hobbes books. On its last page was the final comic strip that ever ran in the series. It showed Hobbes carrying a sled on fresh snow and saying, “The world looks brand-new!” and Calvin ending the script with, “Let’s go exploring!”
CHAPTER FIFTY
JENNA
After Derek Brood’s lunch meeting, Jenna stakes out the congressional office until dusk. She’s moved around—strolling the waterfront, sitting on a bench pretending to read a Jack Reacher paperback, wandering around with a Starbucks cup—trying to go unnoticed.
She spied a CCTV set up for the congressional office, but the rest of the waterfront area doesn’t seem to have any security cameras. She’s careful to avoid ATMs—the tiny cameras on the machines are always recording anything that passes.
By dark, she thinks Derek Brood must be the hardest-working man in show business, which is basically what Congress has become.
At last, he emerges from the building. No entourage this time. He doesn’t carry a briefcase, but he seems to be walking somewhere purposefully. She trails after him at a safe distance. He’s heading back toward the same steakhouse where he ate lunch. She suspects this is the only area of this town that has a halfway decent restaurant, but twice in one day? Maybe this problem will take care of itself; he’ll die from heart disease.
He’s talking on his cell phone as he walks. Brood has an aggressive gait that hasn’t changed much since he was a kid. Jenna wonders what else hasn’t changed about the brute who terrorized the denizens of Savior House.
Brood waves away a homeless man who approaches him and, sure enough, he’s back at the same place where he took lunch. Artemis’s dossier on Brood said he’s married, but no kids. Maybe he’s meeting his wife for dinner. Or maybe it’s where he holds work meetings, lets lobbyists slide him bundles of cash under the table.
Brood disappears inside the restaurant. Jenna needs to decide what to do. She’s had all day to ponder it but can’t land on how to approach this one. Wait in the back of his car? Break into his house? She needs some time with him alone. The bag of goodies from Michael contains everything she needs: Ski mask. Hood. Zip ties. Duct tape. Waterboarding cloth. Bottle of water. Pliers.
Then something grabs her attention. A young woman approaching the restaurant. The young woman … Jenna’s grip on the gun in her front jacket pocket tightens. She thinks maybe she should don the mask, walk into the steakhouse, and shoot them both. Often, simple is better. One of Sabine’s guiding principles.
She watches as the woman enters the restaurant.
Without thinking, she starts fast-walking toward the entrance. She’s going to do it. For her family.
She keeps her head down, crosses the plaza. Her old self, along with the resignation that this is what needs to be done, has returned. She pulls out the mask as she walks.
But she slows—then halts at the sight of the man in the suit who’s obviously trailing the hit woman. He has the buttoned-up look of a G-man. She remembers Arty’s words: We need to be concerned about the FBI.
With that, she aborts. She shoves the mask back in the bag, turns, and walks casually away.
It’s Derek Brood’s lucky day.
But not for long.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
DONNIE
“I’ll tell you what, Hemingway, I’ll make a deal with ya.”
They’re back in the rental car, driving nowhere in particular. It’s dark outside now, and Reeves still seems shell-shocked by the state of the neighborhood. Donnie imagines Reeves as a kid, playing tennis at a country club, going on fancy vacations. Attending an Ivy League college, then hanging with the elites at book parties on the Upper West Side.
“Sure, Donnie. What is it?”
“I’ll take you somewhere important from my childhood tonight, but then I head out in the morning.
I know I promised a full week—and I’ll give you the full time—but it’s been a rough week, so I’d like to take a little break. Think the publishing people will be cool with that?”
“I think that will be just fine.” Reeves looks at him with something that resembles pity. Maybe the town’s getting to Reeves. Lord knows it got to the rest of them.
“Groovy. I’ll take you to the spot where Benny saved my life.”
Reeves tilts his head to the side, like he’s not sure if Donnie’s kidding.
A half hour later, they’ve parked the car and are crawling through the gap in the temporary chain-link fence that surrounds the grounds.
“I’m not so sure about this. This is trespassing and I—”
“It’ll be fine,” Donnie says. “Cops around here have better things to do than guard a shuttered public swimming pool.”
Reeves seems reluctant, but he follows Donnie to the lip of a swimming pool that is empty except for a puddle of brown sludge at the bottom. Graffiti covers the building that used to sell ice cream and Popsicles that Donnie and the other Savior House kids couldn’t afford.
“We used to come here every Saturday in the summer.” Donnie’s mind returns to the blazing sun, the waft of chlorine. The cutoff jeans he bought at Goodwill that he used as trunks.
“I almost drowned in the deep end.” He leaves out the part about Derek Brood holding him under.
Reeves pulls out a pen and his small notepad and flips it open. “I love the idea of starting the book with this. There’s symbolism in starting and ending the book with you nearly drowning but surviving.” He stops. Looks at Donnie. “Are you okay?”
Donnie doesn’t realize that his cheeks are wet. He wipes his face with his hand. “I’m fine, Hemingway,” he says in Rock Star Donnie’s voice.
Reeves is studying him. Not buying it.
Donnie has the sudden urge for another drink. He lowers himself and sits on the ledge of the empty swimming pool.
Reeves sits beside him. The sky is black, the area lit by only a bulb on a lamppost that must be set on timer.
“I gotta tell you something, Reeves.”
Reeves turns to him. He puts a hand on Donnie’s shoulder.
“What is it?”
“Can we go … what do you call it? Off the record?”
Reeves ponders this. “Sure. I won’t write about anything you tell me unless you agree.”
“On the ship. I remember what happened now.”
Reeves gives him a quizzical look.
“There was a woman. I think the same woman from the photo the FBI showed me about Benny.
The same one from the beach.”
Reeves doesn’t say anything, lets Donnie talk.
“She forced me to jump.”
Reeve’s eyes flash. “Wait, what?”
Donnie nods. “She had a gun and…” He trails off.
“You need to tell the authorities. You need to—”