Larison still didn’t see it. “To what end?”
“One possibility is evidence,” Livia said. “In court, those videos will be sealed. The girls’ images, their identities—it can all be protected.”
“Come on,” Larison said. “Look what the powers that be did when Diaz had Schrader arrested. And now you’re talking about, what, prosecuting the attorney general? The director of National Intelligence? What country do you think you’re living in?”
“There’s another possibility,” Dox said. “In my opinion, a better one.”
“What?” Larison said. “Build a time machine and stop all this before it even happened?”
“Maya and Evie,” Livia said. “If they can scrub out the girls’ faces, we can release those videos ourselves.”
The room was quiet for a moment. Larison looked at Livia. “You’d be okay with that?”
She made a fist and the knuckles cracked. “More than okay.”
Larison thought about it more. It was elegant, he had to admit. Audacious. And had just the right amount of fuck-you frisson. “If it could be done,” he said, “it could solve a lot of problems.”
“And not just ours,” Dox said.
They were all quiet again. The more Larison considered, the more he liked it.
“Maybe Kanezaki can get us armor,” he said.
No one responded.
He shrugged and added, “I mean, if we’re going to be kicking down doors, I’d like to be wearing something thicker than just my rain parka.”
Livia looked at him. “Then you’re in?”
“I guess so,” Larison said. He shook his head. “Release the videos ourselves. I mean, what kind of plan is that?”
Dox smiled. “The chaos kind.”
chapter
fifty-five
DOX
They drove in the minivan, Diaz behind the wheel. Dox would have preferred Livia, who was their best driver, but they needed three shooters. So when Diaz volunteered, even Larison’s protests were pro forma. And regardless, Diaz had quickly put those to bed by pointing out that she’d been driving even before she had a license, and learned how on the streets of Washington Heights and the Bronx. “You have your credentials,” she’d said to Larison, “and I have mine,” earning herself a nod and a respectful smile from the angel of death himself.
Kanezaki had given them the coordinates of where to pick up the gear they needed, and told Dox his contact would be the same person who’d supplied him the last time he’d been in the area. Dox remembered a black woman so grandmotherly she was about the last person he would have made for an operator. That time she’d been waiting in a coffee shop, but this morning the pickup would be on the side of the road, along a stretch of the city known locally as the Jungle because, Livia explained, it was impenetrably forested, home to countless homeless encampments, and largely impervious to the local government’s authority.
Diaz knew the exact spot—a street called Beacon Avenue South, just east of I-5. It was getting light as they crossed the overpass, and Dox could see how the area had earned its name. There was something primeval about it, brambles and pine needles and swirling, thick mist, a serpentine carpet of green that made the support pylons of the elevated roads above it look weak and temporary by comparison. Here and there, nylon tents and garbage piles appeared amid the vegetation like hilltops breaking through fog, but their presence only emphasized how much more was likely hidden.
Fifty yards beyond the overpass, Diaz did a U-turn and pulled over. Dox got out and crossed the road, his breath fogging in the still, moist air. He stopped to listen. Morning birdsong. Traffic from the nearby interstate. A dog barking in the distance. He looked around and on both sides of the road saw nothing but green. It was strange—to the northwest, he could see the cityscape of downtown Seattle, but where he stood, everything felt entirely rural.