Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

That gets her. You can almost hear her make a cartoon gulp. Knows he’s done his homework. But she composes herself again. “I think Mom’s been suspecting it for years.”

“You’ve not come out to her.”

“No. But this would save me the trouble of a painful sit-down, I guess. The real question is, could Bridget and her husband survive it?”

“They’d simply deny it,” Howard says. “Your word against hers. She’s married to an attorney general and you, my dear, are a barmaid.”

“A barmaid with proof.”

He’s been waiting to see whether she’ll play this card. The text messages. The phone records.

“Proof,” he says. “And what proof would that be?”

“We had a lot of conversations. The kinds that there’s a record of.”

“Your phone.”

She nods.

“Let me see. Prove it to me,” he says.

Allison shakes her head. “Do I look stupid?” He does not answer. “Like I’m going to give it to you.”

“If you want the one hundred thousand, you will have to produce your phone at the time of delivery so that I can be certain those messages have been expunged.”

Allison appears to be thinking about this point, like she doesn’t want to lose her leverage.

“I suppose that’s okay,” she says.

Howard puts his cup and saucer on the table and clears his throat. “And what assurances does Bridget have that you won’t come back and ask her for more money?”

“You’ll just have to take my word on that,” Allison says, and there’s a trace of an impish grin.

“Yes, I suppose I’ll just have to do that,” Howard says. He slaps the tops of his knees. “Well, thanks so much for dropping by. We’ll be in touch.”

Makes it sound like an audition.

“Don’t you have my money?”

“Not at the moment,” Howard says, standing. “Perhaps you were expecting Bridget to bring it today, but I wanted to get a sense of the situation first. It will take time to get that kind of money together. I’m assuming you weren’t expecting me to write you a check.”

Embarrassment washes over her face as she stands. “No, of course not. But, is it all going to be cash?”

“I think we’d agree it’s better that there be no record of this transaction,” he says.

“God, what will I do with all that cash?”

“I would suggest you rent yourself a safe-deposit box. And then draw from it as your needs dictate.”

There’s a sparkle in her eye. He can see she’s already picturing all that money, wondering just how big a pile a hundred thousand dollars is.

“Okay, okay, I can do that. Where do you get these box things?”

Howard sighs. “I would try a bank.”

“You’ll get in touch when you have the money?”

“Absolutely.”

Howard is thinking ahead, wondering what kind of damage there will be if this gets out. Suppose she does go to the press? Howard is confident, as he has told Bridget, that they’ll be able to find enough on this woman to discredit her. They will ruin her in the public eye. It could be a tough go, no doubt about it. But then again, Bridget is not the one running for office. If this scandal is to end up destroying her, so be it. Morris can probably survive it, even if it means cutting Bridget loose. The whole thing could conceivably garner the man some sympathy, once the hoopla dies down. Extramarital affairs, stains on blue dresses, hanky-panky with hotel maids-there was no end of things politicians seemed able to bounce back from.

But paying her the hundred grand-how will that look if it gets out? Howard’s mind races. He thinks there’s a way to spin it. He’ll take the blame, say he did it to spare his friend and his wife pain and embarrassment. Resign as Sawchuck’s adviser if he has to, at least publicly, and continue to manage things from behind the scenes.

Still, it will be a mess if it gets out. While survivable, it’ll set back the timetable a bit. They’ve already had to put things on hold because of that other matter, wondering whether the proverbial shit is going to hit the fan, but as each day passes, things look more promising. And as for this woman, maybe, just maybe, once she has her money, she’ll really go away.

The things you had to do.

And then Allison Fitch says, “Just don’t try anything funny. Because, you know, I know stuff.”

Howard blinks. “I’m sorry?”

She’s on her feet now, heading for the door. “Now that I know who Bridget is, who she’s married to, you think back, stuff you saw, stuff you overheard, it all starts to come together.”

Howard feels a chill. “What, exactly, are you talking about?”

The last thing she says as she goes into the hall is, “You just come up with the hundred grand and you won’t have to worry about it.”

Howard stares at the door as it closes.

He is going to have to have another chat with Bridget. And before that, he would put in a call to Lewis. Whenever things looked as though they were going to escalate, he talked to Lewis.

When I walked into his room, Thomas, staring at the screen with his back to me, said, “I thought they were nice, but they should have sent the CIA.”

I came up around the side of his map-and-computer-cluttered desk and crouched down, then reached over to where the power strip went into the wall outlet. I yanked it out. The soft whirring of the computer stopped instantly with a barely audible pop.

Thomas screamed, “Hey!”

Then I reached over another few inches, where the phone line went into the jack, and pulled that out as well. Thomas stared, dumbstruck, at the suddenly black monitors.

“Turn them on!” he shouted. “Turn them back on!”

I shouted back, louder, “What the fuck were you thinking? Can you tell me that? What in the goddamn hell were you thinking? Getting in touch with the CIA? Sending them e-mails? Are you crazy?”

Even as I said it, I knew it was wrong. But I couldn’t stop myself.

“Jesus, I can’t believe it. The FBI! The goddamn FBI at our door! You’re lucky they didn’t arrest you, Thomas. Or both of us! At the very least, I’m amazed they didn’t walk out of here with your computer. Thank God you didn’t actually threaten anyone. Do you have any idea what the world is like today? You start sending e-mails to government agencies, telling them some cataclysmic event is on the horizon? Have you any idea how many alarm bells that sets off?”

“Plug it back in, Ray!” He was out of the chair now, dropping to his knees, scrambling for the cord that led out of the power strip.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him away. “No! This is it, Thomas! I’ve had it! Enough!”

But Thomas scrambled ahead, crablike, getting himself under the table. I grabbed hold of his legs and dragged him out.

“I hate you!” he shouted. There were tears streaming down his red, angry cheeks.

“You’re done with this!” I said. “Done! You’re getting out of this room and going outside! You’re going to start living like a normal person!”

“Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone,” he whimpered. I’d dragged him to the middle of his room, both of us sprawled out on the floor. The bare hardwood had made it easy to move him, but several maps and printouts had bunched up under him in the process. He grabbed one of the crumpled papers caught under his thigh, opened it, and tried to flatten it out on the top of his leg.

“Look what you’ve done!” he said.

I grabbed the map from his hands, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it across the room.

“No!” he said.

I knew this was wrong. Yelling at Thomas, pulling the plug on his computer, and, maybe worst of all, treating one of his precious maps like a used paper towel. I’d lost control of the situation, and I’d lost control of myself. Losing my father, coming back here, trying to figure out what to do with the house and Thomas, and now a couple of federal agents at the door-I’d snapped. But there was no excuse for coming down on Thomas this hard.