The Chain(28)

Pete is looking at the Dunleavys’ social media activity on his laptop. “Nobody’s awake yet,” he says.

“Mike will be up in about an hour, then Helen, then the kids. Mike sometimes catches the six o’clock train to South Station, sometimes the six thirty,” Rachel tells him.

“He should drive, there’s no traffic at this hour,” Pete says. “Hey, you know what we have to watch out for?”

“What?”

“GPS tags in the shoes. A lot of helicopter parents put GPS tags in their kids’ backpacks and shoes. That way if they go missing, the parents can find them with an app in a few seconds.”

“Is that for real?” Rachel says, aghast.

“Oh yeah, grab a kid with one of those little buggers, and the FBI will be up our ass before we know what hit us.”

“How do we stop that?”

“I can scan the kid to see if he’s transmitting. And then toss his iPhone and GPS shoes, and we should be OK.”

“Helen seems the type to brag about using that system to find her kids, but she hasn’t mentioned it,” Rachel says, surprising herself with the bitterness of this observation. She remembers that Tacitus line about how you always hate those you have wronged. Or those you are about to wrong in this case.

“Maybe you’re right,” Pete says. “But we’ll check the shoes anyway.”

They watch the house and sip coffee and wait.

No life at all on the street. The days of the milkman are long over. The first dog-walker doesn’t appear until 5:30 a.m.

The earliest indication that anybody is up in the Dunleavy house comes at 6:01 a.m., when Mike retweets a tweet from Tom Brady. Then Helen wakes and begins Facebooking. She Likes a dozen posts from her friends and shares a video about women soldiers fighting Isis in Syria. Helen is a moderate Democrat. Her husband seems to be a moderate Republican. They care about the world, the environment, and their kids. They are harmless, and in completely different circumstances, Rachel could imagine being their friend.

The kids are lovely too. Not spoiled, not bratty, just great little kids.

“Look at this,” Pete says. “Helen has just Instagrammed a picture of the Seafarer Restaurant on Webb Street in Salem.”

“It’s on Facebook now too,” Rachel says.

“She says she’s having breakfast there with her friend Debbie. How far is Salem from here?”

“Not that far. Five minutes, maybe ten if there’s traffic.”

“Not ideal. But a breakfast with an old friend has gotta take a minimum of forty-five minutes, right?”

Rachel shakes her head. “I don’t know. If it’s only coffee and muffins, it could be less. But then again, they’d go to Starbucks if they were just getting coffee and muffins. Why, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that once Mike’s gone and the kids are safely at school and Helen is safely at her breakfast, the house will be empty.”

“And then what?”

“I go in the back door. Scout the place. Maybe upload a little spyware bug of our own onto the family desktop.”

“You can do that?”

“Oh yes.”

“How?”

“The B-and-E stuff is pretty easy, as you found out at the Appenzellers’. The bugging tech I learned from my buddy Stan when I worked for him after the Corps.”

Rachel shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“Gives us an advantage. We’ll know what they’re thinking. The shit’s going to get real when we take Toby.”

“Is it safe?”

“Is anything we’re doing safe?”

Mike Dunleavy finally leaves for work at 7:15. He drives himself to the Beverly train station and leaves his BMW in the lot. Helen gets her kids outside at 8:01. It’s not really cold enough for winter coats but Helen has bundled them up anyway. Rachel thinks they look adorable in their oversize parkas and their hats and scarves.

“Do you want to follow them?” Pete asks.

Rachel shakes her head. “No point. Helen will let us know when she drops them off at school and gets to the restaurant.”

They sit in the Volvo and wait, and, sure enough, at 8:15, Helen Facebooks a selfie taken inside the Seafarer.

Pete scans the street. A college-age kid is shooting hoops down the block, and across the street, a little girl comes out of her house and starts jumping up and down on an enclosed trampoline. “Look over there—front door’s closed, kid’s on that trampoline by herself. She’d be perfect,” Pete says.

“Yes,” Rachel agrees. “But that’s not the plan.”

“No? OK, I’m going in.”

Rachel grabs his hand. “Are you sure about this, Pete?”

“We need all the information we can get about these people. In a raid, you gather all the intel you can for days, sometimes weeks, before you move. But we don’t have days or weeks, so we gotta get as much info as quickly as possible.”

Rachel can see the sense of that.

“Which is why I’m going in now while the house is, presumably, empty. If crazy old Uncle Kevin’s in there with a shotgun, I guess I’m screwed. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes or so, you should go.”

“What are you actually going to do?”