The Chain(87)

Ginger, however, is thoroughly engaged with the world. They would be a neat example in any psychological study of twins. She had boyfriends throughout high school and college, and she has dated a dozen different men since joining the Bureau, two of whom were married.

Sex is important; Olly appreciates that intellectually. Sex is the joker that keeps mammalian DNA forever changing and one step ahead of all the viruses and pathogens that are trying to wipe the species out. Olly understands this on a scientific and mathematical level. But sex is still a wild card, and love—God forbid—is an even wilder card.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And when you mix power with sex, well, you get what Ginger has occasionally done with The Chain. Several times he’s caught her using information from the FBI databases for purposes unrelated to Chain business. He suspects there are other incidents he doesn’t even know about.

It isn’t good.

He has to get her to put a stop to it.

Oliver sits in his grandfather’s study with Erik Lonnrott’s notebook in his hand. There’s a fire burning in the grate. He can see snow flurries through the window.

Olly examines the notebook carefully. It’s mostly a fair copy of a previous notebook. Or even notebooks. Erik has been working on this for some time. Olly was aware that someone was looking into The Chain and he had suspected that Erik might be the one. Erik had shaken off too many tails for him to be entirely innocent, and a lot of search histories and analyses led straight back to the computers at MIT.

They hadn’t been able to find Erik’s laptop or phone, but the notebook was on his person.

Erik took the trouble to write most of his text in cipher. Olly isn’t too bothered about that. There is no cipher devised by man that is unbreakable. Additionally, poor old Erik had gotten quite excited in the last few weeks of his life, and instead of carefully coding all of his entries, he had simply written them down in Russian or Hebrew. As if that would conceal anything. The poor deluded fool.

Olly looks at these final entries and is not impressed. Erik hadn’t gotten very far with his work. He had no suspects, he hadn’t made the connection to the Jalisco boys, his reasoning was all over the place.

Some of the last few entries are just random words and names.

There are hints about an app he was designing but no indication of what said app was supposed to do.

The very last entry in the book was clearly written very recently—perhaps a few days ago.

It says simply: ???

It’s a word that means “ewe” in Hebrew.

It’s a word that’s pronounced “Rachel” in English.

Olly sighs and looks out the window.

Marty, Ginger’s new boyfriend, has an ex-wife named Rachel, doesn’t he?

This little family get-together is going to be a lot more interesting than he initially expected. He picks up his phone and texts his sister: Ginger, can you do me a favor and come talk to me when you get a chance?





66



Rachel tries to call Kylie but she can’t get through.

“No signal,” she says. “Thank God she’s safe, though.”

Pete, however, is looking worried. “Shit. Maybe not,” he says.

“What is it?”

“Look at the time stamp on the GPS trace in her sneakers.”

“Oh my God. She’s been at the Adidas store in Boston for nine hours!” Rachel says. “I know what happened. She bought new shoes, threw the old ones out, and forgot about the GPS.”

“How could they have taken her in broad daylight from the mall? It doesn’t make sense,” Pete says.

Rachel is poleaxed.

Her world has been pulled out from under her.

Again.

And this time it’s 100 percent her fault. They had warned her. They told her to leave well enough alone, and she had blundered ahead with this idiotic plan.

She feels sick.

Dizzy.

Nauseous.

She dry-heaves.

The old thoughts: You stupid cow. You stupid bitch. Why didn’t you just die when you had the chance? Everyone would have been better off.

They have taken her beautiful, innocent, wonderful girl.

Her fault.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!

Stupid no more.

She unslings her shotgun. She’ll go in the back door under the balcony. She’ll shoot the lock off if she has to and she’ll kill everyone inside and get her daughter out of there.

She brushes snowflakes off her face and heads for the house.

“Where are you going?” Pete asks.

“To get Kylie.”

“You don’t know what or who is in there,” he says.

“I don’t care. You can stay here, I’m going in,” Rachel says.

Pete grabs her arm. “No. We’ll both go. Wait here for two minutes and I’ll scout ahead.”

“I’m going with you.”

Pete shakes his head. “I’m the expert, Rachel. I did the Marine Corps recon course. I’ve done this kind of thing many, many times.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Just hold on here for two minutes, OK? Let me check it out first.”

“Two minutes?”

“Two minutes. I’ll signal you from under the deck. Wait here.”