The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(54)

“Shhh,” Sloat said, patting him on the shoulder. “Shhh. Tell you what, we’ll take a little break.” He looked at Tyson. “Stay with him. I’ll be back in a few.”

He went out to the garage and called Rispel from an encrypted burner. She answered instantly. “Did you get it?”

“No,” he said. “Not only did we not get it, I don’t think he has it.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I told you before. He says he set up the system with this kind of scenario in mind. If he doesn’t reset it within a specified time frame, the system uploads whatever it’s programmed to upload.”

“Then get his passcode and reset it yourself. It’ll buy us time, at least.”

“He already gave us the passcode. Twelve-digit number, nothing complicated. But he claims he can only reset it from encrypted keypads installed in his various houses. And—”

“He has a house that can’t be more than a thirty-minute chopper ride from where you’re standing.”

“Look, first, I don’t want to go someplace where US marshals are likely to be looking for him, okay?”

A pause. She said, “What about the other houses?”

“And second, he says the keypad requires biometric credentials. Fingerprint, retina scan—”

“Then take him personally and press his finger and his eyeball wherever they need to go.”

“And a voice-stress analyzer. You get it? We could take him to one of his houses and press his finger and stick his eyeball and whatever else, and put a gun to his head and make him say the magic words, and the voice-stress analyzer is going to say, Fuck off. This guy anticipated duress. And prepared for it.”

There was a pause while she absorbed that. “I’m not buying it,” she said. “Why didn’t his lawyer warn anyone of this?”

Sloat considered that. “You said they let him go six years ago, right?”

“Yes.”

“My guess? They were expecting the same thing would happen this time. Or at least hoping.”

She didn’t respond, which he knew from experience meant she didn’t disagree.

“But then at some point,” he went on, “maybe he sees what happened to that guy Epstein. And decides he needs to be more careful. Some kind of dead-man setup, just in case. Maybe he goes even further, and architects it not just to protect against someone suiciding him, but to ensure everyone’s motivated to get him out of jail ASAP. And to ensure he can’t be under duress. Give the guy credit, it’s clever.”

“Maybe too clever. You don’t think he’s making it up?”

Sloat considered. “While we were boarding him? No.”

“You and I both know people will say anything to make it stop.”

“That’s my point. What he’s telling us isn’t making it stop. It’s making it continue. We’ve done him six times now. He’s crying, he shit himself . . . If he could give a dark web URL where we could log in and use the passcode without him, something like that—I think he would have told us by now.”

Again, she didn’t respond. He waited, then said, “So what do you want to do?”

“I need to think about it. Ultimately, we’re probably looking at taking him to one of his houses and verifying his story that way. But first, I want you to up the treatment.”

He’d sensed that might be coming. “I don’t really think that’s—”

“Don’t go wobbly on me, okay? We need to be sure. Do his fingers. No wait, make it his toes. In case the biometric story is true.”

Shit. He wondered if she’d specified the toes to prevent Sloat from later lying about having done it. Waterboarding left no physical evidence. Fingers and toes . . . not so much.

But orders were orders, and as his sergeant used to say back in the day, You don’t have to like it. You just have to do it.

“I’ll let you know what we get out of him,” he said. He clicked off and headed back in.





chapter

forty-one





MANUS


Manus was trying not to show it, but he was frightened and angry. Frightened for Evie and Dash. Angry at himself for downplaying the possibility that they could be in danger.

And he was confused, too. He’d lied to Evie about where he was. But now maybe the lie had put them in danger. Maybe he had put them in danger. If anything happened to them, it would be his fault.

You’ve been over this. They’re fine. There’s no reason anyone would want to hurt them.

He connected the phone’s Wi-Fi to the satellite hotspot. Immediately, a text from Evie popped up:

Hey. I’m worried about something and I’m afraid to go home. Can you text or FT me right away?

His heart started slamming. What happened? Why would she be afraid to go home?

He checked the text. It had been sent a half hour earlier. Enough time for anything to have happened. No, he thought. No, no, no . . .

He blew out a long breath. They’re all right, he told himself. The school is safe. And afraid to go home means she hasn’t. She’s being careful.

He glanced around and realized he had no good place to prop up the phone. He looked at Dox. “Can you hold it for me? I need my hands free.”