The Passengers(94)
‘Why call yourself Jude?’
‘Hey Jude was your late brother’s favourite song. They played it as his funeral. When it reached the chorus, your family rose to their feet, linked their hands in the air and sang along with the “na na” parts. Soon everyone was standing up and joining in.’
‘How dare you! How could you know that?’
‘People record everything these days for posterity. It wasn’t hard to find online.’
Libby shuddered at the depth of his research and knowledge. ‘Of all the people in the world you could have picked, why me?’
‘We needed someone with morals and values and who genuinely cared about the welfare of strangers. For the broadcast we needed a woman who both men and women of all ages could warm to. And for them to invest emotionally in her, she would need to be broken.’
‘You think the world sees me as broken?’
‘Am I wrong?’
‘You’re an arsehole.’
‘We had to give our mark a Passenger to throw her support behind. Who better than a man with a sob story and with whom she was attracted to? The fact you had our shared loathing for autonomous vehicles was of course a huge selling point and one of the reasons why we placed you inside that jury.’
‘You put me there? I wasn’t randomly selected?’
‘I assumed you had realised that by now. We wanted a personality who’d question the decisions the other jurors made. I must admit, we thought we might’ve made a bad call after the first day when the others kept railroading you and you gave up fighting back. But by day two and shortly before the first hijack, you came into your own. At that point we knew we couldn’t have asked for anyone better.’
Inside, Libby was still seething. She had long come to terms with her manipulation but she hadn’t known how deep the lies ran. She felt like an idiot. ‘But why me specifically? There are millions of women out there who share my views.’
‘But there aren’t any who share what you and I share.’
Libby raised her eyebrows. ‘Which is?’
‘When you arrived here, you asked me why I picked this location. From what I gathered during the harvesting of your data, there are three events that’ve shaped who you are. Finding your brother’s body, your boyfriend fathering a child with another woman, and then witnessing three people die on this road. One of those, we have in common.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The three generations of women you watched die right outside this door were my wife, my daughter and my mother.’
Chapter 65
Libby took a step back from Noah and shook her head. ‘This is another one of your lies, isn’t it?’ she spat. ‘You’re disgusting.’
Without giving him the opportunity to defend himself, she turned to make her way towards the door. Behind her, chair legs scraped across the slate floor. Her body tensed and she clasped the handle of the knife tighter.
‘Don’t go,’ said Noah. ‘Please.’ And for the first time that night, she heard something akin to desperation in his voice. It was enough to bring her to a standstill. ‘I said you deserved the truth and this is the truth. I swear.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ She shook her head and turned to see him on his feet. Something was preventing her from taking those few extra steps and leaving the cafe. Suddenly she recalled why she knew the name Noah Harris. He wasn’t the only one who could keep secrets. She would carry this alone for the time being.
‘Stephenie, Gracie and Mary; my wife, daughter and mum. I was at work when I received a call from a nurse at Queen Elizabeth Hospital to tell me they’d been involved in an accident. It wasn’t until I got there that I learned I’d lost all three.’
‘Their names are in the public domain,’ said Libby, her tone deadpan.
Noah lifted the phone from his desk and asked the Operating System to open a folder. He moved towards Libby, his arm outstretched to pass her the device for closer inspection. Again, she clenched the knife and took three steps backwards. Noah appeared disappointed by her cautiousness and placed the phone upon the table closest to her before returning to his seat.
Inside, Libby found dozens and dozens of albums, each crammed with family photographs. She swiped through the folders, opening them randomly. One contained images of Noah as a boy with an older lad, along with a younger-looking woman she recognised from the car accident, Noah’s mother, she assumed. Other folders contained wedding photographs, honeymoon pictures and shots of a newborn child and Noah.
‘Watch the videos,’ he urged and she pressed play. In the first, Stephenie was sitting on a bench in a garden, nursing a baby. Her voice belonged to the same woman she had comforted on Monroe Street. Libby would never forget how in her dying breaths, she had only wanted to know that her daughter was safe.
Libby hesitated before she spoke again. ‘I’m sorry for what happened to them, but that doesn’t explain your role in the hijacking and why you hurt so many innocent people.’
‘None of it was supposed to happen. Nobody should have died. Everything just … escalated … into an event that was completely out of my control. I couldn’t stop him.’
‘Who?’
‘Alex.’