You Can't Catch Me(9)

Telling me to keep looking ahead, to just listen. Offering a lifeline. A way out.

I took it.

When I’m done filling Liam in, I’ve eaten one of the fish tacos, and he’s eaten two. The bar has filled up around us, and the music’s been turned up a notch. Imagine Dragons is singing about being a believer. What do they know?

We’ve finished our beers and ordered another round. Not that it’s a long story to tell, but Liam is big on getting all the details, especially about Jessica Two.

“She’s done this before,” I say.

“I was thinking the same,” Liam says. He’s got his own notebook out, the twin of mine. So many of my preferences are Liam based, I have trouble deciding if I do something because I like it or because he taught me to. “You thinking of trying to find her yourself?”

“That’s why I called you. What do you think?”

“I think you should.”

“You do?”

I was expecting a lecture. I’d broken one of his cardinal rules: never leave all your money in one place, especially not a place that’s easily accessible through electronic means.

“Doesn’t look like the police are going to do anything,” he said.

“I got that impression. Where should we start?”

“I haven’t agreed to help you yet.”

“But you will, right?”

Liam holds his beer glass with his thumb and index finger and swings it back and forth. He loves giving silence for answers.

“I was thinking that if she’s done it before, finding some of her other victims might help,” I say.

“Other Jessica Williamses?”

“Yeah.”

“You think she’s used that name before? Why?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? She has the ID; why not use it more than once if she can?”

“Or she might have a string of IDs,” Liam says.

“She might. But you and I both know that a good ID is harder to get than most people think.” After I’d left the LOT, I learned that my birth had never been registered. Todd didn’t believe in the government, only Todd. It had taken six months, and a lot of help from Liam, to get the Social Security card in my wallet and the birth certificate in my safe-deposit box, which is also where I socked away my emergency fund, safe from Jessica Two.

“Plus,” I add, “she said this thing about how she played this game ‘every time she met another Jessica.’”

“That might be a clue. Or it might be a lie.”

“Let’s call it a hunch.”

He finishes his beer. “You know what I think about hunches.”

“Eliminate them. Don’t believe. Check.”

“That’s right.”

“So how do we check?”

Liam turns his stool around and rests his back against the bar. He looks out at the crowd of suited men and women. He’s wearing dark jeans and a black shirt, a look he can easily turn into something resembling a suit with the addition of a blazer and a tie. A look for all occasions, he’s called it.

I follow his gaze. There’s a pretty early-twenty-something accepting a drink from an older guy at one of the tables near the door.

“She’s fine,” I say.

“Probably.”

“You don’t have to save everyone.”

He looks at me. “If your ‘hunch’ is right, then there must be points of commonality.”

“Besides our names?” I say cheekily.

“Don’t be an ass.”

“I feel like one.”

“You got taken by a pro.”

“You think?”

“Definitely. What she did took a lot of planning. She must’ve been tracking you for a while, waiting for an opportunity to connect with you and play that game. And the phone tap at the end, that’s clever.”

“That’s how she got my banking info, right? Some kind of capture software.”

“Yes, but that’s pretty sophisticated. There’s encryption in place that should’ve prevented her from getting anything other than your contact information.”

The girl is shaking her head at something the older man’s saying. But then she laughs, and the tension in my body eases. A downside of Liam: he makes you see bad everywhere you look. Which might be accurate most of the time, but it’s a hard way to live.

“Don’t say it, okay. I know I shouldn’t have had my banking information in my phone, but I thought it was safer than e-banking over that shared Wi-Fi in my apartment. I know you always say—”

“Do everything in person—”

“Yes, but life’s not built like that anymore.”

“Expedience over security. It’s always been our undoing.”

A group of recently off-work friends stumble into the bar, laughing. The bartender ups the level on the sound system again and rings a bell: last call for happy hour. “Where the Streets Have No Name” starts playing. They could be describing the Land of Todd.

“I was easy prey,” I say.

“What’s done is done. What matters is what you do now.”

“All right, enough with the sayings. Are you going to help me or what?”

I keep expecting him to offer, but instead he’s made me ask again. Life is like that sometimes. Plans depend on other people.