The Stranger(71)

Merton turned toward the stranger. “You look disappointed.”

“He’ll get away with it now.”

“With what, taking steroids to play big-time football? Big deal. Probably eighty percent of those kids are on some kind of juice.”

Eduardo agreed. “We stick to our principles, Chris.”

“Yeah,” the stranger said. “I know.”

“Your principles, really.”

The stranger, whose real name was Chris Taylor, nodded. Chris was the founder of this movement, even if this was Eduardo’s garage. Eduardo had been first in with him. The enterprise started as a lark, as an attempt to right wrongs. Soon, Chris realized, their movement could be both a profitable company and a source for doing good. But in order to do that, in order to not let one take over the other, they all had to stick to their founding principles.

“So what’s wrong?” Gabrielle asked him.

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“You don’t come here unless there’s a problem.”

That was true enough.

Eduardo sat back. “Were there any issues with Dan Molino or his son?”

“Yes and no.”

“We got the money,” Merton said. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“Yeah, but I had to handle it alone.”

“So?”

“So Ingrid was supposed to be there.”

They all looked at one another. Gabrielle broke the silence. “She probably figured that a woman would stand out at a football tryout.”

“Could be,” Chris said. “Have any of you heard from her?”

Eduardo and Gabrielle shook their heads. Merton stood and said, “Wait, when did you talk to her last?”

“In Ohio. When we approached Heidi Dann.”

“And she was supposed to meet you at the football tryouts?”

“That’s what she said. We followed protocol, so we traveled separately and had no communication.”

Eduardo started typing again. “Hold up, Chris, let me check something.”

Chris. It was almost odd to hear someone speak his name. The past few weeks, he’d been anonymous, the stranger, and no one called him by name. Even with Ingrid, the protocol had been clear: No names. Anonymous. There was irony in that, of course. The people he approached had assumed and craved anonymity, not realizing that in truth, it didn’t exist for them.

For Chris—for the stranger—it did.

“According to the schedule,” Eduardo said, staring at the screen, “Ingrid was supposed to drive to Philadelphia and drop off the rental car yesterday. Let me check and see. . . .” He looked up. “Damn.”

“What?”

“She never returned the car.”

The room chilled.

“We need to call her,” Merton said.

“It’s risky,” Eduardo said. “If she’s been compromised, her mobile might be in the wrong hands.”

“We need to break protocol,” Chris said.

“Carefully,” Gabrielle added.

Eduardo nodded. “Let me call her via Viber and knock the connection through two IPs in Bulgaria. It should only take me five minutes.”

It took more like three.

The phone rang. Once, twice, and then on the third ring, the phone picked up. They expected to hear Ingrid’s voice. But they didn’t.

A man’s voice asked, “Who is this calling, please?”

Eduardo quickly disconnected the call. The four of them stood still for a moment, the garage completely silent. Then the stranger—Chris Taylor—said what they were all thinking.

“We’ve been compromised.”





Chapter 37



They had done nothing wrong.

Sally Perryman had been a junior partner in the firm assigned to be Adam’s first chair for a time-consuming case involving the immigrant owners of a Greek diner. The owners had been happily and profitably working in the same location in Harrison for forty years, until a big hedge fund had built a new office tower down the street, causing the powers that be to conclude that the road leading to the tower would have to be widened to accommodate the new traffic. That meant bulldozing the diner. Adam and Sally were up against the government and bankers and, in the end, deep corruption.

Sometimes you can’t wait to wake up and get to work in the morning and you hate the day to end. You get consumed. You eat, drink, sleep the case. This was one of those times. You grow close to those who stand with you in what you start to see as a glorious, hard-fought quest.

He and Sally Perryman had grown close.

Very close.

But there hadn’t been anything physical—not so much as a kiss. Lines hadn’t been crossed, but they’d been approached and challenged and perhaps even stepped on, though never over. There comes a stage, Adam had learned, where you are standing near that line, teetering, one life on one side, one life on the other, and at some point, you either cross it or something has to wither and die. In this case, something died. Two months after the case ended, Sally Perryman took another job with a law firm in Livingston.