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Back 3 a.m.
Chapters (67)
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

I pull the Vespa over to the side of the road. The backpack feels like there is a miniature bucking bronco trying to free itself. I unzip the backpack and Lassie stops.

He is panting wildly.

“It’s gonna be okay. Just another couple of minutes.”

Meow.

“What?”

Meow.

“You aren’t sick?”

Meow.

“You were faking it? Why would yo—”

Meow.

“You needed to get me out of the house? Why?”

Meow.

“Two men came in?”

Meow.

“Seriously?”

Lassie explains how he was sleeping last night when the front door opened. He thought it was Ingrid or my dad, but it wasn’t. It was two men he didn’t recognize. He went up to them, but they swatted him away. Lassie hid for the next twenty minutes until the men left.

“They bugged my condo,” I say to myself, more than to Lassie. “Holy shit, they bugged my fucking condo.”

I should be pissed, but I’m not. I’m relieved. Because the only logical assumption I can make is that my house was bugged by the CIA. And if so, then Director LeHigh is to blame. And innocent men didn’t bug houses.

He was spooked.

That means I was on the right track.

Everything my mother sent me was true.

Meow.

I straighten.

“Really?”

Meow.

“Which car?”

Meow.

Someone is following us.

I put Lassie back into the backpack and start back onto the road. If my house was bugged, then whoever did it had either video or audio, or both, of my thinking Lassie was sick. And now they were following me.

Five minutes later, I pull up to the emergency vet.

It is 3:13 a.m.

I sign in on the iPad near the receptionist. There are two people ahead of me. I take a seat on one of the plastic chairs. There is a fiftyish man with a white Pomeranian. It barks at me.

I pull out Lassie and put him on my lap. He is playing the part of sickly cat well.

I pull out my cell phone.

I have two missed text messages from Ingrid.

Ingrid’s first text is: I MISS U. The second one is: COULD YOUR MOM HAVE SENT YOU ANYTHING ELSE?

I send back: LASSIE IS SICK. AT THE VET. GONNA FORGET ABOUT MY MOM JUST LIKE SHE FORGOT ABOUT ME.

The phone vibrates almost instantly.

OK. I SUPPORT YOU EITHER WAY. HOPE LASSIE IS OKAY.

HE WILL BE. TALK TO YOU TOMORROW.

She sends: XOXO

But the cyber hugs and kisses aren’t my main concern, it’s what she said about my mother. Sending me something else.

What if my mother sent me something before the DVD? She had to know there was a bounty on her head. That her time was limited. Did she try to get something to me before, but I was too wrapped up in my regimen to notice?