I really don’t know what else to do, and that’s the vortex we’re caught in and it’s precisely where Carrie has put us and wants us to stay. Our usual habits, protocols and procedures for handling the smallest tasks get turned inside out, upside down and are shattered and sucked away into another dimension. She’s done it before. She’s doing it again, and I remember what my boss General John Briggs, the chief of Armed Forces Medical Examiners, often preaches:

When terrorists find something that works they keep on doing it. It’s predictable.

Carrie Grethen is a terrorist. She’s doing what she knows works. Creating havoc and confusion. Until we lose direction and judgment. Until we hurt ourselves and each other.

Think!

“We’re going to have to make things up as we go along,” I tell Marino.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Think about what she’d predict you’d do right now.

“The usual way we do things isn’t necessarily relevant and workable, and we’re going to have to be flexible and extremely attentive, as if we’re starting out all over, as if we’re having to re-create the wheel. Because we are in a sense. She knows our playbook, Marino. She knows our cookbook. She knows every handbook we’ve ever read for everything we do. We have to be open to change and mindful of any assumptions she might make based on her knowing us so well.”

She assumes you won’t tell anyone.

“I wasn’t going to tell you but now I’ve changed my mind because to keep it a secret is what I anticipate she expects me to do. I’ve been sent three video clips so far today.” I speak loudly, slowly and in a calm manner that belies what churns inside of me. “Surveillance recordings taken by Carrie it would seem. Apparently they were filmed covertly in Lucy’s dorm room when she was at Quantico in 1997.”

“Carrie sent you videos that are seventeen years old?” Marino is incredulous and enraged. “Are you sure they aren’t faked?”

“They weren’t.”

“What do you mean weren’t?”

“As in the past tense.”

“Let me see them.”

“I can’t. That’s what I mean by past tense. The instant I finished watching them they were gone and the links were dead. Then the messages themselves disappeared as if I never got them.”

“E-mailed?” Marino’s wet face is pale and stony, his bloodshot eyes glaring.

“Texted. Supposedly from Lucy’s In Case of Emergency cell phone line.”

“That figures. That sucks. The FBI has her phone. They’ll see what she sent. They’ll think she sent the videos to you. It will be more of the same—her getting blamed for what Carrie does.”