“I remember walking into the cafeteria one time and noticing them eating at the same table,” Lucy says to me and not him. “Now and then I saw them talking in the gym, and there was the rainy morning when Carrie ran the Yellow Brick Road and slipped when she was scaling down a rock face. She got a really bad rope burn and told me one of the new agents helped her, cleaned up the wound and dressed it. It was Erin Loria. I do remember that and suspecting the reason Erin might have helped her wasn’t because they happened to be in the same place at the same time. They weren’t just bumping into each other. They were running the obstacle course together. But beyond that?” Lucy shrugs, lifting her face to the sun, shutting her eyes. “Carrie was a lot more outgoing than I was. If you know what I mean.”

“You ever hear her talk about Erin, specifically discuss her?” Marino asks.

“Not really. But Carrie’s a master manipulator. She’s a politician. She’s a lot better with people than I’ll ever be and can get almost anyone to cross the line with her.”

“Exactly. And we don’t know who she might be in communication with,” Marino retorts. “And we don’t know who the FBI might be talking to. Bottom feeders will get information any way and from any source they can. They make deals with the devil all the time.”

“I agree,” Lucy says. “She’s fed them something. Even if it’s indirectly.”

Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

AS SHE TALKS SHE TRIGGERS MORE IMAGES FROM the video she doesn’t know about. Or I assume she doesn’t know about it and then I entertain another unsavory possibility.

If Carrie is in fact the person who texted the video link to me then she might also be sending things like that to the FBI. She might have sent the same recording to Erin Loria, and I don’t want to think about what the Feds could do with it. How embarrassing for Lucy. How dangerous. And then I think of the illegal machine gun again.

It might be why they’re here right now.

“Only thing about Carrie feeding the FBI information or having anything to do with anything?” Marino adds. “I doubt they believe she exists. Seriously. They genuinely might believe she’s dead, just like we did until two months ago. Forget the judge. Forget your Quantico past. Forget everything except that there’s no proof Carrie’s alive. Doesn’t matter our opinion.”

“Our opinion?” I look at him. “Is it merely an opinion that she shot me with a spear gun and it’s a miracle I didn’t hemorrhage to death or drown?”

“That’s her favorite thing. Making you think she doesn’t exist,” Lucy says with her eyes shut, her face peaceful in the bright light.