“The reason is you,” Lucy says and now I remember. “You mentioned the mask in interviews. You told the FBI that I’d installed a mini-recorder on the mask you had on when Carrie shot you, so there should be an irrefutable record of exactly what happened. Except there isn’t.”

“What do you mean there isn’t?”

“Do you remember telling me about it after they talked to you in the hospital?”

“Barely.”

“Do you remember telling the FBI about the mask and its capabilities?”

“Barely.”

I don’t really recall what I said to Lucy, to the Feds, to anyone. Those initial conversations are disjointed and dreamlike, and I can’t retrieve the questions or my answers word for word. But I know I would have told the truth if asked, especially if I were injured and medicated, if I were as out of it as I must have been.

I would have had no reason to feel it was unsafe to relay precisely what I knew or thought I did, never imagining the information would be used against us. I couldn’t have anticipated that two months later the FBI would be crawling all over Lucy’s property and searching it from the air.

“I’m sorry if I’ve caused you trouble. In fact not if. Clearly I have,” I say to her.

“You haven’t.”

“It would appear that I have made things worse somehow,” I reply and we’re almost to her sidewalk. “I’m very sorry, Lucy, because it certainly wasn’t my intention.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about and now we stop talking. Three-two-one and the audio is back on.” She touches an app on her phone, looks at me and nods.

Our privacy is gone just like that.

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

AS IF ON CUE A WOMAN IN KHAKI CARGO PANTS AND a dark polo shirt opens the front door. She could see us on the surveillance cameras even if she couldn’t hear what we were saying.

The .40 caliber Glock and the shiny brass badge on Erin Loria’s belt overwhelm her thin frame, and I do an instant inventory. Shoulders slightly rounded on their way to hunched. Teeth straight and natural with no discoloration due to enamel loss. Arms covered with lanugo, fine dark hair. Anorexic versus bulimic. She’ll have early osteoporosis and cardiac problems if she’s not careful. She doesn’t look familiar. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before. But I know who she is all right.