Back in the lobby, I used the phone at the front desk and tried her number, but she didn’t pick up. I told myself that it was maybe because I kept calling from all these different numbers rather than my own.

This time, I left a voicemail for her to give me a call—the Cyber team was doing a restore on my phone and I would have it back in a few minutes.

Of course, it was unlikely that something might’ve happened to Tessa with regard to Mannie’s escape, but still, I was worried. From my encounters with Blake last summer, I knew that he was aware of Tessa and Christie and how much they meant to me, and right now that did not reassure me.

A rush of fierce protectiveness triggered inside me, something that felt both foreign and also somehow, at the same time, natural. Maybe it was how a dad was supposed to feel. I liked it even though it scared me. I never would’ve thought I would be this worried about someone else’s daughter.

She’s not just someone else’s. Not anymore.

I knew that DeYoung wanted to see me again, but before I left for his office I put another call through, this time to Agent Collins. “Listen, there’s one more phone I need you to track.”

“Whose is that?”

“My stepdaughter’s. She’s going to hate me for this, but could you locate her cell?”

“You sure? My nephew, he’s a teenager; if I did something like that with him, well . . .”

“Yeah, no, I hear what you’re saying, but right now I just need to know that she’s safe.”

I gave her Tessa’s number and headed to the conference room adjacent to DeYoung’s office to debrief Mannie’s escape.

22

DeYoung informed the receptionist that he didn’t want to be disturbed, then tugged the door shut.

A television screen stared at us from one wall, a speaker’s lectern sat on the other side of the room. We gathered around the mammoth table that barely fit between them.

DeYoung and I were joined by the lawyer, who I learned was named Vincent Ashworth and who was still shaking, and Agent Thurman, whose wallet had been taken. The young man whose arm Mannie had broken had been taken to the hospital.

“So what do we know?” DeYoung said. “Where are we at?”

“Blake is still on the loose,” Ashworth muttered. “Mannie’s gone. And we don’t know anything more than we did before he escaped.”

That wasn’t quite true, but I didn’t correct him. I was still processing everything Mannie had said to me.

DeYoung flopped the legal pad Mannie had used onto the table. “And what does this mean, Pat? This cipher?”