“What? Yeah, we’re alone, Deep Throat. Those were your instructions. But let me tell you, I looked you up. I know what you did. What you tried to do anyway. So listen, if you’re here to mess with Mrs. Lombard. In any way. I mean, if this is some con bullshit. If that picture of Suzanne is Photoshopped, and you’re just out to hurt her or play on her goodwill, I will boil water on my stove, tie you down, and pour it down your lying throat. Am I clear?”

“That was vivid,” he said. “Yeah. You have my word.”

Her genuine irritation actually gave him hope that Grace Lombard was playing straight with him. Of course, Denise might not even know she was helping to set him up.

This was going to be tricky. What he had told Jenn and Hendricks was true—he believed Grace was someone he could trust. But obviously that trust only went one way. So if she didn’t trust him, how to convince her that her husband, a man she did trust, was involved with Suzanne’s disappearance? One solitary piece of actual proof sure wouldn’t hurt. Proof he didn’t have any longer thanks to the man in the basement. So how to get her to see the truth? He couldn’t be the one to say it; he knew that. It had to come from her. Grace Lombard had to connect the dots for herself. If she felt she was being manipulated, her open mind would snap shut like a trap.

The crowds thickened as they neared the convention. Lombard’s acceptance speech was scheduled for that evening, and the city hummed in anticipation.

“I listed you as media, doing an interview with Mrs. Lombard,” Denise said. “Just use your real name. Show them your driver’s license. You’re not getting past these guys with a fake. But I’ll walk you through. There won’t be a problem.”

Jenn had described what security would be like around the convention center, but if anything she’d undersold it. The law-enforcement presence was astounding: Atlanta PD, Secret Service, and elements of the National Guard. The convention hall and hotel had layer after layer of checkpoints. Someone might beat one, but the chances of penetrating all of them seemed nonexistent. After all his talk of this being the safest place for him, he was beginning to realize it was just that, talk.

A pair of uniforms stared hard at him as he passed by, and it was hard to muffle the paranoid voice in his head telling him to run far and to run fast.