“She comes to New York every summer. Usually flies American and stays for a day or two before heading home. The only reason that we’ve ever been able to come up with for her trips to New York is to visit Green-Wood Cemetery. But this year, she changes things up. She drives instead of using the airlines. And she hasn’t used her credit card once since leaving LA. She paid for two weeks at the Lowell using a cashier’s check. She’s trying not to leave any trails. We’re convinced she either sees her father on these trips, or is in contact with him some other way. The trip to André Schwarzkopf’s brownstone is the first piece of concrete evidence we’ve managed in all the years we’ve followed her.”

“What happened to the brother?”

“Who?”

“Her brother. What happened to him?

“He died in a sailing accident. Claire Montgomery and her brother took out the family yacht, a sailboat that bore her name—the Claire-Voyance. A three-million-dollar boat daddy bought for her twenty-first birthday. They ran into bad weather a couple of miles off the coast of New York. The boat sank. She lived, but barely—the Coast Guard pulled her near-drowned and hypothermic body out of the ocean. Her brother died. She visits his grave every year.”

“Shit,” Walt whispered under his breath, taking a long swallow of rum.

“What’s the matter?”

Walt thought back to his confession earlier in the night. His stupid, bumbling, rambling confession, and his explanation of the survivor’s guilt that came with making it through the shooting that had taken his partner’s life. He spoke as if his situation were unique, as if Avery could never understand the feeling. She surely did.

“Nothing.” Walt offered a drunken wave. “Just sounds like a shit situation.”

“When are you seeing her again?” Oliver asked.

Walt walked over to the desk in the corner, where papers were strewn across the surface. “Tomorrow. She wants to check out all this Cameron Young stuff to see if any of it can be used on her show.”

“Good. Make sure the meeting happens. And if you get a chance to get into her hotel room, take it.”

Walt didn’t like the implications of what Oliver was suggesting.

“On what pretense would I end up in her hotel room?”

“Come on, Walt. Use those icy blues of yours. We’re off the record on this one. Get creative.”

Oliver reached into the breast pocket of his sport coat and pulled out a thin, square, metal box, which he placed on the foot of the bed.

“I’ve got a dozen agents who would kill to be in your current position. But I went all the way to a tiny island in the Caribbean to recruit you. You’re the only one with the Cameron Young connection, and we need to exploit it.”