“I’m telling you right now, Isabella, and you know this as well as I do—Jon Reznick had nothing to do with the death of this young man.”
“Trust me, I agree. The problem is we have eyewitnesses who saw him breaking into the apartment, and a woman in the building opposite even filmed it. She thought it looked suspicious. And when she saw the glass getting broken, she called the cops.”
Meyerstein felt a migraine coming on. “Isabella, I appreciate the heads-up. I owe you one.”
She ended the call, feeling an immense sense of foreboding for what lay ahead.
Seven
It was late in the afternoon, thirty miles north of DC, as Reznick turned off the freeway and drove to the outskirts of a nondescript small town.
“Where are we going?” Trevelle said.
Reznick drove on. “Just a little stop. But not for long.”
“Why?”
“Relax, kid.”
“I don’t want to relax. I’m scared. Two of my goddamn friends are dead.”
“You wanna try and keep it together?”
Trevelle got quiet for a few moments.
Reznick saw a food truck at a roadside stop.
“Are you hungry?” Reznick asked.
“Hungry? I feel sick. Are you serious?”
“Well, I’m hungry. I need to eat.”
Trevelle shrugged. “Then I guess you’ve got to eat, man.”
Reznick pulled up beside an eighteen-wheeler with Arkansas plates and got out, stretching his legs. He walked around to the other side of the SUV and opened Trevelle’s door. “Everyone needs to eat.”
“I said I’m not hungry.”
Reznick cocked his head. “We all need to eat.”
Trevelle sighed as he climbed out of the vehicle. “Sure, whatever. Fries.”
Reznick walked over to the food truck. He bought a burger and Coke for himself, fries and two cans of Red Bull for the kid. They leaned against the SUV. Trevelle downed most of the first Red Bull, then said, “I don’t feel too good.”
Reznick stared at the fries. “They look good.”
Trevelle began to eat listlessly, chewing slowly.
“Feeling better?”
“Not really.”
“It’ll pass.”
“I don’t think it will. I don’t think I’ll ever get over this.”
“You need to try and compartmentalize your feelings more,” Reznick said.
“Compartmentalize my feelings? What the hell does that mean?”
“You need to leave the bad memories and push them aside. If you let them take over your head, you will drown in self-pity. Shit happens all the time. I know it’s not easy. But you need to just, you know, not let it throw you so badly.”
“I’m pathetic, I know.”
“You’re not pathetic. You’re in shock. Was it your mother who died? Father? Sister?”
“No.”
“These were friends. Close friends. But that’s all they were.”
Trevelle munched on the fries for a minute before he spoke. “My parents don’t talk to me.”
“Why not?”
“My dad was in the army.”
“Was he?”
“Yeah, I was born in Germany. Army brat. He always thought I was soft. I preferred geeking out on my computers to playing sports. He hated that.”
Reznick wondered if the kid’s father was a hardline disciplinarian and had driven Trevelle to retreat into himself. He thought back to when he was growing up. His dad, a no-nonsense Vietnam vet, had been tough on him. He had learned to deal with it. The powder-keg atmosphere. The aggression. The verbal abuse. Even as a child, he could see his father was suffering his own personal hell. Just another simmering, frustrated, borderline-alcoholic veteran with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. But he knew other kids, maybe more sensitive ones like Trevelle, wouldn’t be able to live with such malevolence in the home. “Hey, for what it’s worth, I’d be proud if you were my son.”
Trevelle blinked away tears. “Christ, one minute you’re telling me I need to compartmentalize my feelings, the next you’re saying nice things about me. You’re giving me whiplash, man. Makes me anxious.”
Reznick smiled. “Don’t be. I don’t bite. Well, not much.”
Trevelle wiped away his tears with the back of his sleeve.
“Feeling better?” Reznick said.
“A little, thanks.”
They threw out their trash. Reznick turned and looked at the passing vehicles on the nearby highway. “Less than an hour till DC.”
Trevelle gulped down some more Red Bull. “OK.”
“We need to decide what the plan is when we get there.”
“It would be a mistake to call Rosalind Dyer, or even text her. I’m talking about from a technical point of view. Cell phone security, I mean.”
Reznick nodded.
“I think we’ve got to assume her cell phone has been compromised. I’m assuming it’s a government-issue encrypted cell phone. If the guys after her are halfway competent, they’ll be listening in. If we call her, it might even put her at greater risk.”
“I think we’re all at risk from now on.”
“Man, you really know how to scare me. What is it with you?”
Reznick clasped the kid’s shoulder. “I’m trying to help you stay alive.”
“Point taken. Sorry, my nerves are shredded.”
Reznick glanced behind them, toward the heavyset truckers drinking coffee and talking, shooting the breeze near the food truck. He was starting to formulate a plan to get them into DC without being traced. Despite Trevelle’s confidence in his signal jammer and the newer encryption he’d installed on their phones, Reznick didn’t want to take any chances. “Wait here.”
“Why?”
“Just stand there. Don’t move.”
Reznick walked over to the truckers and approached the biggest guy in the middle. The guy wore an oil-stained plaid shirt and a faded Cardinals ball cap. “Any of you guys headed into DC?”
The big guy pushed up the rim of his cap with his thumb. “Yeah, I’m dropping off my load at a hospital. You want a ride?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“That your Beamer?”
“Rental. Guy’s picking it up in an hour. But I was hoping to catch a lift into town. I’m starting a new job first thing.”
The guy finished the rest of his coffee. “You got it.”
“Appreciate that, thanks. I’ll tell my friend.”
Reznick walked over to Trevelle. He kept his voice low. “Come on, we’ve got a ride.”
“What? What’s wrong with the car?”
“I used my credit card to rent it. If these guys are able to connect you to me, they might already be looking for us. License plate readers fitted to cop cars, road signs, and bridges mean citizens can be tracked and identified. We need to stay off the radar as long as we can.”
An hour later, the trucker pulled up at a motel just a block from a downtown hospital in Washington, DC.
Reznick said, “Appreciate this, buddy.”
“It’s still America,” the guy said. “We got to look out for each other.”