My stomach drops to think he was just outside. Or if not him, someone working for him. Right there, the whole time.
I glance back at Tyler and he’s watching me nervously, the way you watch an animal you’re not sure about and that you’re hoping isn’t about to attack you.
I turn back to the board. It’s sickening to see, but I can’t ignore it, either. I leave Springfield and follow the line to Florida.
The images there are much closer. More intimate. There are even a few of me and Tyler on the beach the first night we kissed. What I thought was a sweet, romantic night on the beach, under the stars, just me and Tyler, was a total lie.
“I didn’t know until after you left that those pictures were taken.” He’s behind me now and it’s disgusting, standing here in this room with him, seeing this.
“That doesn’t make any of this okay. At all.”
He takes a step closer and I can feel his breath on the back of my neck. “I took you to the beach that night, to the most secluded part, thinking we would be alone. I swear, I never knew exactly when he was watching. Thomas doesn’t tell me everything. Still doesn’t. He believes the only way for a plan to work is to make sure no one knows the entire plan.”
He thinks we’re having a moment, me and him, looking at these pictures of us making out on the beach. And in this moment I know Tyler is seriously sick in the head. And it’s probably Thomas’s fault.
“So something will tip off the suits to come here and they will find all of this. But Hammond will be dead and there will be no way for him to defend himself and they won’t even look for the real mole.”
“He’s a genius,” Tyler says, his voice full of awe.
I move away from the Florida pictures and the images get more and more painful. Mom at the liquor store buying bottles and bottles of gin. She’s out in public, hair a mess, and no makeup at all. And Teeny. She looks physically different in these pictures than she did two placements ago: slumped shoulders, pale complexion, sad eyes. God, I remember those sad eyes. They ate at my soul.
I skim over the pictures from Kentucky and South Carolina, instead wanting to see us in Natchitoches.
And there we are in that crappy little cottage. There is image after image of me going back and forth to Pearl’s, sometimes walking with Teeny and sometimes riding in Ethan’s truck. I take a step closer so I can make out the grainy black-and-white images: the house in the country where the party we were at got busted, me running from the laundry room, and Ethan and me on that dock down by Cane River.
“I can’t even tell you how sickened I am by this,” I say.
“Would you believe me if I told you I am too?”
No,the voice inside me says.
I turn away from the wall and look at the desk. It’s covered in papers. It looks like reports from the people watching us—everything about us all laid out. And other things, too. Bank statements and ledger forms. Stuff that reminds me about the ledgers we found in Arizona that Thomas was desperate to recover. I pick up another sheet of paper; it’s a phone number, and then written above it:Hammond.I shove it in my pocket.
“Come with me to the other room,” Tyler says. “There’s something else I’m looking for.”
Going down the hall, I peek inside the room where Teeny and I were kept just a few days earlier and it’s empty. Completely empty. No mattress. No card table of snacks. And the shutter and wall have both been repaired. You would have never known we were here.
Now we’re in the room with all the filing cabinets that I saw from the air conditioner duct. It’s inching toward noon and there’s no telling if Thomas is looking for either of us yet.
Tyler starts looking through drawers and I step back out in the hall. I power on Will’s cell phone and stare at the keypad. I can’t call the hotline number for the suits because I still don’t know who the real mole is. I don’t have Agent Williams’s number, but I do have Agent Hammond’s. I quickly dial his number and he answers on the second ring.
“Agent Hammond. It’s Anna,” I whisper in the phone, hoping Tyler won’t hear me.
“Anna! What’s going on? Agent Williams keeps sending me these crazy messages telling me to come to the French Quarter, but don’t tell anyone. Are you in trouble?” You can’t miss the stress in his voice and I hate more than ever that we ran from him the other day.
“I’m at Ursuline. The third floor. Thomas is setting you up. It’s a trap to make it look like you’re a mole in your agency. Agent Williams is close by but his grandson is being held hostage. You’re not getting those messages from him, they’re from one of Thomas’s men. I can’t talk long. Please come get me!”
“I’m on my way!”
I end the call and go find Tyler.
He’s searching for something so I open a drawer and flip through the files. The problem is I don’t know what we’re looking for and I can’t get the images from the next room out of my mind. All I’ve found is church document after church document.
“Here it is,” Tyler says and I run to the cabinet where he’s standing.
“What is it?”
He drops down on the floor and spills the contents of a brown manila envelope. Four bundled stacks of hundred dollar bills, a handful of papers, and two passports are on the floor between us.
