“Yes!” The picture. God. “In Charlotte’s flat, I didn’t find a black pen but I found colored pens—red, green, sparkly purple. And highlighters, in yellow, orange and blue. The same as in the picture.”
“Maybe the kid who drew it came to her house, used her stationery.” He tossed her the sanitizer. “In a minute I’m going to need help with these strips.”
“It’s not just that,” she said, cleaning her hands while he opened another sealed packet—white suture strips on a paper backing, like small plasters. “The picture—it’s not a random kid’s drawing. It shows a scene from one of the worlds in ‘Cosmos’—that’s the game we were obsessed by, the game the three of us used to play.”
“The game you aced at four in the morning.”
“Last time I saw Charlotte, we played it. This world has rolling green hills and a blue sky and a yellow field with red flowers. Those fields and hills...” She gestured out the window. The smear where she’d wiped had faded into the film of water. “Well, not that you can see them now but they lit something in my brain. Only I didn’t...”
“You didn’t trust your instincts.”
“Just now it all clicked.”
“You think Charlotte drew the picture? A message for you?”
“Maybe. We didn’t have a house in our game as it does in the picture but it’s the kind of game where you can build things, like an early ‘Minecraft.’”
“Ah, interesting. Hate to interrupt your very promising train of thought but I need your conscious and subconscious minds to work together for a bit. If I hold the wound closed, can you press the strips on? Start in the middle.”
Applying the strips was quick and easy, even with her mind on the picture. Especially with her mind on the picture. As he dressed the wound, occasionally borrowing her hand to hold things in place, she downloaded “Cosmos” onto his phone, logged on and loaded the game she and Charlotte had last played on that giggly day before their lives imploded.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, staring down at the screen.
“What’s up?”
“This is weird. Last time I saw Charlotte, two years ago, we played this game. The three of us hadn’t logged in for years, and I haven’t logged in since. But now there are four players.” She brought up the game history. “What the hell...? Latif played the day before he died. We were in hiding. We were supposed to be totally offline while Tess fact-checked the documents he’d stolen. And he was playing ‘Cosmos’ with Charlotte—without telling me? Why take such a risk for a stupid game? And he added this fourth person—Erebus—a few months before that.” She scrolled down. Jamie gathered the trash into a plastic bag and scooted along the back seat to watch over her shoulder. “The three of them have been playing it ever since. Charlotte was last on it three days ago and this person was on it...overnight.” She stared at Jamie, her mouth dropping open.
“So...they’ve been playing a game. How is this significant?”
“They haven’t been spending enough time on it to properly play—a minute or two here and there, look. It’s not a quick round of ‘Pac-Man.’ It’s the kind of game you only play if you have half an hour to spare, at least.Thisis how Latif was communicating—with Charlotte, and with this other person. I suspected he was still in touch with someone while we were in hiding but he denied it. I thought I was being paranoid.”
“Your instinct was right.”
“Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he include me?”
Jamie retrieved his sweater from the footwell and pulled it on. “Perhaps he was protecting you. He didn’t want you to freak out.”
“Better freaking out about that than freaking out one night when you wake to find him gone, and freaking out again when you hear about civilian casualties in a drone attack and freaking out when his name is confirmed and...and...freaking out again when you see this.” She jabbed a hand at the screen, her eyes stinging. “Despite what you might believe of me—what he believed—I don’t need protecting from the truth.”
“That’s not what I meant. I—”
“The truth I can deal with. It’s lies and deception I have a problem with—and people shooting at me.Thatyou can protect me from, anytime you wish. But...” She exhaled shakily. Jamie put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in. “Damn him. What was he up to?”
“This Erebus person...could it be Tess?”
“She would have mentioned it—and Erebus has been on the game since her arrest. And Tess was the one who’d warned us to stay offline. She was as surprised as me that Latif left our hiding place.”
“Who else might he have been in contact with?”
“Oh my God. Tess said...” She tapped the phone with a fingernail. “That’sit.”
“What is?”
“Tess found out that just before Latif’s death he’d been in contact with someone at Denniston Corp—the military contractor he used to work for, the one Hyland used to own, the one that went bust after Tess’s story on its terrorism connections last year.”
“Yes. The one Hyland’s being investigated over—wasbeing investigated over.”
“Latif used to work there until he turned whistle-blower for Tess. She couldn’t figure out who he was in contact with before he died or how but we know he was trying to track down more evidence—the evidence to bring down Hyland, for good. They must have been communicating on here. This contact, and Latif and Charlotte.”
