“You said you can help me with Annie and Skylar,” he says. “But—how do you know about Skylar? How can you possibly know about Annie, when even I haven’t seen her in months?”
“I know more than you think,” I tell him. “But before I answer your questions, I need you to answer mine. Where were you last night?”
“I was home! I’m always home, because there’s nowhere else for me to go!” he cries. “You don’t realize how much Annie controls my life. I can’t have friends, I can’t speak with my family; everyone I come into contact with is in danger. No matter how I try to explain this to you, there’s no way you can realize what she’s put me through! You wouldn’t believe me—nobody would ever believe me.” He loses it for just a second, his impatience bobbing to the surface, like the bodies of his former lovers from their watery graves.
He’s still gripping my arm, but then he realizes it and eases up a bit.
I stare at him, matching the intensity of his gaze. His glittering eyes, clenched jaw, and a worry vein that strikes his temple like a bolt of lightning.
Is this elusive Annie as powerful as he says, or is she another dead girl in his string of ill-fated lovers? How can one woman have a billionaire with all the resources, security, and power in the world running so scared? Or is he just that good a liar?
What’s the truth?
I look over my shoulder. I can see my brother’s house from here. The grass has been mowed recently. The only expense he doesn’t spare is what he needs to keep the place looking boring, tidy, and unremarkable. Nobody would know that there are shelves blocking the windows and doors. Or any of the things that the cheerful, tacky yellow curtains hide.
There was a time when bringing an outsider here wasunthinkable. But he’s dying, and all the rules are broken. This is the last big case of my vigilante career, he said. Crack the code, and I’ll be absolved of all my guilt. I’ll be able to live a normal life.
A “normal life” scares me more than anything, but in this moment, I hope he’s right.
I look to Bertram again. He’s patiently waiting for my reply, even though nervous energy is brimming off him.
“There really isn’t a violent bone in your body, is there?” I say.
“What? Of course not.”
I hesitate. “What if I say that I believe you—about Annie, and about everything?” I ask him. “But the proof I need to not feel like an idiot for trusting you is in one of these houses, and I have to go and get it.”
“You—believe me?” His face lights up with a desperate hope that makes me so sad, because I can see immediately that I’m the only one who’s spoken these words to him in a long time.
“Those police sirens were for me,” I say. “I’m being framed for murder. Or maybe I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, I know I’m innocent, and I need to prove thatyou’reinnocent, so I can trust you.”
“Murder?” he rasps. And then he releases my arm and takes a step back, rakes his fingers through his hair. “Oh God,” he says. “She’s killed someone.”
“Her, or my husband.” Saying the words out loud feels surreal.
Bertram doesn’t press for details. Maybe he realizes he’s in no position to scrutinize my situation, given the nuances of his own.
I make a decision—one I think Mr. X would approve of, but only because he’s not long for this world. I take Bertram’s hand and lead him to my brother’s house.
Bertram is tall, muscular, but lanky at the same time. It’s comical to see him climb in through the back entrance of my brother’s house and navigate the labyrinth of boxes and wires as we make our way upstairs.
“What was that?” he whispers, in response to a faint skittering sound.
“Probably a mouse,” I say.
He shudders.
I’ve come to admire how stalwart Bertram Casimir is, how stunningly adaptable. He doesn’t complain or grouse, and he doesn’t ask the glaring questions, like, “What the hell is this place?” and “What are we doing here?”
I realize now that this is why my instinct feels so correct. Someone like Bertram is well groomed and media trained. He can handle himself with aplomb in any interview, fromGood Morning Americato the most niche of tech podcasts. But the real test is how he carries himself when there are no interviewers, no public to dazzle. Just a woman who says she believes him, and a whole lot of wires.
He sits on the only chair at the kitchen table that isn’t covered with boxes of hard drives and old phones—everything from Nokias to iPhones to Androids. He doesn’t ask any more questions.
“Don’t touch anything,” I say, and he nods.
In the living room, I find what I’m looking for. The last time I visited my brother in the hospital, he told me thathe’d hacked into the security cameras at Bertram’s building. The videos upload to a custom cloud he created, in thirty-second segments. “It was just Ring cameras, if you can believe that,” he told me. “You’d think these big, swanky places would have some top-of-the-line, closed-circuit surveillance, but this is usually what we’re dealing with.”
I sit on the edge of a chair that’s covered with my brother’s things. I don’t let myself look around, because it will make me too sad, like I’m sitting in the center of his heart. He’s brilliant, and he should be out there somewhere, giving his own interviews like Bertram does, inventing world-changing technology, coding and programming for NASA.
