Chapter 6: Someone Was Still Watching
I handed the phone to Carver without a word.
He read the message once, then read it again, his expression not changing.
He turned to the agent by the door.
"Get me a trace on this number right now."
The agent stepped outside with his radio.
Mom was on her feet.
"What is it?"
Carver turned the phone screen toward her.
She read it.
I watched the color leave her face — not in a dramatic way, just a slow draining, like water going out of a basin.
"He has someone on the outside," she said.
"We're working on the assumption that yes, there is at least one additional contact," Carver said.
"That's why we're not leaving you here tonight."
"I told you eleven months ago there were at least three people feeding him information —"
"I know what you told us, Sarah."
"And you believed it was just Ethan." Her voice was controlled but her hands weren't.
She pressed them flat against the kitchen table.
"You narrowed the operation and you left a gap and now someone is texting my daughter."
The room was very quiet.
Carver set the phone down on the table carefully.
"You're right.
And I'm not going to argue with you about it right now.
What I'm going to do is get you and Emily out of this house in the next fifteen minutes."
"Where?"
"A Bureau residence.
Two agents on site at all times.
No external communication until we assess the number."
"And Reese?"
"Still in custody.
This message may be automated — something triggered by his arrest, set up in advance.
We don't know yet."
Mom stared at him.
"Or it means whoever sent it doesn't know he's been arrested.
Which means they're still active and still following instructions."
Carver didn't respond to that.
Which was its own kind of answer.
I sat on the couch with the hot chocolate going cold in my hands.
Denise was packing a small bag from the items Carver had listed — documents from the kitchen drawer Mom had told her about, the two framed photographs from the bookshelf, the orange prescription bottles from the bathroom cabinet.
I watched her take the photographs down and thought about how they'd hung in the same spot my entire life.
One of me at age four in a yellow raincoat, standing in a puddle.
One of Mom and Dad on what I'd always been told was their first anniversary.
Denise caught me looking.
She said nothing.
Just wrapped the frames carefully in a dish towel and placed them in the bag.
I looked at the one of Mom and Dad for a moment before it disappeared into the cloth.
He was smiling in it.
She was too.
I turned away.
Carver crouched in front of me so we were at eye level.
"Emily, I need you to do one more thing for me."
"Okay."
"I need you to think very carefully.
Has anyone else come to the house?
Not just the man with the water company story.
Anyone who spoke to you directly.
Anywhere — school, a shop, the park."
I thought about it seriously, the way he was asking me to.
Then I remembered.
"There was a woman," I said slowly.
"She came to my school.
About five weeks ago.
She said she was a volunteer for the reading program."
Carver went very still.
"She gave me a book," I said.
"She said it was for students who loved to read.
She wrote something in the front cover."
"Where is the book now?"
"In my backpack."
Carver stood immediately.
"Where's the backpack?"
"By the front door.
I dropped it when —" I stopped.
When Dad h*t me.
I didn't finish the sentence.
Carver crossed the room in four steps.
He picked up my backpack without unzipping it and handed it directly to the agent who had just come back inside from the street.
"Full sweep," he said.
"Don't open it in here."
The agent went back outside.
Mom appeared in the kitchen doorway.
She had heard.
Her face had gone very careful.
"What did the woman look like?" Carver asked me.
"Brown hair.
She was maybe forty.
She had a name tag but I can't remember the name on it.
She smiled a lot."
"Did she ask you anything?"
"She asked me what grade I was in.
She asked me if I liked school." I paused.
"She asked me what my dad did for work."
Mom pressed one hand over her mouth.
Carver looked at her.
"Sarah.
May you like
We need to go.
Right now."
