Chapter 8: What Margaret Already Knew
Carver was in the monitoring room at six in the morning when Mom knocked on the door.
I was behind her, still in the borrowed clothes, having not slept more than an hour.
He opened the door fully and stepped back to let us in.
Two other agents were seated at the screens — satellite maps, call logs, a frozen image from a security camera outside what looked like an apartment building.
Mom looked at the frozen image.
"Is that her?"
"Taken at 11:47 last night," Carver said.
"Margaret Reese left her apartment forty minutes after we executed the warrant on your location.
She got into a car registered to a shell company linked to her father's network.
We lost her at the highway interchange."
"She's running," Mom said.
"Or she's meeting someone." Carver turned to the agent at the nearest screen.
"Pull up the school records."
The agent brought up a document.
Volunteer registration form.
Photo ID.
The name on it was Patricia Hollis.
"False credentials," Carver said.
"But the face matches.
She signed in at your daughter's school on three separate occasions over the past six weeks."
"Three?" I said.
He looked at me.
"Do you remember the other two times?"
I thought about it.
"There was a woman at the book fair.
And once in the parking lot after school — she was talking to another parent.
I didn't think anything of it."
"She was building familiarity," Carver said.
"Making herself part of the background so you wouldn't remember her specifically."
Mom looked at the photograph on the screen.
She looked at it for a long time without speaking.
"She knows about Emily," Mom said.
"We believe so."
"Not just that I have a daughter.
She knows Emily is mine.
She knows her face, her school, her routine."
"Yes."
Mom turned away from the screen.
Her jaw was set.
"Then this is not over when Reese goes to trial.
This is over when Margaret is in custody."
"We're actively —"
"Don't tell me what you're actively doing." She turned back to face Carver directly.
"I gave you testimony that could have put Dominic Reese away for three consecutive life sentences twelve years ago.
I gave up my name, my brother, my city, my entire life before thirty years old.
I watched my marriage become a lie and then become a betrayal.
And now his daughter is standing in my daughter's school." She paused.
"What are you going to do?"
The room was quiet.
The two agents at the screens were very carefully looking at their screens.
Carver met her gaze.
"We're going to finish it."
"How?"
"Reese will be formally charged this morning.
His attorney has already been in contact with the prosecutor about a cooperation agreement, which tells us Reese is afraid of something.
That something is likely Margaret — he knows if she's loose and he's inside, she controls what happens to his remaining assets and contacts.
He will give her up."
"And if she moves before he does?"
"We have alerts on every identity we've linked to her network.
Every credit line, every vehicle registration, every phone number from the past three years." Carver paused.
"And we have something else."
He nodded to the agent at the second screen.
A new document appeared.
A photograph — not a surveillance image but a clear, close photograph.
A man in his forties at a restaurant table, leaning toward a woman across from him, one hand over hers.
The woman was Margaret Reese.
"Who is he?" Mom asked.
"His name is Arthur Greer.
He's a mid-level contact in the network.
But more importantly —" Carver paused — "he contacted our office at four-thirty this morning.
He wants a deal.
He says he knows exactly where Margaret is going."
Mom stared at the photograph.
"He was with her last night?" she asked.
"Until nine p.m.
They had dinner.
Then she went home and he went to a payphone and called us."
"He turned on her."
"He turned on her," Carver confirmed.
Mom was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "How long before you have her?"
Carver looked at the screen.
"If Greer's information is accurate — and we have enough corroborating detail to believe it is —" he glanced at his watch — "we should have a location confirmed within the next two hours."
I had been standing very still through all of this.
Now I spoke.
"And then it's really over?"
Carver looked at me.
He didn't give me a quick reassurance.
He thought about it honestly, the way I was starting to understand he always did.
May you like
"Then the part that's been chasing you is over," he said.
"What comes after that is yours to build."
