Page 40 of Nine Lives

10

Wednesday, September 21, 3:03 p.m.

Fischer had been in his car for the majority of the day, systematically working his way south from Rockland, checking every small coastal village, every side road, every dead end, for any sign of Jessica Winslow or her car.

He was beginning to worry that whoever had tailed her as she fled to Maine, then lost her south of Rockland, might have truly lost her. If she’d continued to head north, and the tail had missed her on Route 1, then she could be anywhere. She could be in Canada for all he knew. And if that was the case, then Fischer was going to need either a miracle or some outside help to locate her.

But for now, he was operating on the assumption that she had turned off Route 1 somewhere between Damariscotta and Rockland. He was in Damariscotta now, sitting in his parked car, studying a map he’d bought at a general store called Renys, when his cell phone rang. It was Brandon.

“Hey,” Fischer said.

“Hey. Any luck?”

“No, nothing.”

“It’s possible I have something,” Brandon said.

“Please tell me.”

“It might be nothing, but I’ve compiled a list of all of Jessica Winslow’s contacts from her defunct Facebook page, plus also her LinkedIn page that she doesn’t use anymore, and I even managed to scrape a few names from her old Friendster account. I’ve been going through the social media accounts of everyone on that list, and one of her contacts, a Gwen Murphy, who was in her graduating class at college, has an Instagram account. Murphy lives in Boston now but there are a lot of pictures of Maine on her feed. Looks as though she has a house there. The majority of the pictures are from Port Clyde, which is a village—”

“On St. George Peninsula.”

“That’s right. You’ve been there already, I take it,” Brandon said.

“I have but I’ll go back and give it a second look.”

“It’s not much but I thought I’d report it.”

Fischer started his car, very happy to have a lead, even if it turned out to amount to nothing. All along he had thought that Jessica Winslow might have borrowed a summer place that belonged to one of her friends. It made sense. And maybe Gwen Murphy was that friend. He turned off the main road back onto the peninsula, passing through the now-familiar landscape of rolling meadows and early fall color and low afternoon light. It was nice here, in Maine, and he’d already been starting to think about taking the family on a vacation, maybe next summer. They usually rented a house in the Smoky Mountains, but Maine would be a nice change of pace. Being close to the ocean did remind him of his shitty childhood in Florida, but he could get over it. Besides, his youngest daughter, like him, loved any kind of seafood.

When he reached the outskirts of Port Clyde, Fischer slowed down so that he could look at all the cars in the driveways. He drove toward the lighthouse again, wanting to get a look at it when the fog wasn’t so thick. He parked and got out of the car. He was amazed how many islands were visible, some not too far from the shore. The water was speckled with lobster buoys, catching the remaining light in the day. He wanted to stay for a while, just take it all in, but got back in his car and drove into the center of the village, looking for any side streets he hadn’t tried yet. The first left heading northwest from the general store was Horse Point Road, and he turned down it. The road rose slightly to provide expansive views of the harbor, and several of the quaint shingled cottages had signs out front, advertising themselves as rental properties.

About three-quarters of a mile down the road Fischer spotted a white Camry parked in front of a two-story gray house with blue trim. He slowed, just long enough to confirm that the license plate was correct, that it was Jessica Winslow’s car.

He’d found her.

A small surge of excitement coursed through him, prickling the back of his neck. But as he scanned the house before turning back to the road, he caught a glimpse of a figure in a first-floor window, looking out toward him.

He’d been spotted, as well.

Horse Point Road was a dead end, and he turned around slowly. He considered for a brief moment pulling into the driveway of the house that Jessica Winslow was hiding in, busting down the front door, and taking her in the house, but it would be foolish on so many levels. She was an FBI agent and would almost certainly have a gun. And even if he got the drop on her there would be no way he could make her death painless, and that was one of the instructions from his client.

He drove back down the road, not turning his head to look at either the car or the cottage. Maybe there was a chance that she simply thought he’d come down a dead-end road by accident.

11

Wednesday, September 21, 4:22 p.m.

Jessica Winslow was on the phone with her father when she spotted the gray Chevy Equinox slow down in front of her house. Inside the car, the man—although she supposed it could have been a woman—turned his head to look at her car. He wore a baseball cap but that was all that she could see.

Her road was a dead end so she told her dad she’d call him right back, and raced upstairs to the guest bedroom, grabbing the pair of fancy binoculars that she’d spotted on the top of a bookshelf earlier. She went to the master bedroom, put a desk chair in front of one of the two front-facing windows, and adjusted the focus on the binoculars. She only had to wait about thirty seconds before the car, not slowing down this time, cruised past the house. She got a good look at the license plate, but it was smeared with mud, and all she could make out was the number 3 and maybe an L.

The fact that the plate number was obscured, intentionally, meant that she’d been found. A combination of fear and triumph surged through her. He was so close. And how had he managed it? She assumed that she’d been followed from Albany, or possibly her phone conversation with Gwen had been tapped, although how that was possible she had no idea. And if she had been followed here, then it must have been a multi-car job. She hadn’t spotted anything.

She did wonder if the person in the car was the architect behind the list, or merely some employee. Maybe someone sent to kill her, or maybe someone just sent to find her. Her whole body hummed with what felt like electricity, and she went and got her handgun—the Glock 27—just to have it near her.

She was trying to decide what to do next when she remembered that she needed to call her father back, if only because she had told him that she would. When she’d asked him about Arthur Kruse there’d been a long silence, followed by his asking if Arthur was someone he should know.

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