Page 90 of Lies He Told Me

“Keep your eye on the prize,” says Blair. “Money first, revenge second.”

NINETY-FIVE

FIRST STEP OF THE plan: blast this audio file.

I pull up my email at the computer station and run into a username-password prompt. I remember my username but not my password. On my laptop at home, I’m never asked.

I have an option forForgot your password?I click on it, my heart racing. Now that I have a plan, I can’t wait to execute it.

It says it will send a password reset to my phone. But my phone — I can’t turn it on. If I activate it, Blair can find me. The feds use that real-time cell-site location capability all the time.

I breathe out. This is the only email I have.

I try passwords I’ve used:Dietrich0414, my maiden name and birthday.MDB0414, with my married-name initials.GraceLincoln343, with our street address on Cedar.

No, no, and no. And it’s telling me that with one more wrong password, I’m locked out.

“Shit,” I mumble through gritted teeth.

Fine. No choice. I need my email server to send me a new link. And it will only send it to my cell phone. So here goes.

I turn on my cell phone and wait for it to awaken. It lights up and shows me a screen saver of the kids and David lying in the grass and hugging.

It takes a moment to refresh, makes me type in my phone password to open it.

C’mon, c’mon, c’mon …

Then the text messages kick in, several of them. I go straight to the one my email provider sent me. I click on it to reset my email password. It opens to a new page. I type in the new password and press a button. There.

Then I shut off my phone immediately. And pray it didn’t ping a cell tower in the roughly forty-five seconds it was turned on.

NINETY-SIX

“IT KICKS OFF A range from the cell-tower ping, an approximate area,” Blair says into the phone. “It would — just tell me where you are, Silas. Find some address and tell me where exactly you are.”

Blair, pulled over on the side of I-57, listens as Silas reads him a street address.

“Shit, you’re right in the range!” he says. “She’s right there around you somewhere, within, like, a six-block radius!”

“Okay, but where?”

“I don’t know — you’re on a busy street. There can’t bethatmuch commerce. It’s not Chicago —”

“Right. I’m on the busiest street around here. By far.”

“Good. Then tell me what you see.”

“Shit, you want me to — okay. A laundromat, a Chinese restaurant, a yoga place, a something, I don’t know, whatever ‘screens and beans’ stands for —”

“Wait!” Blair shouts. “Screens and beans? That’s gotta mean — is that one of those internet places? Computers and coffee?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Go check it out. Now!”

Why didn’t Blair think of that before? She wants access to a computer. She can’t use her phone — she’s had it off this whole time, other than the forty-five seconds she used it for some reason. So she’s using a computer. Email?

“Okay, I double-parked, and I’m heading over.”

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