The Bookstore on the Beach - Brenda Novak Page 0,10
in the end she might not have any say in it.
Secrets had a way of coming out.
“There you are!”
Mary turned to see Autumn trudging toward her and waved.
“Taylor and Caden are having a blast,” she said as soon as Autumn arrived and let her bag drop onto the sand. Sometimes Mary marveled at the banal things that came out of her mouth when there was so much more going on inside her head.
Autumn slid her sunglasses higher on the bridge of her nose as she turned to watch her children out in the waves. “For once they’re not fighting.” Pulling a towel from her bag, she prepared a spot where she could sit down. “Sorry it took me so long to get here. That private investigator I hired in Ukraine called.”
“Did he have any news?”
“Not really. Just more of the same. He’s found someone who might’ve seen Nick. He’s taking more pictures to show this contact or that contact. A friend in the government might be able to help. He’s managed to speak to the person he told me about last time, so we can at least cross one more potential lead off the list. That’s all I ever get.”
Mary could see why she’d be discouraged. “He has to be methodical, I suppose.”
“That’s true, but it’s been so long. Is this investigator doing anything that will make a difference?”
“Who can say?”
It was difficult to watch her daughter suffer. For a long time, Autumn had been so intent on finding Nick that Mary could scarcely reach her. She was up night and day, always on the internet or the telephone, trying to get more information, to push the government to help her, to speak to people who might have more power, to circulate his picture around various groups in Ukraine, to find someone over there who might be capable and willing to look into his disappearance. It terrified Mary to think that Autumn’s efforts might draw the attention of the wrong sort of person or persons. What if Nick had indeed infiltrated a terrorist group, and they were so bothered by Autumn’s dogged efforts to track him down that they decided to put a stop to her nosing around—by putting a stop to her?
When Mary mentioned the possibility to Laurie, Laurie had said she shouldn’t let her imagination run away with her. The odds of something that terrible happening were one in a million.
But Mary didn’t care how remote the chance might be. The odds of what’d happened to her were just as slim—and yet she’d been that one in a million.
“Do you trust him?” Mary asked.
“I did at first. He’s the one who gave me that fuzzy photograph taken by a security camera at the airport in Kyiv, remember? That was how I knew Nick made his flight and landed in Ukraine, which was huge.”
Mary remembered. Autumn had made a big deal of that picture, calling out the FBI on social media, claiming they were trying to sweep her husband’s disappearance under the rug. His “handler” had finally reached out and admitted that Nick had been doing a few “low level” things for the bureau but only online. They wanted her to accept that he’d gone to Ukraine on his own and pipe down, but she kept saying she couldn’t believe he’d do that—not without telling her he was going out of the country.
“Isn’t there something more that could be done to track Nick’s cell phone?” Mary asked. “I know I’ve asked before, but they can do so much more now than they could even a year ago. I see it all the time on those forensic shows.”
“His cell phone should’ve yielded more information,” Autumn replied. “Believe it or not, if it were an older model, it would’ve had a baseband processor that powers up every ten minutes or so to retrieve text messages—although not phone calls—and I would’ve had a chance.”
“But he didn’t have an older model.”
“Of course not. He relied on his phone a great deal, always had the latest and greatest. He loves—” she frowned and cleared her throat “—loved technology.”
“But most people have new technology these days. And I’ve read about the NSA being able to track cell phones, even when they’re turned off.”
“The new phones have a unibody design where the battery can’t be removed,” she explained. “As long as there’s a battery, a phone can be tracked even when it’s turned off.” She grimaced. “But only if it’s infected with Trojans. According to everything