like this. If Adam was clueless as to what Paul was really involved in, then he’d be much more likely to help Claire if she didn’t look like a homeless person. She washed her face, and then quickly took a whore’s bath. The underwear Helen had bought came up past Claire’s belly button, but she was in no position to complain.
She slicked back her hair with water, then fingered it into a soft wave to dry. There was make-up in her purse. Foundation. Concealer. Eye shadow. Blush. Powder. Mascara. Eyeliner. She winced as she patted her finger around the bruise. The pain was worth it, because she felt like she was slowly coming back to herself.
The hour and a half of sleep had probably helped more than the ninety-dollar concealer. She felt her thoughts whirring back awake. She remembered the question she had told Nolan he needed to ask: Why was Paul sticking around?
He wanted the USB drive. Claire was not so narcissistic to think that her husband was waiting around for her. Paul was a survivor. He was risking his safety in order to get the USB drive, and he was telling Claire the things he thought she wanted to hear because keeping her onside was the best way to get it.
Saying he loved her was the carrot. Lydia was the stick.
Nolan thought that Paul was offering evidence of the masked man’s identity, but Claire knew that Paul wasn’t going to give the FBI evidence against himself. So what did that leave? What information could be on the drive that was so valuable that Paul was risking his freedom?
“His customer list,” Claire told her reflection. It was the only thing that made sense. On the phone yesterday, Paul had claimed he got into the family business because he needed tuition. Setting aside that he had graduated years ago, what kind of money were people willing to pay to watch his movies? And just how many names were on his customer list?
Gerald Scott’s VHS collection went back at least twenty-four years. There were at least one hundred videotapes in the garage. The archived equipment on the metal shelves pointed to various other means of duplication. Floppy drives for photographs. DVDs for movies. The super Mac to upload edited footage to the Internet. There had to be an international component. Paul had taken Claire to Germany and Holland more times than she could count. He’d said he was going to conferences during the day, but she had no way of knowing exactly what he did with his time.
Paul couldn’t be the only man in this business, but if she knew her husband, he was the best. He would franchise the concept to other men in other parts of the world. He would demand top dollar. He would control every aspect of the market.
So long as he had his client list, Paul could operate the business from anywhere in the world.
The bathroom door opened. Two young girls came in. They were giggling and happy and carrying large Starbucks cups filled with sugary, iced concoctions.
Claire drained the water from the sink. She checked her makeup. The bruise still showed in a certain light, but she could easily explain the damage. Adam had seen her at the funeral. He knew that her cheek was scraped.
The lobby was filled with travelers in search of breakfast. Claire looked for Jacob Mayhew and Harvey Falke, but they were nowhere in sight. She knew from movies that FBI agents tended to wear earbuds, so she scanned the ears of all the single men in the vicinity. And then she looked at the women, because women were in the FBI, too. Claire was fairly certain that she was looking at tourists and businesspeople because they were all vastly out of shape and she assumed you had to be fit to work for the FBI.
Her refreshed brain easily jumped to the next conclusion: No one had found her in the Hyatt, which meant that Paul had not given them her location, which meant that Paul was not working with Jacob Mayhew or the FBI, which meant that by extension, he was not working with Johnny Jackson.
Probably.
A quick look outside the hotel revealed that the light mist had turned into a steady rain. Claire went up one floor and took the skybridge, which was part of an eighteen-building, ten-block project to help tourists navigate the convention corridor without passing out in the sweltering summer heat.