Reel nodded at this but said nothing. Her mind was evidently elsewhere. Then she said, “The text to this Sally Fontaine. What did it say?”
Vance shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“It’s apparently written in code. At least it made no sense to any of us.”
“Can we see it?” asked Robie after Reel gave him a sharp look.
“Why, are you guys codebreakers?”
“I’ve got some experience with it,” said Robie.
“Well, I guess it can’t hurt.”
Vance made a call and about fifteen minutes later one of her agents brought her a written copy of the text. The phone itself was already tagged and bagged and in the Bureau’s evidence truck.
Reel glanced at the paper but showed no reaction.
Robie said, “We’ll take a look at this and get back to you with anything we might have.”
“So, you two are a team again?” asked Vance.
“Of sorts,” answered Reel.
“How about that,” said Vance without a trace of enthusiasm.
Robie said hurriedly, “We’ll be in touch.”
He took Reel by the elbow and turned her away from Vance, ushering her down the street. He looked back once to see Vance staring at them.
Reel did not speak until they got back to the car.
They climbed in and she held up the paper.
“Sally Fontaine,” said Robie.
“They took her because of me,” said Reel, and her voice trembled as she said this.
“You couldn’t have known, Jessica.”
“The hell I couldn’t. It was a setup, Robie, clear and simple.”
“Your father?”
“Wanting me to come and see him so he could say goodbye? What bullshit. Was I a damn idiot?” She slammed her fist against the dashboard. “Shit!” she screamed in fury.
“He was dying all alone in a prison he’d been in for twenty years. Not the sort of guy you worry about.”
She held up the page again. “He wasn’t alone, Robie. He got me down there for a reason.” She added dully, “And this tells me why.”
“You can read that code?”
“I helped invent this code.”
He looked at her, stunned. “What?”
“When I was a teenager and working undercover for the FBI.”
“You mean when you’d infiltrated the neo-Nazi group?”
She nodded. “The neo-Nazis needed a safe way to communicate. I helped them come up with this communication protocol. Only they didn’t know I was feeding it to the Bureau at the same time.”
“So this is the same group? I thought they’d been arrested.”
“That was almost twenty years ago, Robie. Many of them are out now.”
“So they used your old man to get to you.”
She gave a hollow laugh. “It was probably his idea, not theirs.”
“So what does it say?”
Reel placed her hand over her eyes.
“Jessica, what does it say?”
She removed her hand and looked at him. “It’s a choice, Robie. It’s an ultimatum.”
“What ultimatum?”
“They’ll release Julie unharmed.”
“And what do they want in return? You? As revenge all these years later?”
“Partly.”
“Partly? What else, then?”
Reel gave a little gasp and Robie saw tears flicker across her eyes.
She composed herself and said, “They want my child.”
Chapter
38
ROBIE PULLED THE CAR TO the curb and cut the engine. He turned sideways in his seat to look at her.
“Your child? You have a kid?”
“She’s grown now. I was only seventeen when I had her.”
“I didn’t know about that.”
“It’s not part of my ‘official’ file. But the doctor who examined me back at the Burner knew.”
“How?”
“I had to have a caesarean. She could tell by the scar.”
“But how would these Nazi wannabes know anything about this?”
Reel wiped her eyes. “Because their leader is the father of my child.”
Robie’s features betrayed his astonishment at this admission.
She looked at him and noted this. “He raped me, Robie. It was not consensual. I was only sixteen. I carried the child and gave birth to her three days after the FBI came down on the group. They went to prison. I went into WITSEC.”
“And the baby?”
“I had to give her up. They said I had to.”
“Who did?”
“The powers that be, Robie. I was seventeen. I was in Witness Protection. I was moved around six times in less than a year. I had to testify against these scum. And I did.” She snapped, “You can’t exactly raise a kid with all that going on, can you? I could take care of myself. What I couldn’t take care of was an infant.”
“So it was your choice, to give her up?”
“I told you, I didn’t have a choice.”
“But if you’d had one?”
“What does it matter? I gave her up.”
“You said the leader of the neo-Nazi group is the father. He raped you.”