Which shouldn’t surprise him. When it comes to Trina’s life story, bluebird isn’t the most secret of passwords. How many times did he sit in the audience and listen to her tell that story about the bird flying out of her hands right as the SWAT team exploded out of the woods?
He’s not willing to jettison the rest of his guess—not yet. He refuses to believe Trina has let go of her birth mother, and that’s part of her problem, her inability to see her mother’s death as a necessary sacrifice, a fundamental aspect of her rebirth. When it comes to the code, he just needs a word, a token, a thing from her more recent, and more secret, past. The life she made for herself after she legally changed her name and disappeared from that town in California where her grandmother’s friends had threatened to beat him to a pulp if he ever came back again.
He consults the list.
Altamira, Luanne (grandmother), Bayard Rock (Altamira landmark, used to visit with grandmother on her walks), Fisher Pit (copper mine near her house, closed 1986).
While he’s sure Bayard Rock is probably the most meaningful item on the list, it’s not exactly secret, a local landmark in a town where she’d lived while she was still Trina. And Fisher Pit, which is just up the road, isn’t exactly the most covert, either.
He should just wait. He should just wait until her headlights appear out of the darkness and then slip in through the reinforced-steel garage door as soon as she opens it. It won’t be the easiest maneuver, but it’s doable.
But where would he hide until then? There are no trees close to the house. There’s pretty much nothing close to the house. The nearest arroyo, where he hid his car, is a fifteen-minute walk if he moves at a clip, way too far for him to make it through the garage door before it closes. And that’s the idea, isn’t it. Nothing but wide-open desert on all sides of the house, no obstructions, easily surveyed with the night vision cameras she’s got attached to her security system.
I have to get in, he tells himself. If this is meant to be, then I’ll be able to get in.
While his gut tells him Fisher Pit is probably the basis of her code, he doubts she used a name that could be easily found on a map of the surrounding area. So he goes for the year it closed and adds it to his previous string of digits; 1986474.
A single beep. Access Granted.
The flood of adrenaline makes him dizzy at first, then breathless with elation.
He almost forgets to follow the Savior’s next instruction, which is to pass the code along if he cracks it. He has, and he does. He’s proud of how it looks on the burner phone’s screen next to all the nervous preparatory texts they’ve exchanged over the past few hours. A task completed, a goal met.
In another few seconds, he’s crossed the courtyard and slipped inside the house. She’s left the air-conditioning on, a necessity even in October, and the cool air kisses his skin in an undeniably welcoming way. He’s in. And just as he expected, a few minutes later, the locks all click shut behind him, the sounds a confirmation of his speed and smarts.
Not just that. But his destiny as well. Their destiny.
Now he just needs to find her guns.
4
“Describe them to me,” Dylan says.
“I can’t. The dreams are too vague,” Charlotte answers.
“Can you remember any of them?”
“Not really. It’s more like I wake up with an awareness that they were bad. Or that I was being chased.”
“Dreams are funny things.”
“These dreams aren’t funny. I mean, I don’t wake up laughing.”
“Figure of speech,” he says. “Forgive me. What I mean is that most neuroscientists believe dreams don’t actually have a chronology when we’re in them. When we’re asleep, we’re not tuned in to the type of physical stimuli our bodies use to detect the passage of time.”
“So what does that mean?” she asks.
“It means our brains have been firing a stream of random images at us and our waking minds instinctively place them in a coherent order. A narrative that makes sense to us.”
“So dreams have less to do with our subconscious and more to do with our mental state when we wake up? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Actually, I’m trying to get you to describe your dreams over the past two weeks.”
“I can barely remember them. I just wake up sweating and with a sense of anxiety and dread. Like someone’s in the house with me.”
“Is Jason Briffel in them?”
She shoots him dagger eyes before she can stop herself. He shakes his head. “Sorry. Your stalker, is he in any of the—”
“Like I said, they’re vague. They’re more like . . . I don’t know . . . swirls of feelings.”
“Swirls of feelings. That’s an interesting description.”
“Is it?”
“What about the other agreements that you’ve made with yourself? How have those gone?”
“Other agreements?”
“The Mask Maker. It was very upsetting when you first read about it. We agreed you’d make an effort to avoid anything further about the case.”
“Have they found another body?” she asks.
“I feel like this is your way of maybe answering my question.”
“Because if I’d broken my agreement, I’d know whether or not they’d found another body.”
She smiles. He smiles back.
“So maybe you’re answering my question. Or maybe you’re using me to get around the agreement you made with yourself.”
He smiles again. She smiles back.
“Does that mean you’re not going to tell me?”
“Well, if you remember correctly, they didn’t find a body. They found a face.”
“I remember. And if they haven’t found another one, then it’s not a serial.”
“That’s not what you felt when you first read about it. You thought the gruesomeness of the crime, the fact that the face was displayed in public like some kind of mask meant—”
“Maybe it’s a mafia hit. Isn’t there a lot of Russian mafia in LA?”
“The police don’t seem to think so.”
“That it’s a hit, or that there’s a lot of Russian mafia in LA?”
“Charley. We’re off the point.”
“There’s a point?”
“There hasn’t been a high-profile serial predator like this in a while.”
“You mean a good reason for me to avoid all news everywhere.”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“So they did find another face?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not the point.”
“Again. What is the point, Dylan?”
He bows his head, closes his mouth, as if he’s reconsidering his initial response. For a long while, there’s just silence and the low murmur of the AA meeting downstairs. Occasionally a motorcycle backfires in the street below, probably snarled in the little knot of traffic that always develops around that crosswalk they just installed between the movie theater and the new ice-cream parlor next door to the center.
“So it’s not the movie,” she says, trying to control her anger. “It’s that I’m not over those letters from Jas—my stalker. It’s this Mask Maker psycho. I mean, I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“I’m saying it’s all of them. I’m saying the number of potential triggers in your life is expanding by the day, and it’s expanding because you’re on too fragile a foundation. You live in isolation. You have no meaningful friendships—”
“That’s not true. I have Kayla.”
“I’m not including the lawyer who helped you sue your father. That’s a business relationship. And she lives in San Francisco.”
“We talk once a week.”
“You’ve got all your grandmother’s friends back in Altamira, and you’ve been to visit them how many times?”
“That one’s hard.”
“Why?”
“Because my grandmother’s still dead.”
“She’s still dead whether you visit her friends or not.”
“Jesus, Dylan.”
“You need a breath, Charlotte.”
“Well, I’m not going to get it talking to you right now. And what happened to the bridge? I thought I needed a bridge. What? Are we building a whole city here?”
“You need something that’s going to reduce your anxiety levels so that you can start acting contrary to your instincts right now.”
“And what are my instincts right now?”
“To isolate, self-obsess, and convince yourself of things about yourself that aren’t true.”