Page 104 of The Chain

“Maybe I should call. I don’t think anyone at The Chain knows my voice. If it’s a trap, I mean.”

“I’ll disguise my voice. I’ll do my grandmother’s accent.”

Pete gets the bag of burner phones from the closet and they select one at random and go onto the deck so as not to wake Kylie. Pete looks at the clock. It’s only six thirty in the morning. “Too early to call someone?”

“I want to call before Kylie gets up.”

Pete nods. He doesn’t like any of this but it’s Rachel’s show and he just has to go along with it. She dials the number.

A male voice answers immediately: “Hello?”

“I’m callink about ze ad in ze paper,” Rachel replies in an approximation of her grandmother’s Polish accent.

“What about it?” the man asks.

“I’ve been having trouble vith a chain and I vas vondering if you vere having ze same trouble and vhether ve could help each other,” Rachel says.

There is a significant pause on the phone.

“Are you the one who wrote the blog?” he asks in a deep baritone that also has a tinge of a foreign accent to it.

“Yes.”

Another long pause.

“I don’t know if I can trust you. And you should be wary about trusting me. Don’t give out any personal information at all, OK?” he says.

“OK.”

“They could be listening. In fact, they could be you. Or me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really understand? The danger is real.”

“I know. I’ve seen it up close,” Rachel says, kind of abandoning the accent now.

A few seconds pass. Then: “Since you’re calling yourself Ariadne, you can call me Theseus. Perhaps we shall go into the labyrinth together.”

“Yes.”

“I hope you are not a fool, Ariadne. Your blog was foolish. This call was foolish.”

“I don’t think I’m a fool. I’m just someone who wants to put a stop to this.”

“That is ambitious. What makes you think you can stop this entity?”

She looks at Pete. “I’ve figured out a few things.”

“Have you indeed? All right, Ariadne, this is what I want you to do. Go to Logan Airport today at noon. Buy a domestic ticket going anywhere that departs from terminal A. Go through security and wait in the departures lounge. I have the number of this phone. Bring it with you. I may call you; I may not. Trust no one, least of all me. Recall that one builds a labyrinth not to hide but to lie in wait.”

The line goes dead.

“Well?” Pete asks.

“I’m going.”

“Trust no one. Not even him.”