Page 57 of The Five Year Lie

Now he knows what people mean when they talk about chemistry. The connection between them is like a living, breathing thing. They don’t even make eye contact in the office, because they can’t exchange a glance that’s not preloaded with heat and meaning.

He keeps promising himself that he’ll break it off. And hewill. It’s only a matter of time before it’s out of his hands. He can’t be Drew Miller much longer. Settling the estate means reporting Ernie’s death to Social Security. But if he doesn’t settle it soon, the law will notice.

Ernie.Thinking of him hurts, too. His voice is still easy enough to conjure—those flat Maine vowels. His patient rasp.

Ernie, standing in the kitchen in a worn flannel shirt, teaching him how to cook fried eggs and bacon.

Ernie in the rowboat, demonstrating the right way to bait a hook.

Ernie shooting hoops in the alley, wearing combat boots and Nike shorts, tattoos fading on his fuzzy barrel chest.

Ernie grinning at his report card.You’re going places, kid. You watch and see.

He owes that man everything, and he means to pay up. That’s the point to all this mess. He’ll get vengeance for Amina and Ernie.The dirty cop will get what’s coming to him. And the whole world will know that Chime Co. has never made the world a safer place. It’s a company that helps gun-wielding stalkers intimidate young girls.

It will make a nice headline on the front page of theBoston Globe. Eventually. But so far the scoreboard is looking grim. He can’t find the LiveMatch system on the network. There’s exactly one directory with that name, and it’s empty. At least as far as he can tell.

After Ernie’s death—and before his accident—he nearly went crazy in Syria. He Skyped everyone he ever knew in Lowden, trying to find someone who could verify all the ugly things Ernie had told him about Omar’s and Amina’s trouble with the cops. There had to be somebody with direct knowledge of the abuse.

The best clue he got came from a high school buddy—Jerome—who was now a Lowden paramedic. Jerome knows some of the younger guys on the force, and he’d heard them talking about a surveillance system called LiveMatch. It let the cops follow anyone around town, from camera to camera.

“They brag about it,” he said. “And they don’t just follow the drug dealers. It’s kinda gross.”

Those same cops had told Jerome they were deep in bed with the Chime Co. law enforcement tools, too. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

But he can’t prove a thing. Yet. Nobody ever brings it up, and none of the log-ins he’s stolen have access. And he can’t tie anything dirty back to Officer Ward. That’s the ultimate goal—to nail that guy.

First he has to figure out how a cop got access to a private citizen’s home video feed.

The evidence has to be on the network somewhere. There must be areasonwhy someone at Chime Co. was willing to give private footage to a cop.

Slowly he sits up in bed. Sleep won’t come for him when his head is spinning like this.

He grabs his boxers, and then his leg off Ariel’s floor. At home he’d use crutches in the middle of the night. But Ariel’s roommate went away for the weekend, so they’re staying at her place this time.

He puts the prosthesis on, careful not to wake her. She doesn’t stir as he quietly crosses the room. He stops in the doorway to watch her smooth back rise and fall as she sleeps.

There’s a chasm opening inside his chest, and it gets a little deeper every time he pictures leaving Portland for good. But it’s going to happen. Pretty soon.

He heads to the kitchen for a drink of water, but it doesn’t do much to make him feel better. He sits down at Ariel’s kitchen table. The only light in the room is from the blue glow of her laptop. He can see a reflection of the log-in screen in the window.

Earlier tonight—when she logged on to order dinner—he saw her fingers dance over the keyboard. Stealing log-ins is just a reflex now. He can’t shut it off. That’s how he came to notice that her password starts with the wordglory.

He eyes the computer the same way he might look at a rattlesnake in his bed. There’s almost no chance this ends well. Ariel wouldn’t have access to any high-level privileges.

Probably.

He is disgusted with himself as he drags the computer toward himself anyway.G-l-o-r-y-h-0-l-e, he tries—theoa zero.

Password incorrect.

He tries one more variation. And when it fails to work, he is ridiculously relieved.

Since arriving in Portland, he’s broken all his own rules. He’s lied, he’s invaded others’ privacy in the name of research. He’s manipulated innocent (if clueless) coworkers.

For good reason. But still. Ariel is his personal Waterloo. That river he can’t cross. She’s one of the good guys. She’s the only bright light in his whole damn life right now.

He snaps her computer shut and then buries his face in his hands.