Page 78 of The Five Year Lie

“Indeed,” Ariel replies at a whisper that suggests she’d rather listen than talk.

But the guy can’t take a hint. “Young women become old women, you know,” he says, as if they’re already having a conversation. “I bet that tattoo seemed fun, yeah? But no man wants that on a forty-year-old.”

Drew unclenches his jaw and prepares to tell this asshole where he can shove it.

But Ariel beats him to it. “Oh dear,” she says with loud, uncharacteristic sweetness. “You’ve got that a little wrong, sir. You see—I never wanted a tattoo. I got this one to cover up my medical tattoo—I had to get one right here, for my cancer treatment.” She places a hand on the side of her calf, where a butterfly spreads its wings. “Bone cancer. Treated with radiation. I beat it for now, but it could come back.”

She lifts serious eyes toward the old man and blinks away imagined tears. “I hope you’re right that young women become old women.”

The old man’s jaw drops so low it grazes the gray chest hair puffing out of his threadbare T-shirt. Then—with more agility than he ought to have—he stands suddenly. He grabs his chair and hightails it through the patchwork of picnic blankets, making tracks for the other side of the grassy lawn.

A couple on an adjacent picnic blanket starts clapping avidly. “Well done! I hope that story isn’t true, though?”

Ariel smirks. “Not a word of it. But he won’t pull that shit again, will he?”

Drew almost can’t breathe for laughing so hard. He buries his face in one hand and tries to quiet himself. They are, after all, at a concert. But it’s just so damn funny. “God, you’re so evil. I love it.”

And I love you, too, he manages not to say.

“He had it coming,” she whispers, settling against him again.

Eventually he stops laughing. He closes his eyes and listens to the singsong of the violins on the breeze. As the orchestra transitions from a fast movement to a slower one, she kisses the underside of his jaw, and he plays with her hair.

If he could bottle tonight, he would. He loves the weight of her on his body, and the way her fingers tease his chest. He’s never beenin a real relationship before. He didn’t know a woman’s hands could feel both familiar and arousing at the same time. He didn’t know you could glance across a busy street and instantly find her in the crowd because your senses are tuned to her, like a radio station that comes in louder than others on the dial.

Lately, he finds himself cataloging all the little things she does. He doesn’t want to forget any of them. The particular tilt of her head while she considers a drawing in her sketchbook. And the way she catches her top lip in her teeth when she’s uncertain.

She’s not uncertain right now, though. She’s kissing her way across his neck to his throat. Then she snakes a knee across his thighs and moves even closer.

He catches her smooth knee in one hand and sighs as she props herself up on one arm and meets his mouth with her own. Unbidden, his fingers thread into her hair and hold her there so he can do the job right—taking over the kiss until they’re both panting.

When she finally pulls back, they’re still nose to nose, wearing matching expressions of naked longing. “Baby, you make it hard to concentrate on Beethoven-Mozart.”

Her laugh comes quickly. “Which one is it again?”

“Both, I think. This song’s a banger.”

She touches her smile to his. “Take me home. My plans to thank you for this picnic aren’t very family friendly.”

He sits up and starts packing away their plates, because a guy can’t really turn that down.

Not this guy, anyway.

Four hours later, though, he’s lying awake staring at the ceiling.

This happens a lot. He has a lot on his mind.

Guilt, mostly.

He thought that revenge would taste sweet. Some progress on his mission should have been gratifying. And it’s been a fruitful couple of weeks.

Yet the weight of it all feels heavier, not lighter.

From Edward Cafferty’s computer, he gave himself access to the LiveMatch beta. And he did it in such a way that he can access the network from his personal laptop at home. So now he has a treasure trove of evidence that Chime Co. has been testing an incredibly dangerous piece of surveillance software in Lowden.

LiveMatch has turned out to be exactly what his buddy hinted at—a tool that allows law enforcement to tag and track citizens via facial recognition software. If a person walks past the camera at Kennedy Park and then walks past another one on Canal Street, the system will note their movements and save the data, whether that person is known to the police or not.

It’s problematic even when used with good intentions. But the things the cops are doing with it are downright disgusting. Each officer can create his own watch list. Most cops are tagging known suspects with police files, which was the system’s intention.