The question didn’t seem to faze him.

“I don’t have to answer your questions,” he said.

Kat swallowed. Her voice sounded as though it were coming from someone else. “I don’t mean him any harm.”

“If that’s true,” the old man said, “then maybe you should be leaving well enough alone.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“No, Detective Donovan, I don’t think you do.”

His eyes pinned her down, and for a moment, it felt as though he knew who she was. “Where is he?”

“He’s not here. That’s all you need to know.”

“Then I’ll come back.”

“There’s nothing left for you here.”

She tried to speak, but no words came out. Finally: “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m going to close my door now. If you don’t leave, I’m going to call Jim Gamble. He’s the chief of police here. I don’t think he’ll like some NYPD cop hassling one of his residents.”

“You don’t want that attention.”

“No, but I can handle it. Good-bye, Detective.”

“What makes you think I’ll just go away?”

“Because you should know when you’re not wanted. Because you should know that the past is the past. And because I don’t think you want to cause any more destruction.”

“What destruction? What are you talking about?”

He took hold of the door. “It’s time for you to go.”

“I just need to talk to him,” Kat said. She could hear the pleading in her voice. “I don’t want to hurt anybody. Tell him that, okay? Tell him I just need to talk to him.”

The old man started to close the door on her. “I’ll be sure to pass on that message. Now get off my property.”

Chapter 31

The farm, in keeping with the Amish way of life, had no connection to the public electric grid. Titus liked that, of course. No billing, no reading meters, no outside maintenance. Whatever reason the Amish had for not using public energy sources—he had heard everything from a fear of outsiders to blocking access to television and the Internet—it worked well for this operation.

The Amish, however, do not shun electricity altogether. That seemed to be a common myth. This farm had used a windmill to provide enough electricity for their modest needs. But it wouldn’t do for Titus. He had installed a DuroMax generator that ran on propane gas. The farm’s mailbox was on the edge of the road, far from the house or any clearing. He had put in a gate so no cars could drive through. He never ordered anything, so there were no deliveries. If they needed something, he or one of his people fetched it, usually at a Sam’s Club eight miles away.

He tried to give his men time away from the farm. He and Reynaldo enjoyed the solitude. The other men got antsy. There was a strip club twelve miles from there called Starbutts, but to be on the safe side, Titus asked his men to drive the extra six miles to one called the Lumberyard (“Where Real Men Go for Wood”). They were allowed to go once every two weeks, no more. They could do what they pleased, but they could not, under any circumstances, make a scene. They always went alone.

Mobile phones and the like had no reach there, so Dmitry had set up phone and Internet services via a satellite that bounced all web activity via a VPN that originated in Bulgaria. Almost no calls ever came in, so when Titus heard his private account ring at eight in the morning, he knew something was wrong.

“Yes?”

“Wrong number.”

The caller hung up.

That was his signal. The government monitors your e-mails. That was no longer a secret. The best way to communicate via e-mail without getting anyone’s attention was to not send the e-mail. Titus had a Gmail account he kept off-line except when signaled to check it. He loaded the homepage and signed in. There were no new e-mails. He had expected that.

He hit DRAFTS and the message popped up. That was how he communicated with a contact. They both had access to the same Gmail account. When you wanted to send a message, you wrote it, but—and this was the important thing—you didn’t send it. You just saved it as a draft. Then you signed off, signaled with the call, and your recipient signed on. The recipient, in this case Titus, would then read the message in the draft folder and delete it.

Titus had four such accounts, each communicating with a different person. This one was from his contact in Switzerland:

Stop using 89787198. SAR was filed by a financial firm called Parsons, Chuback, Mitnick and Bushwell and now an NYPD detective named Katarina Donovan has followed up.

Titus deleted the draft and signed out of the account. He wondered about this. Suspicious Activity Reports had been issued on his accounts before. He seldom worried about it. When you moved large sums of money overseas, they were mandatory. But the Department of the Treasury was mostly hung up on possible terrorism financing. Once they checked into the person’s background and saw nothing suspicious, they rarely followed up.

But this was the first time he had seen two questions for one account. Moreover, instead of just the Department of the Treasury, Titus had now drawn the attention of a New York City cop. How? Why? None of his recent guests had come from New York City. And what possible connection could there be between a chemist from Massachusetts and a socialite from Connecticut?

He could ask only one of them.

Titus rested his hands on the desk for a moment. Then he leaned forward and brought up a search engine. He typed in the name of the detective and waited for the results.

When he saw the photograph of Detective Donovan, he almost laughed out loud.

Dmitry walked into the room. “Something funny?”

“It’s Kat,” Titus said. “She’s trying to find us.”

 • • •

After the old man slammed the door in her face, Kat wasn’t sure what to do.

She stood on the stoop for a moment, half tempted to kick in the door and pistol-whip the old man, but where would that get her? If Jeff wanted to reach out, she had given him all the tools he needed. If he still ignored her, did she really have the right or even desire to force it?

Have some pride, for crying out loud.

She headed back to the car. She began to cry and hated herself for it. Whatever happened to Jeff in that Cincinnati bar, it had nothing to do with her. Absolutely nothing. Stacy had said last night that she would continue to look into the bar brawl, see if the two drunk guys had additional records, if somehow they were looking for Jeff and that might explain his disappearance, but really, what was the point?

If these two men had been after him, would he still be so afraid to see Kat?

Didn’t matter. Jeff had his life. He had a daughter and lived with a grumpy old man. Kat had no idea who the old man was. Jeff’s own father had died years ago. Jeff had chosen to go on a dating website. Kat had reached out to him, and he had slapped her hand away. So why was she still pursuing it?

Why, despite all the evidence to the contrary, was she still not buying it?

Kat got back on Montauk Highway and headed west. But she didn’t travel far. A few miles down the road, she turned left onto Napeague Lane. Funny what you remember after nearly twenty years. She made the turn onto Marine Boulevard and parked near Gilbert Path. She took the wooden boardwalk toward the ocean. The waves crashed. The sky darkened, hinting of an upcoming storm. Kat made her way around a pathetic fence with shattered rails. She slipped off her shoes and started on the sand toward the water.

The house hadn’t changed. It had been newly built in that sleek modern style that some people found too boxy but Kat had grown to love. The place would have been way out of their price range, even for a weekend rental, but Jeff had been the owner’s TA at Columbia, and loaning him the house had been her way of thanking him.