Lie in the Moment

by Nicole Camden

  She winked at him. “Sure, honey. Just make sure you bring a date to our dinner next weekend.”

  “I always bring a date when we have dinner.”

  His mother gave him a smile that showcased perfectly straight white teeth . . . a lot of them. “You bring women, but not dates. Bring a date. I would like some grandchildren before I die.”

  Roland glanced at his stepfather, who shrugged uncomfortably and shoved some steak in his mouth.

  Out of nowhere, Roland had an image of Maura O’Halloran sitting at his parents’ table, her stubborn chin lifted as she argued politics. She wouldn’t hesitate to speak her mind. The thought amused him so much that he almost considered bringing her, just to see what would happen.

  “Mom, I’m pretty sure you’re going to live forever, but since when do you want grandchildren?”

  She laughed prettily and fluttered her lashes. “You say the nicest things, darling. I’ve always wanted grandchildren. Call me next week and let me know who you’re bringing.”

  Shuddering on the inside, Roland took another long sip of his wine. His mother was only sweet when she was plotting something, and he couldn’t see her as a doting grandmother any more than he could picture himself as a father.

  “I’ll do that,” he promised, then set his napkin on his plate. He stood and signaled to the waiter, who immediately came over with the check.

  “Your car is waiting by the door, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Roland said, tipping him generously.

  “Roland,” his stepfather protested, “we haven’t even had dessert.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” Roland promised, and bent to kiss his mother’s cheek, getting a strong whiff of Balenciaga perfume.

  “Where could you possibly be going in such a hurry? It’s Sunday.” She pouted but allowed the kiss.

  “I need all the time I can get if I’m supposed to bring the mother of your future grandchildren to dinner by next weekend.”

  She snorted, appeased, and Roland left before she could ask any more questions, stopping to take his coat from the attendant in the front of the restaurant and grab several tiny foil-wrapped candies from a silver tureen, unable to resist the bright, sparkling colors. He shrugged into his coat and shoved the candies in his pocket for later.

  He put on his hat, a black fedora, but didn’t bother to tie his scarf or put on his gloves. It was only steps to the waiting car.

  Another attendant opened the carved wooden door, letting in icy cold air and cool blue light, partly cloudy skies reflecting on the snow that had fallen last night and this morning. The valet had pulled his Mercedes up to the curb, and standing in front of it was none other than Detective Maura O’Halloran, her gloved hands wrapped tightly around a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, her red hair hidden beneath a dark purple beanie. She was wearing the shiny purple coat again, looking even younger than her thirty-three years.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” she said firmly.

  Roland stared at her, at the sight she made against the cool whites, grays, and browns of the Boston winter. She made him think of the candies in his pocket. Tiny, bright, and irresistible.

  “Of course,” he agreed smoothly, distantly aware that his hands were freezing. How did she know where I’d be? “Why don’t we go to my house?”

  She flushed.

  “Or not,” he said with a shrug. “How about neutral ground?”

  “Where exactly is neutral ground?”

  He smiled.

  “A BOWLING ALLEY? That’s neutral ground?”

  He looked amused, standing next to a wooden bench in a vest and a shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He was impeccably groomed, as always, his dark hair with its sprinkling of gray expertly swept back away from his face, his big, shiny gold watch on his wrist.

  “You don’t like bowling?”

  Maura scowled at the candlepins at the end of the shiny wooden lanes. She didn’t remember the last time she’d gone bowling, but she thought it had been at her niece’s eighth birthday party. Poker was more her speed, or softball. “Seems frivolous. Besides, I didn’t peg you as a bowler.”

  “Why not?” he asked, sitting down and taking off the expensive leather shoes he was wearing. He had nice feet, long and well shaped, encased in dark socks. She hadn’t noticed his feet Friday night. She waited for him to turn up his nose at the ugly white bowling shoes, but he put them on without any hesitation.

  Standing, he looked down at her curiously, like she was some strange species of bird. She couldn’t read him, but holding his gaze made her feel flushed and hot. Idiocy. Looking down his long, long legs, she expected to see the bowling shoes and feel superior. It didn’t work. Even the shoes couldn’t make him look ridiculous.

  Shrugging, she sat down to put on her own shoes. “No reason.”

  He didn’t push. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that he was actually interested in bowling. The alley was getting crowded, mostly younger people. The men had beards and the women weren’t wearing makeup, but they were all attractive. Students and hipsters. A crew of them in the lane next to theirs had ordered a flatbread pizza and dark beer. Friendly smells that made her relax without even realizing it.

  When Roland threw a strike on his first turn, the pins knocked violently and resolutely out of formation, Maura knew that she’d been conned.

  “You play professionally?” she said with a sneer as she picked up her own ball, a bright blue eight-pounder that she was fairly certain she’d gotten from the kiddie section.

  “Sarcasm is unattractive in a woman,” he informed her, but his blue eyes were laughing.

  “Good,” she muttered, and rolled the ball down the lane. She didn’t get a strike, but she knocked down all but two of the pins.

  “Not bad,” he noted.

  Maura ignored him as she waited for her ball to be returned.

  “So how did you know I’d be at that restaurant?” He pitched his voice loud enough to be heard over the crashing pins and laughing crowd.

  Picking up the ball, Maura cradled it against her body and walked to the line, breathing out steadily as she drew the ball back and released it down the lane. She hit one of the standing pins, but the other eluded her, wobbling but staying in place.

  “You eat there every other Sunday with your parents. Even if I weren’t a detective, I probably could have figured it out.”

  “I see,” he said without inflection, and took her place. “And you couldn’t have called me?”

  “I could have,” she agreed.

  “But what’s the fun in that?” he finished for her, looking over his shoulder and flashing her a smile before getting into position.

  Damn. She didn’t want to like him so much.

  He threw another strike, his tight ass and muscular thighs on display in his perfectly tailored suit pants as he threw the ball efficiently at the pins. They surrendered without much of a fight.

  “Do you suck at anything?” she asked as he passed her.

  He shrugged. “Relationships.”

  She thought about that as she picked up her ball again. Okay, that was fair, but since she felt like everyone sucked at relationships, it was hard to see that as a true weakness.

  He waited until she was finished taking her turn before he asked, “Are you going to show me the letters?”

  “Well, that’s the problem,” she said tightly, watching the ball as it edged toward the gutter. Stay in the lane, damn it. It didn’t. Scowling, she didn’t meet his eyes as she waited for the ball to return.

  “Problem?”

  “The letters are gone,” she muttered as she hauled her ball up again. “There’s nothing there that’s going to help you find him.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  Maura rolled her ball violently down the lane, but only picked up seven pins. She hated bowling. She shook her head as she turned back. “As in not in the file. You looked in the digital records, didn’t you? Weren’t you surprised
that there was no record of the letters?”

  He had been, but he wasn’t about to admit that he’d hacked into the Boston Police Department’s computers.

  Bent at an angle over the ball return, she saw his knuckles whiten as he lifted his ball out of the carriage. His shoulders were tense as he briskly lined up and hooked the ball toward the pins with just the right amount of spin, knocking them all down again. When he faced her again, his gaze was direct and more than a little calculating.

  “And you checked the paper records?” he asked.

  Maura stepped toward him until they were standing just a few inches apart, holding his gaze. “I went through every page of those files. They are gone.”

  “And you didn’t keep an extra copy, maybe as a backup?”

  “The PDF copies were the backup. We’re not allowed to keep case files in our personal effects anymore. I have our IT department searching the backup files on the server, but I think whoever bugged our system removed those letters. Who else but Keenan? I want to know why. I want to know how.”

  He spread his hands as if to say “Look at me, I’ve got nothing,” but she shook her head. “You know something. You knew that we were bugged. With all your resources, you must have something.”

  “Maura, look,” he said, and put a hand on her shoulder. Reacting out of habit, she put a hand to the gun she wore off duty, a smaller Glock than her service weapon, concealed in a special holster in front of her right hip. His eyes flickered as he caught the motion, but he didn’t step back or pull away. Interesting. What kind of training did he have, exactly?

  “Don’t ‘look’ me.” She knocked his arm aside before he could distract her with his touch. “Clearly I was wrong about the letters, or Keenan wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of taking them back.” She pressed a finger into his chest, into the impossibly soft gray wool of his vest. Who wears three-piece suits to lunch on a Sunday? Nobody. He looked good, though. Tangled-sheets-on-a-lazy-afternoon good.

  He didn’t say anything, but his nostrils flared slightly, and Maura realized that she was standing even closer to him than before. He smelled delicious, like he’d bathed in a spring tended by wood nymphs.

  She licked her lips. “You know him.”

  “Yes, I know him. That’s why I needed the letters. Keenan likes to leave clues. Now I don’t know how I’m going to catch him before he hurts someone again.” He moved forward again, this time sliding his hands under her elbows. She fought the urge to shove him away. He was too close, too attractive.

  He said it matter-of-factly, but she was shocked. Somehow she hadn’t expected Roland Chandler to admit that he was uncertain. He seemed so sure of himself. “I remember the gist of them, if that helps.”

  He shook his head, clearly distracted, but his fingers drew small circles on her elbows. Even through the thin cotton of her sweater, she felt the sure, consistent motion. “I can see if I can recover the PDFs, but I doubt it, and we’d have to convince the captain to let me take a look.”

  “Can’t you just call the governor?”

  “I thought you didn’t approve of my using political connections to involve myself in police business.”

  Since she’d told him that very thing last year, right before Keenan shot up Quincy Market and kidnapped Blake, she conceded that he might have a small point.

  “In this case I’ll make an exception. What else do you need from me?”

  “First,” he said slowly, stepping carefully away from her. He held up her cell phone. “You need to let me check your phone for bugging software.”

  Maura felt her mouth fall open. She hadn’t felt him remove it from the back pocket of her pants. “You don’t know much about building trust.”

  He ignored her, unlocking her phone with a few quick flicks of his fingers. “And you don’t know much about password security. Your niece’s birthday, really?”

  Okay, so maybe that had been a little obvious. “Give me back my phone.”

  “In a moment.”

  She stood there, feeling helpless. Not her favorite feeling. It made her want to draw her gun and shoot him, just on principle.

  “Ah.” He let a short, sharp sound of triumph. “Knew it.”

  He was typing quickly, his thumbs moving rapidly over her screen. “I think I can get— Damn it.”

  Moving to his side, Maura tried to see what he was doing. “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s been listening to you.”

  Maura felt a cold hollow start in her belly and travel up her throat. “He” could only mean Keenan. Keenan Shy had bugged her phone; he’d been eavesdropping on her conversations. He’d heard everything she said to Maddie, to her father. He knew where she went, where she lived. Her life was on that phone.

  “You bastard,” he muttered, his face intense in the bluish white glow of the phone. “I need a damn keyboard.”

  Since they were in a bowling alley, Maura didn’t take the request seriously. “Shouldn’t we destroy it?”

  He ignored her, his grim expression focused on whatever he was doing to her phone. “Damn it,” he snarled, and gripped the phone tightly in his fist. The screen was dark. Very dark. Like the feeling she had when she thought about what she wanted to do to Keenan Shy. “He wiped it.”

  “What?” Maura reached out and took the phone from Roland’s hand, twisting a little to get it out of his grip. “What do you mean?”

  “I was back-hacking him. I got an IP, but it’s probably another proxy. Tripped a virus . . . total meltdown.” He ran a hand through his hair.

  “Am I supposed to understand any of that?” Maura muttered, pressing the power button in vain. “Damn it, all my numbers, my pictures, everything is on this phone.”

  “Come on,” he said, taking her elbow. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She agreed. Suddenly the neutral ground felt dangerous as hell. “I need to call my father,” she told him as she kicked off the bowling shoes.

  “Get your boots on. You can call him from my phone once we’re in the car.” He’d already shed his shoes, put on his jacket and coat, and had her down jacket in his hand.

  “How do you know your phone’s not bugged?” She stomped her feet into her boots and checked her weapon for good measure.

  He held up her jacket for her. She snatched it out of his hands and put it on herself. She didn’t trust him not to take something else off her person.

  “I know.”

  “What about your car?” she asked as he picked up both pairs of their rented shoes and stalked toward the counter to return them. She stayed at his side, though she had to practically jog to manage it.

  “I check it daily, and it’s parked in a secure garage.” He paused, looking around the bowling alley like he expected sniper fire. “But it’s been on the street for half an hour.”

  What does that mean? “So, what? You think Keenan did something to it?”

  “Maybe,” he muttered, stopping in his tracks. “Let me call—”

  A loud boom shook the building, breaking glass and sending dust falling from the ceiling overhead. She could hear screams coming from outside.

  “Fuck,” she muttered, drawing her weapon and badge from the concealed pouch on her hip. “Come on,” she ordered him, and then turned to face the crowd, which was just beginning to press toward the doors. She held her badge up high. “Boston PD. Everyone stay where you are. Stay calm.”

  She looked at the older woman with the tight gray curls who’d been handing out the rental shoes. “Call 911.”

  “Let them know that there’s been an explosion,” Roland added. He was looking at his phone, his face set and still.

  Maura turned on him. “You don’t know that.”

  He turned the screen to face her. It was a text from an unknown number with a short, but perfectly clear message.

  BOOM!

  “Fuck,” she said again, and he nodded his agreement.

  A CAR BOMB. Not Keenan’s specialty, but certainly in his wheelhouse. Rola
nd noted the destruction of his Mercedes without surprise, but two other vehicles had been ruined as well. A pedestrian who’d been walking by at the time had been seriously hurt and was on his way to the hospital in critical condition. Two others had been hit by flying glass. He’d already called Zach, his administrative assistant, and tasked him with finding out the victims’ names and making sure that the hospital sent all bills to Roland. He’d also called Milton. He needed him to track the IP he’d found on Maura’s phone.

  Maura was talking to the head of the bomb squad, her hands shoved into the pockets of her coat, her cheeks rosy with cold, as she explained the situation. Dark, thick-jacketed men and women surrounded her, their badges prominently displayed, faces serious and unreadable as they spoke into radios and directed crowds. Sirens wailed incessantly and the first news vans were already clogging the streets and alleys nearby.

  Roland stayed out of the way as ordered, drawing his hat down over his eyes, but he noted the cops that he knew as well as the general pattern of the damage. He needed to get back to his office and see what progress Milton was making, and hopefully pull the security cameras from the bowling alley and surrounding businesses. He knew Maura would be able to get the feeds, but his contact at the Department of Defense could probably get it faster, especially if Keenan was involved. MOMENT should have warned of an attack; the fact that he hadn’t gotten any warning worried him.

  He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “Yeah, Shane? I need a car one block north of Murray’s Bowling Alley. There’s been an incident.” Shane was Milton’s driver, a tattooed bibliophile with a food obsession and a preternatural calm.

  “No problem. I can be there in fifteen minutes. Preference?”

  “The Range.” Roland didn’t want to risk his Ferrari if he could help it. “And check it first—be careful.”

  “Sure. You got it.”

  Roland hung up and made another call, this one to his contact at the Department of Defense. “Christie, tell me what you see.”

  “It didn’t pop, Roland. Either Shy kept his face out of the cameras, or he figured out a way to circumvent the program—you said he’d stolen some code, maybe it was enough.”