“Why?” you say, not understanding. “What happened?”

“My guess is, Tim found out somehow.” Jenny’s eyes are wet. “Maybe the school phoned him instead of her when Danny got back, and he realized there was no eye exam…I don’t know. I don’t even know if she somehow managed to get away, or if he killed her. Or, for that matter, if she killed herself, thinking it wasn’t going to work.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police? You could have told them what she’d been planning. They’d have had a much better chance of getting to the bottom of it if they’d known.”

Jenny shrugs. But her gaze goes to Mike.

“Oh my God,” you say, realizing. “You thought Mike was involved. You thought, if Tim killed Abbie, Mike might have helped him.”

“Why not?” she says quietly. “You think Tim wouldn’t have called Mike up and said, I’ve just killed my lying slut of a wife, come and help me clear up the mess? That’s the kind of shit he doles out to my husband on a regular basis. And Mike…” She stops. “Mike would have done it, too.”

“Jesus,” you say disbelievingly. “All this time, you’ve thought that of your husband…And you never said anything?”

Her eyes flash. “Sometimes it’s easier in a marriage not to overshare. Not to rock the boat. There’ll always be another day for that conversation.”

   “Jen,” Mike says desperately. “Jen…”

“Don’t say anything you’ll regret later,” she says sharply to him. “Don’t lie to me.”

There’s a long silence.

“Maybe I can help there,” you say at last. “Abbie’s alive. She wants me to go to her.”

Jenny buries her head in her hands, her bony shoulders shaking with relief.

“So now you have to help me,” you add. “Both of you. You owe me that, at least.”

Jenny looks up, her cheeks shiny with tears. “What do you need?”

“To know where she is, for one thing. Haven Farm Ranches seem to be spread all over the U.S. I can’t possibly visit them all.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know where she is. None of us do. That was the only way it was safe, Lisa said.”

“Lisa was in on it, too?”

Jenny nods. “She was the only one Abbie trusted. But even so, I don’t think they’re still in touch. Tim would have been spying on her as well.”

You realize now why Lisa has been so intent on having you destroyed. She’s frightened you might somehow work out where Abbie is and tell Tim. “Can you at least get her to tell me whatever she does know?”

“I can try. But if you do work out where Abbie is, what will you do?”

“The only thing I can. I’m going to take Danny to his mother, just like she wants me to. Because now she’s my only chance of surviving, too.”

73

   Next morning Tim leaves the house early for a crisis meeting with Pete Maines. He’s going to countersue, he announces furiously. He’ll sue Lisa. He’ll sue Renton. He’ll sue his own company. He’ll sue Mike. The bastards are mistaken if they think he’s just going to lie down and take it. They have no idea what kind of shitstorm they’re about to unleash on their own heads.

Or something. You can’t really be bothered to follow the details.

Not once does he ask how you feel. The nearest he gets is when he asks if you’ve had any ideas about Abbie yet.

You frown. “There was something—but it’s probably irrelevant—”

“What?” he demands.

“Was there a guy she once worked with—Rajesh? Someone she was close to?”

Something flickers in his eyes. “Yes. Is she with him?”

“It’s only a hunch. But I’m going to give it some more thought.”

“Do that.” He smashes his fist into his palm. “This damn court case has come at just the wrong time.”

   He kisses you goodbye, but distractedly. A habit, a ritual. Like kissing a photo because the real thing isn’t there.

And that’s the last time he’ll ever see you, you think as he leaves. Will he look back one day and ask himself, What if I’d done something different?

Probably not. Tim’s not much given to introspection.

Hopefully he’ll be too busy obsessing about Rajesh to consider any alternative scenarios now, at least in the short term. Jenny told you Rajesh is currently in India, the CEO of his own start-up and a multimillionaire in his own right. That should buy you some time.

Once Danny’s gone to school, you go up to Tim’s study. The combination lock on the door is a problem—you try some different options, but none work, so you get a fire extinguisher and smash the lock off the frame.

Inside, just as Tim described, are half a dozen rack-style computers. Lights flicker, green and red. Behind them, there’s something under a drop cloth. You go to see what it is, pulling the cloth off. Then you recoil.

It’s you—an ugly, prototype version, the limbs crudely screwed together, the joints exposed and crisscrossed with wires. The A-bot. Across the blank cheeks someone has scrawled WHORE in big, angry letters, so that the O encircles the open, lipstick-smeared mouth.

It must be light-activated, because as soon as the cloth is off it stirs. Then, in a voice eerily like your own, it speaks.

“Hello sir. I hope you’ve come to fuck me.”

You turn away, sickened. Even though you know it isn’t conscious, you can’t help feeling sorry for it. You find the backup power supply to the computer and disconnect it. You’re about to do the same with the servers when it occurs to you that this might not actually achieve what you need it to. You want Tim’s data wiped, not just powered off. And you don’t actually know how to do that.

Luckily, you know someone who will.

* * *

—

   “Back already?” Nathan says when he sees you.

“I need something. A couple of things, actually.” You show him the hard drives. “First, I need these erased. That website talked about something called a degausser—I assume you have one of those?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Anything else?”

“Yes—I need to make sure no one from Scott Robotics can track me. So if there’s any kind of GPS built into my system, you need to get rid of it.”