Chapter 68

LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS

Poppy lets out a scream that ricochets in the cabin of the Ford Escort. Panicked, she reaches for her sidearm before whoever’s in her back seat has a chance to harm her. But fright turns to what borders on fury when she realizes who it is.

FBI Special Agent Fincher.

“What in the holy fuck?” Poppy yells.

“Sorry to frighten you.”

“No, fuck that. Get out of my car. This is—”

“I understand your friend reached out to the FBI about Patrick Donnelly,” Fincher says, her voice calm, matter-of-fact.

Poppy’s heart is still beatboxing. She shakes her head, wondering momentarily how the tall woman managed to stay hidden back there. And why would she be skulking around, tracking Poppy?

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

The woman shakes her head, disappointed. “Don’t you think it’s time we shared information?”

“Sharing is a two-way street.”

The corners of the woman’s mouth curl as if she’s amused.

“This isn’t funny. Breaking into someone’s car is a crime, in case you didn’t—”

“You want to know how Dapper Donnelly fits into all this?”

Poppy quells the anger in her chest, tries to focus on this chance to gain information. Poppy says, “He was coming for Alison Lane. She and her father were on the run from the O’Learys. They were in WITSEC.” It’s a bluff, but it’s a good working theory. Let Fincher dispute it.

The agent nods. “Close.”

“Care to fill in the fucking gaps?”

Agent Fincher says, “They weren’t in WITSEC.”

“But they were hiding from O’Leary?”

She nods.

“Why? Was Michael Lane going to testify against the O’Learys for something?”

Fincher tilts her head side to side, like kinda-sorta. “You ever hear of the ‘coupling theory’?”

Not this shit again. Before Poppy can stop her, the agent continues.

“Coupling’s the idea that behaviors are linked, coupled, with a particular set of circumstances. There’s been research on coupling with regard to suicide.”

Poppy clenches her jaw.

Fincher continues, undeterred: “In the 1960s in England, nearly half of all suicides were by carbon monoxide poisoning: people literally sticking their heads in the oven. But then the country phased out the type of gas that had high levels of carbon monoxide. And guess what?”

“I’m tired of this bull—”

“The suicide rates plummeted. If you stuck your head in the oven you wouldn’t die. But the unusual thing was that it wasn’t only suicides by gas that fell. All suicides dropped.” Fincher raises a finger. “Conclusion? Behaviors are linked to a person’s circumstances.”

“Fuck your weird-ass riddles,” Poppy says.

Now Fincher smiles broadly.

“Talk straight or get the fuck out of my car,” Poppy says.

“For a thirteen-year-old boy named Anthony O’Leary, his circumstances were coupled: relentless bullying by affluent private-school classmates coupled with his gangster father’s culture of violence and keeping firearms in the home.”

“You’re saying the head of the O’Leary organization’s son killed himself?”

She nods.

“And that it has something to do with—” Poppy stops herself, has a revelation. “Was Alison Lane a classmate of O’Leary’s son?”

“Her name was Taylor Harper back then, but yes. Then another coupling event: devastated parents with an endless supply of brutal henchmen set on vengeance.”

“So you’re saying Alison was one of the kids who bullied O’Leary’s kid. And she and her father had to go into hiding because of it? O’Leary’s people wouldn’t possibly go after a schoolkid.”

“You wouldn’t think so, right?” The agent taps on her phone, pulls up a news story from the Philadelphia Inquirer. The story is nine years old, the headline says: Tragic Week at Elite Private School: Headmaster and Three Students Dead in Separate Accidents.

Poppy feels a rush of blood in her brain. She’s getting closer. “But why run? Why not join WITSEC?”

“They tried.”

“What do you mean?”

“I went to Michael Lane—Michael Harper—convinced him to turn on O’Leary. He was O’Leary’s captive accountant. Helped them cook the books. But his downfall was helping O’Leary get his son into that private school with Alison.”

“So why didn’t—”

“Someone at WITSEC—and my office—was dirty. In O’Leary’s pocket.”

Agent Fincher explains that she arranged for Ali and her father to meet with the liaison for WITSEC. Explains how it turned into a setup: When Ali and her father arrived at the meet, O’Leary’s men were there. Ali’s father is a former soldier, he got the better of them.

“And they disappeared to a small town in Kansas,” Poppy says.

“Not before Michael stole millions of O’Leary’s money.”

A double reason to hunt down Alison and her father: the bullying of O’Leary’s son and stealing his money.

“The viral video,” Poppy says, thinking aloud. “Someone from O’Leary’s crew saw it five years ago and came to get them?”

The agent nods. “They sent someone outside the O’Learys to grab her. It would give them some distance if anyone put the pieces together when the Lanes disappeared. A patsy.”

“The man with the missing pinkies Ryan Richardson described?”

She nods. “He was supposed to do a handoff. To Patrick Donnelly and another O’Leary soldier. But obviously that didn’t go well for either of them.”

Poppy doesn’t say so, but this corroborates everything her brother told her. The sheriff and Poppy’s father going after the missing-pinky guy who’d driven Alison to Suncatcher Lake that night presumably to deliver her to O’Leary’s goons; Ali’s father killing Patrick Donnelly and the other bad guy. But something gnaws at Poppy. “How do you know all this?”

Poppy examines the agent in the weak light. Far from gloating, Fincher appears despondent.

“Patrick Donnelly was my CI.”

“Your informant?”

She nods.

“Why hasn’t the FBI done anything? Why haven’t you—”

“You weren’t listening.”

Poppy waits.

“Someone in my office, and at WITSEC, is dirty.”