Lie in the Moment Read online

  “I’m worried about what Keenan will do next, who he’ll target,” Roland said.

  “You’ll catch the bastard this time. Who’re you meeting at the Diner?”

  “Detective Maura O’Halloran.”

  Shane let out a long, low whistle, and took the turn heading south. The roads were mostly empty and still except for the snowplows. “You don’t go for the easy ones, do you?”

  Shrugging, Roland replied, “Usually I do. But I need her to catch Keenan.”

  Shane frowned in disapproval. “He could go after her, too, ya know? Just because she’s a cop doesn’t mean she’s a match for the likes of that bastard.”

  “I’ll look after her.”

  Shane didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know, boss. Seems like you’re spreading yourself a little thin.”

  Roland suspected that he was right; he would have to hire more security.

  Fifteen minutes later, Shane pulled up to the curb outside a tiny, triangular building on a corner in the northern part of South Boston. The old brick building had windows painted with the day’s specials and a snowman next to the entrance.

  “Here we are. Call me when you’re ready.”

  Roland opened the passenger door. “Damn, that’s cold. No need to wait. Milton needs to head home, and I’ve decided to attend the press conference—Maura can drive me there tomorrow morning.”

  “Reporters’ll love that.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Take care, Roland.” Shane held up a hand on the steering wheel. “Say hi to Eloise for me.”

  Roland nodded. “I will. See you later.” He closed the door to the limo and immediately shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them warm. Ice crunched beneath his feet as he headed to the entrance of the restaurant. He paused before heading inside and waved to the camera in one corner.

  When he opened the glass door, he was unsurprised to find Maura standing next to a podium manned by Eloise, a short, gray-haired woman with a mannish haircut and a fondness for Hawaiian shirts and dangly earrings.

  Roland removed his beanie, shaking off the loose snow, and walked toward them.

  “Here he is,” Maura said to her.

  “Roland?” the woman replied. “That’s who you’re waiting for?”

  Maura frowned. “You know him?”

  “Of course I know him.” Eloise laughed. She turned her cheek to Roland as he came near. “Give us a kiss, handsome.”

  Roland dropped a kiss on her wrinkled cheek. “Tell me, Eloise, what am I holding behind my back?”

  Eloise began checking her person, feeling her pockets, her wrists, and finally her ears, where one long strawberry-colored earring was missing. Eloise hooted. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  She was still grinning as Roland leaned over. “Allow me,” he said quietly, and replaced the earring as deftly as he’d taken it.

  Eloise flushed and swatted him with a couple menus. “You watch out for this one, Maura. He’s a handful.”

  Maura nodded. “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Come on, then.” Eloise waved them toward the back. “I have a booth with your names on it.”

  Roland followed the two women back to the booth in the corner and waited while Maura stripped off her coat and hung it on a hook screwed into the wooden booth. Roland did the same, then took the seat across from her.

  Her face was pale, making her freckles stand out even more than usual, and there were dark circles under her eyes. He frowned. He wanted to take her somewhere warm and relaxing, like Fiji or the Caribbean.

  Eloise set the menus down in front of them, but Roland didn’t open it. He already knew what he wanted.

  “I’ll have the eggs Benedict and a side of bacon as usual. And coffee.”

  Maura didn’t say anything for a moment, looking at him in surprise. “I’ll have the same.”

  “Two eggs Benedict, two bacons, two coffees. Any toast?”

  “White,” Roland said.

  Maura nodded her agreement.

  Eloise collected the menus and marched off to call in the orders while Maura continued to frown at him.

  “What?” Roland asked finally. “I can’t like eggs Benedict?”

  “How is it that you know this place?”

  So that was what was bothering her. “Nick. He grew up in Southie. Not far from here. We used to come visit his friend the Professor when we were at MIT. Shane as well.”

  “That’s right.” She lifted one finger, as if checking off a box on a list. “I remember that from my files. Still, I didn’t think you came back once you hit the big time.”

  “What? I have money so I sit in my tower and hoard my millions, eat steak every night, and step on the little people?”

  She made a considering moue. “Pretty much.”

  Roland wanted to kiss the pout off her pink lips, but there were more pressing matters to attend to.

  “What have you found out about this afternoon?”

  “Very little, you?” she asked sweetly, her eyelashes fluttering.

  “I was able to get some surveillance,” he said, and waited for the explosion. He wasn’t disappointed.

  She straightened so fast, he thought she was going to bounce out of her seat. “What the fuck? Why didn’t you call me and send it over?”

  “I wanted to look through it first.”

  “Two coffees,” Eloise interrupted, placing two mugs of the steaming black liquid in front of them.

  “Thank you,” Roland and Maura chorused. Neither one of them broke eye contact.

  Clucking her tongue, Eloise turned away.

  “I could have you arrested for obstruction,” Maura hissed once Eloise was out of earshot.

  Roland didn’t laugh, but only because the thought of her arresting him reminded him of his dream, of himself naked and her with handcuffs.

  “I was planning on sending everything over to you in the morning. It’s more than you’ll get in the next week.”

  Roland could see her teeth clenching, but her need to know seemed to outweigh her need to scream at him. For the moment, anyway.

  “What did you find?” she asked grudgingly.

  This part was a little less satisfying. “Not much. Kid in a hoodie planted the bomb.”

  “Why do you say that? A kid? Male or female?”

  Male and young. Roland was certain, though he wasn’t sure he could explain clearly. All the years of practicing the craft with his father, picking pockets on Sunday afternoons while crowds milled around him, had taught him how to read people’s bodies almost as easily as he read words on a computer screen. He knew how young men moved, and this kid had been a young man.

  “Impression of a young man, but no clear shot of his face, so facial recognition is out.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s it.”

  Maura reached for several sugar packets and tore off one end, pouring the sugar into the cup. “Bullshit. You’re holding something back.”

  “So tell me, Detective. What have you found out?”

  Tilting her head to the side, she said, “I found out that you wiped your phone before you gave it to me. Now why would you do a thing like that?”

  Roland had expected her to be upset with him for wiping his phone, but he’d been hoping she wouldn’t realize it until later, much later.

  He sat back against the brown vinyl cushion of the booth and stalled, adding sugar and cream to his own coffee. “My company specializes in digital security, in hunting down hackers, in using technology to catch criminals. Surely you didn’t expect me to turn my phone over to the police.”

  “You don’t trust the police? Or me?”

  Roland took a sip of his coffee and shrugged. “Grow up like I did and you wouldn’t trust the police either, not entirely, and certainly not with your personal information.”

  “Well, that’s just great. I don’t trust you and you don’t trust me.” She leaned forward. “So what are we doing here, Roland?”

  Her e
yes were so beautiful, a soft gray, luminescent like an opal, and framed with spiky lashes.

  He reached across the table to grab her hand. “You could have been killed today. If we’d gotten in that car.”

  Distracted, she licked her lips. “We weren’t.”

  “Only because he didn’t want me dead. Didn’t want us dead.”

  “There’s no use focusing on that.” Her hand fluttered in his grasp like a bird, but he didn’t let her escape.

  “I like you, Maura O’Halloran. I don’t want you killed.”

  She leaned closer. “I like you, too, Roland Chandler, but if you don’t tell me what you know—everything you know—I’m going to arrest you right here.”

  He’d like to see her try, but he couldn’t afford the distraction.

  “I think Keenan is the hacker who redirected the cameras and the blond woman is Angela Wepsic, Keenan’s partner.”

  She digested that for a long minute. “We have the FBI running facial recognition, but it hasn’t come back yet. What makes you think it’s her? Or Keenan for that matter?”

  “I had some friends in the government run facial rec on the woman. Her real name is Adelina Marcuceick, niece of Andre Polzen, a Russian gangster.”

  Her fingers tightened around his, but her gaze was distracted, the wheels turning in her head as she considered the implications. “Known associates of Keenan Shy.”

  “I have Milton and Nick searching for other known associates that match the description of the kid in the surveillance. Even if we can’t locate Keenan, maybe we can find his friends.”

  She focused on him, her expression unreadable. “We?”

  Roland ran the pad of his thumb over her knuckles. “Yes. We.”

  MAURA KNEW WHAT he was doing. Seducing her. And she was letting him. Not just with the subtle touch on her knuckles or the dark look in his eyes. He was giving her what she wanted, what she needed: information on Keenan.

  “Why the chemical company?” she asked, trying to stay focused on the conversation and not the steady hypnotic motion of his thumb. He had large thumbs and well-shaped, well-tended nails. Her own fingers were small and sturdy, nails unpolished. She’d found that she wasn’t taken as seriously as a detective when she polished them.

  “My, my, what’s going on here?” Eloise interrupted, her hands full with two plates loaded with bright yellow eggs Benedict and crisp, perfect bacon.

  Roland released her hand and took the plates from the older woman, setting Maura’s carefully in front of her. “I was just showing her a trick, Eloise my lovely.”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve never seen you in here with Maura before, Roland Chandler, and you’re not one to date a good girl.”

  The words reminded Maura that she wasn’t here with a handsome man who happened to know a lot about surveillance, government agencies, and the object of her own personal mission. She was here with a man who dated supermodels and vacationed on mega-yachts. The closest she’d come to a yacht was seeing one in a movie. She liked him, but the only reason he was with her was because of Keenan. She had to remember that. Even when she was pretending to be fooled by him, she had to remember that none of it was real. It was a pretty lie crafted by a master. She might be a good girl—God she hated that—but she was not an idiot.

  She looked up from her plate and met his gaze. He was looking at her as if she wasn’t a good girl.

  “A man can change his tastes,” he said to Eloise, who flat-out laughed.

  “Only if someone makes him,” she said firmly. “And I don’t think Maura is foolish enough to take on changing a man—useless waste of time.”

  Maura smiled. “You said it, Eloise.”

  The woman plunked a jar of hot sauce down on the table. “On the other hand, it’s good to waste time every now and then, Maura. Spices up your life a little. And God knows, your life could use a little kick.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Maura muttered, which made the old woman hitch up the elastic waistband of her pants and walk away.

  “Could your life use some spicing up?” Roland asked, a small smile raising one corner of his mouth.

  “I was nearly blown up today. I think I’m good.”

  “Touché,” he agreed, and looked at his plate. He didn’t touch his silverware, though; he sipped his coffee and studied her instead.

  “Are you waiting for me to start eating?” she asked incredulously. Cops didn’t wait for other cops to start eating. Shit, cops ate before someone else stole their food.

  “I am.”

  Maura shook her head and scooped up a forkful of English muffin and egg drenched in hollandaise. “We grew up very differently.”

  “Not so different,” Roland countered. “We were both raised by our fathers for much of the time.” He picked up his own fork.

  “You had your mother; mine died.”

  “I know,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  Maura heard sincerity in his voice and saw it in the tilt of his head and the soft warmth in those cool blue eyes, but she told herself it was an illusion. He knew how to lie with every part of his body. The only way he could know about her mother was if he’d gone digging into her background. He didn’t do that because he thought she was beautiful.

  “I don’t want to talk about my mom. Tell me what else you know about Keenan and why you think he targeted the chemical company.”

  Reluctant amusement colored his expression. “Tenacity. Yet another thing we have in common.”

  “Yeah.” She bit off a large piece of bacon. “So tell me what you know.”

  “I know he’s using a piece of code that he stole from Accendo, code that helps identify people who have the potential to become mass killers, like the Oklahoma City bomber or the Boston Marathon bomber. I can only assume he targeted the chemical company for supplies.”

  She stopped chewing. “Supplies. Fuck.” She didn’t want to think about what Shy or some other crazy could do with a bunch of chemicals. She focused on what he’d said about the software. “I heard something about that. Didn’t you invent some software that prevents major attacks?”

  “It’s called MOMENT, a program that analyzes online activity and nonverbal communication using surveillance data to identify possible subjects. These subjects are put on watch lists. What was stolen from the chemical company?”

  “Sounds like invasion of privacy.”

  “You’re a cop. It’s public information. People offer up their lives freely. No one is stealing anything from them. And you’re ignoring my question.”

  “Dry-cleaning fluid. Feel better? Maybe he’s thinking of starting a business and needs the start-up capital. Now, the surveillance data. Where do you get it?”

  “That was part of my arrangement with the Department of Defense when we signed the contract to make the program,” he said absently, rubbing the watch on his hand.

  “And Keenan has part of this program?”

  “We rewrote it. The code he stole wasn’t working exactly as it should when we were hacked.”

  “But he took enough to write his own, is that it?”

  He toasted her with his coffee mug. “Like I said before, O’Halloran, you’re a smart woman.”

  “Smart enough to know that there’s a reason you want to catch him so bad. It’s not just what he did to Blake.” She leaned forward. “You know why I want Keenan Shy behind bars. Why do you?”

  For a moment, she thought he would answer, finally giving her a clue to the mystery of Roland Chandler, but, as usual, he dodged the question. “I suspect that he’s using the program’s algorithms to identify people he can use. People who can be manipulated into working for him. Killing for him.”

  His voice roughened and the hand holding the fork tightened briefly. The cues were subtle, quickly masked, and honest, she decided.

  So that’s it, Maura decided. He used you. And no one uses Roland Chandler.

  “Why? Who?”

  He set down his fork and wiped his mouth with his napkin, his eye
s suddenly tired. “You’re asking the wrong questions, O’Halloran.”

  “What should I be asking?” she asked softly, wondering when he’d slept last, if he ever slept, or if he was like her, waking up to dreams of Keenan Shy killing everyone she loved.

  “With Keenan?”

  She nodded.

  “Where and how.” And he laughed. Short. Bitter. And just a little mad.

  Thirty minutes later, Maura left the Diner with her arm tucked through Roland Chandler’s, ostensibly to help her keep her balance on the icy sidewalk, but the nervous flutters in her belly suggested that allowing the assistance had set her on a path of self-destruction. She’d left off her gloves and used her free hand to grip the hilt of her duty weapon, casting her eyes around the snow-covered mounds of cars and shrubs, looking for any sign that the night had been disturbed.

  “Where’s your Range Rover?” she asked in the cold, quiet stillness, wondering if he knew just how handsome he looked in the stark light of the streetlamps.

  “Secured at the parking garage at Accendo. Where’s your car?”

  She nodded to the unmarked patrol car she’d brought from the station, parked next to the curb several feet away. “How do we know he hasn’t tampered with this one? How do we know he hasn’t had us followed?”

  “He wouldn’t play the same prank twice,” he assured her, removing her arm from his so that he could draw off his gloves. “But I’ll check it.”

  Prank? Jesus. Maura put a hand on his arm to stop him and withdrew her weapon, moving to grip it with both hands. “No offense, but you’re not the fucking bomb squad. I should have had uniforms watching it, watching you.” She cursed silently to herself for being so intent on getting information that she hadn’t used her fucking head.

  “You give me too much credit,” he said with an amused smile, and pulled out his phone. He typed what she presumed was a quick text and after a moment his phone beeped in reply.

  “All clear,” he said softly. “No one’s been near it.” He held up the phone and used it to point at a camera near the entrance of the building.

  Maura wanted to ask questions, realized it was useless, and just said, “You’re sure?”

  He thought about it. “Let’s look before we get in, just to be safe. The best way to fool someone is to show them that you have nothing up your sleeve.”