And Then I Found Out the Truth (20 page)

Judging by the buses parked on the street and the people with cameras swarming around, the Basílica and the cemetery were major tourist attractions, and if we’d had time we probably would’ve stopped to check them out. But we weren’t there for the sights — our destination was the collection of sidewalk stands catering to the tourists. And across from the cemetery gates we found exactly what we were looking for: a guy selling hats.

Sadly, his selection was geared toward people’s souvenir needs, and specifically the needs of people who for whatever reason wanted to dress like gauchos. Gauchos were the Argentinean version of cowboys, and apparently they favored hats made of wool felt, with wide brims and attractive chinstraps for when their wearers were galloping across the pampas.

I doubted Charley would approve of the fashion statement I’d be making, but the price was right, and coming here had been more efficient than trying to find a shopping mall. And at least I could find a hat that fit my tiny head, since a lot of the stock was in children’s sizes. We chose one with a brim that came down far enough to hide most of my face while still allowing me to see, and after adding a cheap pair of mirrored sunglasses my disguise was complete. Of course, I was also pretty sure I looked like a total idiot no matter what Quinn said, but it seemed like a small sacrifice given the circumstances.

That done, we hailed a passing cab. We had an appointment of sorts, one I’d set up with the final phone call I’d made at the
locutorio.
“El Obelisco,
por favor
,” Quinn told the driver with fluent ease.

The Alvear made sense as a base of operations for Hunter since so many of the embassies were close by, but I’d wanted a more action-packed setting for what was going to happen next, and the monument had been the first thing to come to mind when I’d been making arrangements. To be honest, it was the only thing that came to mind — I wasn’t exactly well versed in local landmarks.

The driver gunned his engine and plunged into traffic with an utter disregard for the other cars on the road, traffic signals, and stray pedestrians. He was also as busy on his cell phone as the driver I’d had earlier, so if we were passing anything interesting, we had to figure it out for ourselves.

Quinn could read in a moving vehicle without getting carsick, and he studied our map as the driver alternated between flooring it and slamming on the brakes. “That’s the Palacio de Justicia, which I think is the Supreme Court,” he said, when a pillared building flashed by, “and that’s a really famous synagogue,” he added, gesturing to a blur of carved Byzantine facade. Then, as we zipped by a stately Renaissance structure topped with a triangular pediment, he said, “That’s the Teatro Colón. It’s like the Lincoln Center of Buenos Aires.”

So the trip was moderately educational, and learning what everything was distracted us from the fact that the driver seemed to have a death wish. A couple of blocks beyond the Teatro Colón he screeched to a stop at the edge of the Plaza de la República, the mammoth oval where the twelve lanes of Avenida 9 de Julio met the six lanes of Avenida Corrientes. In the middle, El Obelisco rose from a grassy island the size of a football field.

We’d arrived with ten minutes to spare, and we needed five of them just to cross the crazed traffic between us and the center island. Then we had to find a spot that offered a clear view of people coming and going and where it wouldn’t be immediately obvious we were on a stakeout.

“Too bad we don’t have a camera,” I said. “We could pretend to be tourists.”

“We do have a camera,” said Quinn, digging one out of his backpack. “I thought it might come in handy. It has a zoom feature, though it’s no substitute for binoculars. I’ve got binoculars, too, with great aspherical lenses, but those might attract unwanted attention.”

He’d definitely put more thought into packing for this trip than Carolina and I had. “What else do you have in there?” I asked.

“Toothbrush, toothpaste. Change of clothes. My iPod. A book or two. Various surveillance equipment.” “Wait — what?”

“Surveillance equipment. You know, like the binoculars, and a pen that’s actually a video recorder, and a bionic ear, which lets you listen in on people’s conversations — basic stuff like that.”

“You just happened to have all that lying around your house?”

He sounded almost sheepish as he explained. “When I was little, maybe Bea’s age, I got really into James Bond. It was sort of how my dad and I bonded. Hunter’s a huge fan. He’s collected first editions of all of Ian Fleming’s books — that’s the guy who created Bond — and on birthdays and holidays he always gives me secret agent—type gadgets. So, yeah, I did have all this stuff lying around.”

The way Quinn and Hunter were about James Bond wasn’t that different from how Ash and I had been about surfing — I didn’t think he should be embarrassed. Before I could say anything, though, Quinn grabbed my arm. “Is that him?” he asked.

I turned. And sure enough, there was Thad, threading his way through the six lanes on the other side of the avenue. Quinn had never met him before, but in his khakis and button-down shirt, and with his BlackBerry clipped to his waist, Thad looked exactly like what he was — a tech executive from Silicon Valley — so here in Buenos Aires he didn’t exactly melt into the crowd. As we watched, he narrowly escaped being flattened by a truck running the red light, and I couldn’t help registering a twinge of disappointment.

He managed to reach the center island intact and began scanning the crowd, searching for a specific face. Even without the hat and sunglasses he probably wouldn’t have noticed me — after all, he didn’t expect me to be there, and he was looking for someone else entirely — but I was glad of my disguise and Quinn’s presence as his eyes passed over us.

When I’d called Brett from the
locutorio,
she said she’d do what she could, but she also warned me Thad had been less than responsive to the messages she’d already sent while he’d been away.

Still, it looked like an urgent request to meet Samantha Arquero at the Obelisk at 3:30 P.M. was all it took to get his attention.

Regardless, I was stunned my plan had worked. Not only had I confirmed there was a connection between Thad and Samantha Arquero — why else would her name be sufficient to lure him here? — but now we could also follow him wherever he went next.

Thad, meanwhile, had no way of knowing Samantha Arquero wouldn’t arrive at any moment, and he settled in to wait for her. For him this meant fiddling with his BlackBerry and glancing up every few seconds to see if she’d appeared. Fifty feet away and safely off to the side, out of his line of vision, Quinn and I pretended to be busy taking pictures.

A full fifteen minutes elapsed before it seemed to occur to Thad that he might have been stood up. Through the camera’s zoom lens, I could see his expression in profile, morphing from impatient and weaselish to annoyed and weaselish. He took a wireless headset from his pocket and clipped it to his ear before thumbing something into his BlackBerry.

“Perfect,” said Quinn, grabbing a cell phone from his backpack.

Only it wasn’t really a cell phone — it just looked like one. “My dad gave me this for Christmas last year,” he explained in a low voice, pulling off his sunglasses so he could get a better look at its screen and pushing buttons on its keypad. “It lets you tap into other people’s Bluetooth connections up to a twenty-five-yard radius. You can hear both sides of their call, but they can’t hear you.”

And the amazing thing was that it worked. When Quinn held the phone to my ear, bending down so we could listen together, there was the sound of a number being dialed and then someone answering.

“Arquero Energía Argentina,” announced a woman’s voice.

“Samantha Arquero,
por favor
.” This voice was Thad’s, and it was as clear as if he’d called us directly, though his Spanish didn’t sound anywhere near as good as Quinn’s.

“Momento,”
came the response.

And a moment later, another woman came on the line.
“La oficina de
Samantha Arquero,” she said.

“Teresa, it’s Thad Wilcox. I’ve been waiting for Ms. Arquero for fifteen minutes. Where is she?”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Wilcox,” the woman answered, a note of confusion in her tone. “Ms. Arquero is in a conference with her father this afternoon.”

“I had a message from my assistant to meet her at three thirty,” Thad insisted.

“I’m afraid there has been a mistake. You are on her schedule for tomorrow morning, as we arranged last week. I was going to call you at the end of the day to reconfirm. Eleven o’clock at the Café Tortoni.”

Thad hung up without saying thank you or good-bye, and then he immediately dialed a new number. Quinn and I listened as it rang four times before a voice mail greeting clicked on.

This is Brett Fitzgerald at TrueTech. I’m on the other line or away from my desk. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call as soon as I can.

Thad gave an irritated grunt as he waited for the beep. “Terrific,” he said sarcastically. “You’re probably out at lunch already, and it’s not even noon yet in California. I need to know about that urgent message from Samantha Arquero. Call me ASAP. And I mean ASAP.”

He ended this call as ceremoniously as he’d ended the previous one and yanked the headset from his ear. He shoved it into his pocket and clipped his BlackBerry back onto his belt as he strode over to the crosswalk and waited impatiently for the light to change. I felt guilty about Brett — I should have realized Thad would call to check when Samantha Arquero didn’t appear. And based on how angry he’d sounded, I wouldn’t put it past him to fire her. I could reassure myself that my mother would fix everything once she returned, but Brett didn’t know that, and I couldn’t tell her until it was actually safe for T.K. to come back.

The green light finally turned red and the D
ON’T
W
ALK
signal gave way to the W
ALK
signal. Quinn and I moved to follow Thad as he stepped into the street, trying to keep a safe distance behind.

But before he was even halfway across, Thad froze in his tracks, right there in the crosswalk. Then he spun around, and the look on his face reminded me of a cartoon character who’d just had an epiphany. There should have been a bubble above his head with a lightbulb inside.

He headed back for the center island, and now he wasn’t even watching for the occasional rogue driver who might decide to ignore the red light. Instead, he was scanning the people around the Obelisk with fresh intensity.

Fortunately, Quinn and I hadn’t even made it to the crosswalk yet, and my disguise was still in place. Now we paused and feigned immersion in our map. From the corner of my eye, though, I could see Thad’s gaze sweep over us as he stalked by, and he was clipping his headset back onto his ear.

“He’s making another call,” I whispered to Quinn, who was already punching buttons on the spy phone.

We had a false start, picking up the signal from some unknown person’s phone instead, but Quinn pressed another button and the torrent of Spanish was replaced with another annoyed grunt from Thad as his call was answered by voice mail.

For a fleeting moment, I thought he’d tried to reach Brett again, and that this time he really would fire her — not only over the phone, but by leaving a message, which seemed extra wrong.

But the greeting that picked up wasn’t Brett’s.

It was mine.

Twenty-nine

I’d recorded the greeting months and months ago, long before T.K. had disappeared and my entire life exploded. As I listened to my own voice, it sounded strangely sunny and carefree, like a relic of a different person altogether.

Hi. It’s Delia. Sorry I missed you. Leave a message, and I’ll call you back.

And then, like a true Californian, I added: “Have a great day!” I couldn’t believe Charley hadn’t made me change that — people telling her what kind of day to have was right up there with emoticons on her list of pet peeves.

Thad, however, didn’t sound like he was having a great day as he recorded his message. In fact, he sounded like he was having a really bad day. “Delia. This is Thad Wilcox. I’m wondering where you are right now. I suspect it’s not where you’re supposed to be.”

There was an undertone of menace to his words that was more than a little disturbing, though he was less condescending than he’d been when he threatened me in Patience’s apartment the previous week — maybe he was starting to respect me, now that he knew I could scheme and connive, too.

Because though it had taken him a while, it seemed safe to assume he’d realized I might have been behind the message about Samantha Arquero. After all, who else would have used Brett as a go-between? Samantha Arquero’s assistant sounded like she was used to talking to Thad directly — he’d known her name and everything.

And if Thad had figured that out, he’d probably also figured out there was a decent chance I was somewhere nearby, hoping to do exactly what I’d been hoping to do. My brilliant plan was starting to look a lot less brilliant.

Especially since as he continued to speak, something weird began happening to our spy phone connection, kind of like an echo effect.

Except it wasn’t an echo.

Slowly, trying not to give us away with any abrupt movement, I turned my head to get a better look. Thad was moving in our direction, and now we could hear him in stereo, both through the spy phone and more faintly as his voice traveled toward us, carried on the breeze.

He was still a healthy distance away, searching the faces of everyone he passed, so I didn’t think he’d spotted us.

“We should get out of here,” said Quinn softly, closing the spy phone and slipping it into his bag.

“Good idea,” I said. Quinn put his arm around my shoulders in a casual, touristlike gesture, and we started for the crosswalk.

And that’s when it happened. A sudden gust of wind caught the brim of my hat, and because I’d drawn the line at actually using the chinstrap, it went spinning off my head. My hair whipped around my face, so I couldn’t even see, but I heard Thad give a shout of discovery. “Delia!”