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Chapter One

At 10:19 AM, Henry Devlin was distracted by a flash of movement in the corner of his mental grid of the Rose Reading Room. Without moving his head, he lifted his gaze from the screen he’d been staring at and swept the room, cataloging every change.

He’d always had a talent for single-minded concentration, but in these strange days, he’d been forced to apportion smaller and smaller pieces of his attention to multiple tasks at once, forcing them all to work in parallel. Not optimal or efficient, but a fugitive had no choice. He had to be constantly on the alert.

The disturbance on his grid was a hunched, elderly woman who was entering the Rose Reading Room. She had long, unkempt gray hair under a puffy knit hat with a bill, and wore a tired wool coat of dingy gray that used to be black. She shuffled forward, thick ankles bulging over heavy black orthopedic shoes that clumped and dragged. She had shiny brown compression stockings, a dowager’s hump, a hooked nose, heavy glasses, and hanging jowls. He focused his attention, to see if maybe…

Yes. It was the costume girl. Jubilant certainty filled him as he admired her disguise. Incredible, how she upped her game with each new persona.

It felt like a game now, even a friendly duel. The rush he got from spotting her was also cause for worry. He was walking a tightrope. Any strong feeling, positive or negative, could knock him off it.

To survive, he had to be blank, gray, empty. The actions of a person who had no feelings, opinions or preferences could not be predicted. So he had to be invisible even to himself. He had to be not there.

He had to be nobody.

Nostalgia still overtook him whenever his guard faltered. For the way he used to be. Not so much for life with his former wife, which in any case had been a lie.

Then again, from the start he’d had the uneasy sense that Belinda was just too good to be true. Part of him had been braced for disaster all along. Unwilling to let go of the fantasy, but at the same time, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And then it dropped. Right on top of him, like a ton of broken rock.

A year and a half ago, he’d been Belinda’s husband, the father of a perfect baby girl. He’d been making good money. He had a nice house, a good car, a great sex life. An enviable existence by all standard markers of American manhood. Incredible luck for a shy, socially awkward, nerdy guy like himself. Improbable, if you thought about it. So he’d tried not to. He’d just embraced his luck, because why not?

In prison, he’d had all the time in the world to ponder why not.

What he really missed now was the way he’d worked before. Focusing so completely that the world went away. He couldn’t get to that place anymore, even alone in his studio sublet. He was too tense for deep dives. It was only brief, shallow dives now, and he always came up quickly, anxious, scared, gasping for air.

It used to be that when he sat down to work, a big hand reached up out of the screen, grabbed his brain, and yanked him down to where the magic happened. Nothing touched him when he was in that state, not hunger or thirst or the body’s demands. Not an alarm wailing, a phone ringing, a baby crying.

He craved those brainwaves the way other people craved food.

Belinda had scolded him for that. Get out of la-la land. Join the real world.

She’d gotten her wish. By framing him for fraud, Belinda and Victor, her sociopathic boyfriend, had catapulted him headlong into a world that was terribly real. The clang of prison doors closing still echoed in his mind. It didn’t get much realer than that.

But he shouldn’t think about Victor and Belinda at all. He exhaled, replacing thoughts of them with blank gray. Invisible. Empty. Nothing. He clung to nothing, and called nothing his own. Not his memories, not even his anger. It was all fiction, all suspect, all up for debate.

Except for Faith. Memories of his baby he would keep, even though they burned like an ulcer.

Henry focused on the costume girl as she shuffled along leaning heavily on her cane, precisely as an old lady with badly swollen ankles would. Liver spots. Raised veins. She had incredible skill.

He’d noticed her a few weeks ago, but she may well have been coming in for a while before that. One day, while organizing his mental images of the Rose Reading Room occupants, he cross-referenced her with the memory of a woman he’d seen four days before. The first woman had been slim, with a black Metallica sweatshirt, star-spangled active-wear spandex pants, auburn dreads, rimless glasses, and facial piercings. The second woman had chipmunk cheeks, pink-rimmed sparkling glasses, a perky gray bob, a heavy bosom, and a big belly. Body shape, haircut and color, skin tone, eye color and age were all different, but there were too many similarities to overlook.

Henry had been so alarmed that he had actually considered walking away from the Rose Reading Room, even leaving New York City altogether. But he loved the big, loud, anonymous city, and the Rose Reading Room soothed him. Yes, it was dangerous to have habits, but he’d given up so much already. He needed one constant in his life. Just one, for baseline sanity. A safety rope to keep him moored to the world.

He felt suffocated in his studio apartment. He needed the outdoors, movement, a destination, and public libraries were the only sheltered place where a person could take up space without paying for the privilege.

His mom had been a librarian, so libraries felt like a haven to him.

Still, he kept going, and kept watching the costume girl, growing more fascinated with her by the day. Nothing bad had happened yet. And she didn’t act the way a person stalking him would act. A cop, a Fed, a P.I., any one of them would have made a move by now.

He’d begun anticipating the challenge. He felt flat and somewhat cheated when she didn’t show up. Over time, she’d become his entertainment. His guilty pleasure. It was as if they had a secret little outlaw club with a membership of two. A brief flash of connection every day. All of that was probably all in his head, but he enjoyed it. And his enjoyments were few these days.

He caught her glancing over to see if she’d fooled him, and lifted his coffee cup, giving her a slight, deliberate nod, almost a bow, in homage to her skills. Thanking her for another magnificent performance.

Great try. But no.

The costume girl looked away. Her lips seemed to tighten, but she had somehow created so many lip wrinkles that he couldn’t be sure. He wished he could ask her how she did it, but he wouldn’t have been capable of an overture like that even before his life exploded and he became a fugitive, indebted to criminals. An outlaw with no name, no past, no future. No self.

In any case, she’d bolt if he tried it. Normal people didn’t hide under elaborate disguises. She was on the run, hiding from something or someone, just like him. He’d bet money on it. He watched as she pulled out a tablet. He ought to tell her to switch out that cover. She always used the same grubby pink thing, though only a detail-crazy geek like him would notice.

Henry forced his attention back to the screen. He was working for a hardened criminal, which made him tense, but he had no choice other than prison, which was no choice at all. No matter who he was working for, he was grateful to be out. He could exist off the grid and make enough money to survive, and it was all thanks to Ivar, a contact he’d made in prison.

Henry had met Ivar Schull soon after he arrived at the Rock Ridge Correctional Facility for Men. Ivar was in for mail fraud, and up for parole very soon. Ivar was fiercely intelligent, a born hustler with an entrepreneurial mindset. When he learned how Victor and Belinda turned Henry’s technical skills against him, he’d started dreaming up ways to monetize Henry’s talents in the criminal underworld. It started as a joke. It didn’t stay one for long.

Before he was released, Ivar quietly suggested that, in return for a long-running commitment for some trifling technical services, he could arrange for Henry to break out. Ivar would take care of the details. Once Henry was on the outside, he would hide him, outfit him, find him serviceable ID. It would be expensive. But Henry could work off his debt with his special skills.

At first, Henry laughed him off. At the time, he still hoped that he could prove his innocence and get his life back. Then, slowly, he began to realize the extent of the trouble he was in. The evidence against him was rigged, and the judge was prejudiced.

In the end, he realized that the indentured servitude Ivar was offering was actually his best bet.

According to the prosecution, Henry had defrauded his three biggest clients of a combined six-point-five million dollars using cutting edge tech tools he had inserted into databases he had designed for them. The prosecutor offered clemency if he cooperated, a slap on the wrist. Two to five years in a minimum security facility, out early for good behavior. All he had to do was give back the money. But since he had not stolen the money, he was useless in recovering it, much to the disgust of his lawyers.

He’d never been a bitter, cynical person, but the events of the past eighteen months had changed him. He was like a lump of coal subjected to massive geological forces. He’d become a diamond, but not the bright, glittering kind. More like the practical, un-beautiful kind. The ones they used for drill bits.

The prosecution had presented videos of him buying diamonds. Security cameras from jewelers all over the tri-state area had recorded him. Receipts had been produced bearing his signature, from places he’d never been, generated by people he’d never met, spending money he’d never touched. Over and over, there he was, brazenly laundering his ill-gotten gains right out in front of God and everyone. He would have been more intelligent about it if he had actually done the crime. He’d said as much to his lawyers, but as a defense strategy that didn’t go over very well.

As Mom had always gently tried to remind him, nobody liked a smart-ass.

His wife, Belinda, had stolen a copy of Mirror, Mirror, a deep-fake program Henry had written himself. He’d done it for fun, delving into deep-fake tech to see if he could make videos that would fool a forensic expert. He’d pulled it off, too. And like a kid with a new toy, he’d run right off to show his creation to Belinda.

Henry had never meant to sell or use Mirror, Mirror. It was clearly a tool for bad actors. He’d simply wondered if the logistical difficulties of a deep-fake were solvable, and when his brain posed a question like that, he had to answer it. By showing Mirror, Mirror to Belinda, he had exposed himself, like a fawning idiot. He had handed her a rope and begged her to hang him with it.

Belinda had asked for his signature all the time when they were married, usually while he was concentrating on some other project. He’d always given it. Absently, trustingly. Innocuous things, permissions for Faith to have her picture taken at the child-care center, releases for vaccinations, tax stuff, banking stuff. He’d been grateful to leave the busywork of life to her so he could focus on more important things. Hurray for the division of labor that liberated him to leverage his true talents, right?

He’d been so stupid. Not in the obvious ways in which they had made him seem stupid, which were bad enough. He’d been stupid in deeper, more humiliating ways. He’d been emotionally callow, blind, with holes in his head. Belinda and Victor had used every one of those holes, and he had no one to blame but himself.

After the trial, Henry let go of any hope of justice. If he reached for justice, he’d get smacked down so hard, he’d never see the light of day again. But revenge was a more flexible proposition.

During sleepless nights in the prison, surrounded by the miserable nocturnal noise and stink of his cellmates, he’d decided he wanted every penny they had accused him of stealing. He’d never cared about money until he married Belinda, but it had taken on a new importance now. Money meant freedom, high-quality ID, travel, the chance to build a life somewhere else. Money meant seeing the sunrise, the breeze on his face.

He needed a large sum of money to crawl out of the hole he was in now. Ivar sent him a steady stream of work, and bit by bit, he was paying off his debt for the prison break. But it was slow going. What Henry really needed was a new passport. A real one. Ivar had assured him, somewhat cagily, that this was doable. Ivar dealt in secrets and favors. The bigger the secrets, the bigger the favors, and he had secrets on people in government agencies who could make it happen. Or so he claimed.

But it was not in Ivar’s best interest to hand such a document over until Henry had paid off his debt, and maybe not even then. The prison break and all the help he’d been given afterward, the housing, electronics, bank accounts, credit cards with driver’s licenses to match them, had already run up a tab of close to a million. A genuine American passport, Ivar said, would be another million. It would take years, working night and day, to pay that off. And even if Ivar did get him that passport, he could always tip off the authorities himself, and Henry would be back to square one, in prison.

So in a way, he was still inside. Still stripped of any real identity. Still a nobody.

He could sell Mirror, Mirror to Ivar outright. But he was living proof of the harm that Mirror, Mirror could do.

The only other solution was the money Victor and Belinda had stolen, if they still had it. That would be plenty to both pay off his debt and leave enough extra to start over.

Among the other favors he had bestowed upon him, Ivar had put Henry in touch with people who sold test-taking services and the writing of scientific masters and graduate theses. Henry churned these out with such ease, the man who found him the jobs had asked him to dumb them down, just to make them more believable. It was a unique challenge for him, dialing it down and not up. But the extra cash that he earned from those gigs covered his basic expenses.

Even if he took back what Victor and Belinda had stolen in his name, it could never make up for what he’d lost. His reputation, his identity. And Faith. His baby girl.

Even so, destroying Belinda and Victor was a way to even the score. He’d ruin them, just as they’d ruined him. He would bully and hassle and torment them. They would not have a moment’s peace until he got that money back, paid his debt, and left the country.

The only problem was Faith, stranded out there with them on the firing range.

Movement on the screen caught his eye. Henry studied the flicker on one of the thumbnail monitors. The one that had been activated was in Belinda and Victor’s garage. Belinda had taken to doing her grocery shopping in the mornings after dropping Faith off at the daycare center. She brought it home, unpacked it, and then went to work. Coming into work a couple of hours late was evidently one of the perks of sleeping with the boss.

He watched as she sat in the garage in her Toyota Gamma for so long that the motion-activated light snapped off, leaving her in total darkness. A tiny flickering glow wavered in front of her. A cigarette. She’d quit while she was pregnant with Faith, but picked it up again. Maybe having her husband thrown into prison was stressful. Maybe she felt guilty, conflicted. Maybe a life of crime exhausted her. Maybe it was just having a toddler.

Belinda took her time finishing her cigarette and then tucked behind some boxes. Then she grabbed her reusable shopping bags from the back. Classic Belinda, always thinking of the planet, with her hybrid SUV, her eco-sustainable body care products, her free-range eggs, grass-fed beef, organic produce and hemp sneakers. Hyper-conscious of her carbon footprint.

But she’d stomped all over him without a shred of remorse.

The monitor enlarged as she entered the frame, then reduced to a thumbnail as she left. Now the kitchen monitor dominated his screen. Her new kitchen was more impressive than the one in the house Henry had bought for her. Now he watched her via the video camera of the cutting-edge electronic butler. Belinda and Victor had a smart house, which made it all the easier for Henry to hack into their systems. This particular gizmo was fortuitously angled to encompass the entire kitchen. It even afforded a glimpse through the entryway into their living room. Thanks to the almost too easy hacking of all their monitors and security systems, Henry had broken in a couple of months ago and loaded a sleek little key-logging bit of malware into their computers. If they tried to change their passwords, all he had to do was access the logger, and he was right back inside.

Thanks to the house’s smart-hub, he had access to everything. Their electronic butler. Their computers. Their smart TVs, the Bluetooth, the security cameras, the smart appliances, the baby monitor, Belinda’s phone. He hadn’t compromised Victor’s phone yet, but he could listen to all Victor’s conversations in his car through his Bluetooth connection. It had been easy to hack the cyber-connected cars. If he wanted to, Henry could seize control of those cars at any time he liked.

He hadn’t played that card yet. For now, he just enjoyed holding it. Little pleasures.

The Bluetooth connection had proved especially useful when Victor set up extracurricular sex parties with escorts in the city, a thing he did frequently. It had taken Henry a while to figure out how to collect video evidence of these encounters, and when he did, watching it had been extremely distasteful. But he had what he needed now. Another stick to beat Victor with. And soon.

Belinda hoisted the grocery bags onto the granite-topped central island. The island had a sink and a stovetop. There was another sink and stovetop against the wall, below a big window with decorative lace curtains. Beyond the window, Henry saw rolling knolls of green uniform grass, and a glimpse of the artificial lake at the center of Victor’s gated community, the Chilton Estates.

Belinda went back and forth, grimly putting her groceries away, her carefully shaped dark brows knotted into a frown. Her collagen-plumped lips were pursed tight. Items piled up. Pre-washed organic salad greens. Frozen pizzas. Frozen dinners. Baby carrots. Yogurt, baby food, frozen chicken tenders. Belinda had never been a very inventive cook. Henry had done most of the cooking during their marriage. Belinda unpacked wipes and diapers. She plonked two large packs, sized for an eighteen-month-old, on the counter.

Henry frowned. Eighteen months? Faith was well over two and a half. She had not been underweight back when he had been bathing her, feeding her, changing her.

He swiftly opened the monitor that showed the daycare center’s play rooms, looking for Faith. Belinda had recently, and conveniently, moved her to Busy Bees Day Care, a facility that offered continuous video monitoring for anxious helicopter parents.

Henry finally found Faith sitting in a corner on a rubberized mat decorated with the letters of the alphabet. She showed no interest in the toys scattered around her, just sat hunched over, sucking her small fist, looking pinched and hollow-eyed.

Henry didn’t like this at all. The listlessness, the dullness in her eyes, her shrimpy smallness. Not that he was one to judge if she was undersized. But she certainly did not look like the bouncing, alert baby he remembered. The baby fat on her wrists and ankles was gone. Her little arms and legs were spindly now.

Henry swallowed the rebellious clutch of emotion in his throat. No. Faith was someone else’s kid. She had never been his to begin with. A genetic test, demanded by Victor’s angry ex-wife, had revealed that she was Victor’s biological child. Faith was definitely someone else’s problem now. Just another unlucky kid who had drawn shit parents from the great lottery in the sky. It was a big shame, but there it was. All he could do was wish her luck and get as far away from her as he could.

Faith had been nine months old when they dragged him away in cuffs. He still remembered her screaming in Belinda’s arms, holding out her arms to him, her little face purple with yelling, wet with tears and snot. Howling in bewilderment.

Henry had given Faith his mother’s name, over Belinda’s protests. Belinda thought the name was old-fashioned and stodgy, but Henry had insisted. So Victor Shattuck’s child bore Henry’s mother’s name. Not that it mattered. Faith was Victor’s now, to neglect, disappoint, damage.

Every time he looked at her, he had to remind himself that she was no longer his responsibility. Even if he could do something so crazy, taking a little kid with him on the lam would be doing her no favors. The chances of that ending well were slim to none. The kindest thing he could do for her was to somehow take her worthless parents off the playing board. Let her roll the dice again with a fresh set of adoptive ones. After all, she couldn’t possibly do worse than those two ghouls.

He switched off the Busy Bees monitor and checked back on Belinda, who was still putting away yogurt cups and pureed soup. She pulled out two tubs of caramel praline ice cream, her favorite, and one of chocolate almond fudge. Henry and Belinda had always had a dish of ice cream after sex. Belinda had been struggling to stop smoking at the time, so the ice cream took the place of nicotine.

Henry favored simple French vanilla. To his mind, ice cream should be creamy, plain, and perfectly uniform in texture. He didn’t get why anyone would mar that with chunks or nuts, or gummy fudges, or crystals that crunched, crackled, and stuck in your teeth.

Belinda had teasingly called him her “vanilla man.” He hadn’t known what that meant. He’d been a virgin when they met. Dazzled by sex. Pathetically enthusiastic. Later, he’d run across the term in a magazine in prison, and learned that being “vanilla” meant you were dull, boring, and predictable in bed. No spice, no kink.

A painful revelation, but relatively speaking, other things had hurt him more.

So Victor was a chunky almond fudge kind of guy. Henry stared at the tubs of ice cream, wishing he could return to his previous state of blissful ignorance.

Once she’d finished putting away her ice cream, Belinda shrugged on her coat. Henry followed her progress back out into the garage. Then he switched the GPS tag on and followed her Gamma through town. She veered off to stop at the coffee shop for her usual sugary expresso drink. Bel was a creature of habit.

While she ordered, Henry clicked into the smart house control hub, found the refrigerator, and turned it off. By the time Victor and Belinda got home that night, their ice cream would be liquid slop.

Maybe it was a petty gesture, but Henry preferred to think of it as thorough. And a harbinger of things to come.

End of Excerpt