Reston, Virginia

Tully found Emma in her usual lounge spot, in the living room on the floor and in front of a blaring TV. He was relieved to see no packages. Just the regular teenage mess of magazines and junk food.

A news brief interrupted her television show. She muted the sound, but Tully asked her to turn it back on when he saw that it was a press conference at Saint Francis Hospital in Chicago. There wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. Two doctors and a CDC guy fielding questions and keeping to the basics. In the corner of the screen was a picture of Markus Schroder. It looked like a wedding shot and included his wife. The guy looked like an ordinary joe. An accountant, they were saying, for a Chicago firm. Tully didn’t recognize him. He’d batted the name around his brain all morning and couldn’t place it. Even now as he studied the photo there was nothing he recognized about the man. Then Tully glanced at the wife. There was something familiar about the eyes. Did he know her?

“It’s so sad,” Emma was saying.

“Did they say the wife’s name?”

“Yeah, something with a V. Vera, maybe.”

Vera Schroder. No, the name didn’t mean anything to Tully, either.

“Gotta go, sweet pea. Remember everything I said, okay?”

He was back on the road again. He got Maggie’s message and revised his route. It would take him more than forty minutes to UVA. He was looking for a radio station with more news from Chicago when his cell phone rang.

“This is Agent Tully.”

“Conrad’s mom got one of those cute little packages filled with money, too.” It was Caroline again and even more angry. “What the hell’s going on, Tully?”

The realization hit him and it felt as if Caroline’s words had injected ice water into his veins. He could see everything so clearly.

He had recognized Vera Schroder. And now he remembered where. It was a photo from a newspaper clipping that his roommate had insisted he keep tacked on their bulletin board to motivate him. A distraught young woman, devastated at finding her parents dead in their home after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol. Only, her name wasn’t Schroder then. It was Vera Sloane. She was George Sloane’s sister.