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“He’ll only meet somewhere public.”
“That wasn’t the deal.”
“Well, he says he’s not coming unless it’s somewhere public. I believe him.”
There’s an audible sigh. “Where?” she asks, finally.
Poppy considers this. Where is somewhere public, somewhere crowded that he’ll feel safe?
“The carousel museum,” she blurts, remembering the place was always crowded when her parents would take her there as a kid.
“The what?”
“The carousel museum,” she repeats. It’s the best Poppy can come up with on the fly. And it’s just up the road from the Econo Lodge. “Google it. It’s not like there’s more than one carousel museum in Leavenworth.”
“Or anywhere, for that matter,” the agent says with the condescension of a big-city person.
“One more thing,” Poppy says.
“Seriously?”
“He’s coming alone.”
“No. We need them both,” Fincher says. “You need to convince him to bring Sophia.”
Poppy sighs. “Not gonna happen.” She wonders how the agent knows Alison is going by the name Sophia, but Fincher has always had a leg up on intel.
“For fuck’s sake, what the—”
“Look, he’s got a right to be paranoid. Let’s just get him comfortable, then we can get this squared. You want O’Leary, don’t you?”
Fincher doesn’t answer.
“Where are you taking the daughter?” Fincher says eventually.
Poppy hasn’t a clue. “I’m not sure. I’ll figure out somewhere safe. I’ll keep them close until you all finish, then we can all meet at the motel once he’s comfortable.”
Poppy waits for confirmation, but the agent has hung up on her.
Nice.
76
Alison feels a strange combination of fear and hope. She sits in the back seat of Poppy McGee’s SUV next to Ryan, who is lost in thought, perhaps fear and hope of his own. Her father is about to meet with the Feds. One of two things will happen: It will be the real deal or a trap. In either case, they’ll be in hiding again.
“Everything okay?” Ryan says.
“Dandy.”
He smiles at that.
Dodge has such a wonderful smile. She’s experienced a roller coaster of emotions seeing him again. The nostalgia of their youth. The man he’s become. Her betrayals. Not only keeping her real identity from him for all those years. There’s more. She’d had periods of doubt about their relationship, including what could best be described as a dalliance with Poppy’s older brother. And in the years since, she’s become a different person. If Alison was the good version of Taylor, Sophia is the melancholy version of both. She has a deep sadness—loneliness—baked into her bones now.
She thinks a lot about that night at Lovers’ Lane. Not the abduction, which she’s tried to bury. But of Dodge shivering in that car, the anticipation that they would finally… She fights the memory. You can’t go home again isn’t just a literary cliché.
The car pulls into a lot in front of a structure the size of an airplane hangar. A sign over the entrance reads C. W. PARKER CAROUSEL MUSEUM.
Her father, in the front passenger seat, looks at Poppy. She returns the look with a shrug that says, Best I could do on short notice.