The Five Year Lie

The narrative returns to the present. Ariel suspiciously wonders why Uncle Ray was looking at a photo of Drew/Jay as she prepares for a Chime Co. law enforcement support program. She is furious about Amina’s fate and Chime Co.’s role in her death. When Ray is busy in the meeting, Ariel goes into his office to find the name of the judge who issued the warrant for Ernie Miller’s camera footage. That judge, Judge Kerry, had a higher-than-average number of requests right until Drew/Jay disappeared.

Zain’s private investigator friend has managed to track Jay Marker to 2017, after which there is no trail. When Ariel says that she hasn’t sent the letter to Jay, Zain surprises her with a hug. An online search shows that there is no Judge Kerry in Maine, which leads Ariel to suspect that the judge isn’t real but was invented by someone at Chime Co. who could fake the paperwork. They decide to look for the first warrant issued by Judge Kerry to see who set up the account.

The novel flashes back five years. Jay has found that a fake police captain submits the warrants for the fake Judge Kerry to approve. He speculates about who the insider at Chime Co. might be. Edward doesn’t seem to have the programming skills to pull this off. Jay gets an email from HR saying that there’s a problem with his Social Security number, so he knows his time at Chime Co. is up. He and Ariel have sex. He regrets having to leave her and vows to come back for her.

The narrative returns to the present. After Ariel and Buzz make pizza, Ariel reads the new incident report about her father’s death. Since there was no suicide note, the death might have been accidental. Zain calls: They could search for video of the person who input the initial warrant now since the company servers have a lot of traffic and their investigation won’t be noticed. Ariel can’t leave Buzz alone, so Zain decides to find the video himself. When he doesn’t call back, Ariel texts Zain, but he brushes her off.

The novel flashes back five years. Brainz and another system user with the name “TheBoss” are getting ready to take Drew/Jay out and clear all the evidence. They lock Jay out of the system and get ready.

The narrative returns to the present. It is Buzz’s last week of preschool before summer vacation. Zain claims to be too busy with the office network to see Ariel, obviously avoiding her. She mails the letter to Jay and then ambushes Zain on the street. He is evasive at first but then goes to see Ariel at her glass-blowing studio and apologizes for his behavior. Zain found that he was the one who set up the fake judge account, though he had no idea he was doing it. He doesn’t remember who asked him to take the assignment. He has also found that the police captain requesting the warrants, Whitman, doesn’t exist. Zain wants to take all this evidence to Ray, but Ariel wants him to hold off for now. They don’t know why Edward or Ray would risk blowing up the company. Larri says that it’s always money, drugs, or a woman. Zain says that Ariel will inherit the company one day, so they need to get to the bottom of it.

The novel flashes back five years. Drew, about to return to the identity of Jay, can’t log on and is instructed to go to an HR department in another location. When he walks in the office, his instincts kick in, and he avoids being attacked by Ray, who tells him to cooperate to avoid arrest. Jay counters that he has evidence of company malfeasance and easily subdues Ray, secretly pocketing Ray’s ID in the process. Jay offers to leave quietly, knowing that he is no match for the company’s lawyers. Ray stipulates that Jay can’t contact Ariel at all. Jay says that Ariel must be untouchable, which Ray agrees to since Ariel knows nothing about what the company has been doing. Jay leaves with Ray’s ID.

The narrative returns to the present. Ariel goes to her house and notices that the door is open. She takes Buzz to her mother’s and returns to find her house ransacked.

The novel flashes back five years. Jay uses Ray’s ID to get past the bored Chime Co. security guard. He downloads all the warrants in the relevant time frame, as well as the camera feed for the warrant desk. He wonders why Ray hasn’t said anything about Jay leaving to the rest of the company and realizes that this is because Edward doesn’t know about the fake warrants. Jay calls Edward, saying that there’s an egregious security problem in the warrant system and that it’s an inside job. Edwards asks if his brother knows, and Jay implies that Ray is responsible. Edward asks Jay to come to his house.

The narrative returns to the present. When Zain doesn’t show up for tacos at Larri and Tara’s house, where Buzz and Ariel are staying for the time being, Larri and Tara try to make Ariel feel better while keeping Buzz occupied. Ariel calls Zain; when she tells him about the break-in, he worries that her laptop was taken and hopes that Ray isn’t to blame. Ariel looks at Buzz’s destroyed toys and considers who could have been responsible. Could Ray have hired someone to do this? Is Zain the one she can’t trust, or is Jay somehow to blame? Ariel gives Buzz a bath and decides that Jay wouldn’t want his child mixed up with Chime Co. and that he tried to warn her before he disappeared. Officer Barski arrives in response to Ariel’s text about the break-in, but she is too afraid to tell him the truth about what is happening.

The novel flashes back five years. Jay cleans out his apartment and sends his landlord a text apologizing for the quick vacancy. He texts Ariel one last time, telling her to meet him.

The narrative returns to the present. After Ariel takes Buzz to school, she takes Larri and Tara out to brunch as a thank you for letting her and Buzz stay. She listens to a message from Zain in which his garbled voice mumbles for her to “take bussan run” (308). She texts Zain, but there’s no response. Tara shows Ariel the five-year-old texted photo they got of her drug dealer. It is Bryan Zarkey’s sister. Tara confirms that Bryan was sourcing the product. Ariel is suddenly terrified for Zain.

The novel flashes back five years. Brainz arrives at Edward’s house and finds him already passed out. Ray thought that they were switching out Edward’s prescription for drugs meant to knock him out, but the dose was high enough to kill him. Brainz substitutes the fakes for the actual prescription pills, adjusts the network connection to LiveMatch, and tidies up the warrant system. If anyone looks into LiveMatch, it will appear that Edward was behind the cover up, not Ray or Brainz, who is revealed to be Bryan Zarkey. Bryan sends a slightly incriminating text to Ray’s phone to help keep Ray quiet.

The narrative returns to the present. Zain isn’t in the office. When Ariel asks if Ray has heard from him, Ray is worried and curious about her and Zain being friends. Ariel wonders if she’s been wrong about Ray her entire life. He accuses her of not taking her break-in seriously: He tried to pull her Chime Co. camera footage only to find none because she cancelled her account. She is struck that Ray doesn’t think that laws about pulling private video apply to him.

They are interrupted by a bagel delivery from Bagel Tree—the same place where Ray claimed to have gotten a five-year-old text. Suddenly, Ariel realizes that he made up that story: Bagel Tree didn’t exist then. She asks to check the weather on his phone as he gets a cup of coffee and quickly looks at his texts. She finds one from Bryan Zarkey saying, “The job is done just the way you wanted” (317). Ray returns with coffee and tells her to take his car to Buzz’s school picnic. Ariel calls Zain, but a woman police officer answers and tells her that Zain overdosed and died. Ariel realizes that Zain’s slurred message was “take Buzz and run.”

The novel flashes back five years. Jay checks his phone for a response from Ariel, intending to tell her he will come back for her. He goes up to the Cafferty house, following the route that Ariel told him about—one that avoids cameras. He can see Edward’s white shirt collar in the window, but his posture is wrong.