The Outer Circle (The Counterpoint Trilogy Book 3) Read Free

minutes of solitude.
     
    Almost two years of running. Immediately after the 2022 events, she and David spent a couple of months in Playa Del Carmen, then moved to Mexico City to hide in the giant swarm of ten million people. They started carefully withdrawing small sums of money from the accounts where they transferred the three million dollars they took from Nemzhov, moving them into local banks. Thanks to Alejandro’s family and to Javier, they had multiple sets of documents.
     
    That would have been their end, if not for the protection that Alejandro’s family extended to them. Someone came into one of the local banks they were using, asking questions. The manager knew enough to send the word to the family. David and Maggie left the same day for Bucerias, a small town north of Puerto Vallarta. They used Canadian passports to pass as another rich Canadian couple spending their winter months in warm climes. The three months in Bucerias were her favorite time. They rented half-a-house from a free-spirited American woman. Maggie loved the gentle nights, with soft wind rustling in the palm trees and bright moon glistening on the bay. She and David had fallen into an easy going routine; they made love in the morning, went to the beach, swam and suntanned, ate, came back to the house to work until early evening, went for a walk, ate dinner, talked and made love again.
     
    An experiment had been set up, transferring money from one of the accounts to a small one-branch bank in the Caribbean. Less than a day later, new faces appeared in the Caribbean town, watching the bank. An attempt with another account had the same result. There was no way to get the money out safely, all they had was what they withdrew in cash and deposited directly. Less than three hundred thousand dollars. And now most of it was gone.
     
    They had to run from Bucerias when the word came from the local police that someone started asking questions about them. There were no more carefree stays. Oaxaca, Guatemala, Mazatlan, Monterrey, back to Mexico City, Hermosillo... they moved wherever Alejandro’s family could provide them with temporary protection, stayed for two-three months, moved again. David was feverishly working on the parts of Schulmann’s data that has not been decoded yet. She found it difficult to motivate herself; the information that they thought would change the world had not done much. Yes, some of the guilty parties lost their jobs but many did not; very few went to jail; the protests in China had been brutally suppressed. And the massive volume of disinformation ha drowned what she and David risked everything for. Their names had been dragged through the mud.
     
    Nothing had changed. But David wouldn’t give up, and she just could not bring herself to tell him that she was losing hope. So when he finally broke through and uncovered another batch of names, high-profile, dangerous names, she perhaps was not as thrilled as she should have been. She saw pain in his face and tried to inject more excitement into her voice, but he lowered his eyes: “You think it’s all been for nothing, don’t you?”
    “No, love, I am just tired. All the running, all the setbacks...”
    He looked at her, then to the side, spoke into the void:
    “I am sorry. Perhaps we should have accepted Nemzhov’s offer two years ago. I wish I had not convinced you to publish the Schulmann’s research and go on the run. I know you want a child, a normal life.”
    She came close, took his face into her hands:
    “Love, please don’t think this way. You have not convinced me, I made this choice. Yes, I wish things have been easier, I wish we did not have to live out of suitcases, always on the run. But that’s how it is and we are together and alive. Now, what are we going to do with this new information? Who can we trust? Just trying to distribute it on the internet won’t do any good after all the lies that’ve been published.”
     
    David needed additional