Harry looked at him, then whispered to me. “Is he really an FBI agent? He looks kind of a mess.”
Calahan scowled and rubbed at his stubble.
“I promise you he’s real. He has a badge and a gun and everything,” I said. “He’s with me and he’s really okay when you get to know him. We’re going to take you to the FBI building. Trust me, it’s pretty cool.”
Harry looked uncertainly between us. “Okay,” he mumbled at last.
With the principal still muttering that she wasn’t sure about this, we got Harry strapped into the back seat of my car. Calahan let out a long sigh of relief as we pulled away. A moment later, he muttered, “Thanks.”
I nodded.
Calahan glanced at Harry in the rear-view mirror. “You’re good with him.”
I looked at him in shock. I could see in his eyes that it wasn’t a throwaway comment. He was telling me he’d noticed there was something going on with me. He could see I’d been freaked out at the hospital. I looked away, embarrassed, focusing on the road ahead.
Calahan gently slid his hand over mine on the steering wheel and squeezed.
“Are you two in love?” asked Harry from the back seat.
That made me flush. Calahan and I looked at each other.
There was a deafening bang as a truck rammed into our car.
43
Yolanda
I MUST HAVE blacked out for a second. When I came to, everything was wrong. I was leaning on Calahan so hard that my seatbelt was cutting into me painfully, but when I tried to straighten up, it felt like I weighed a thousand tons. There was a huge white balloon pressing against my head and neck and my face was wet, even though it wasn’t raining.
It took me a while to figure out that the car was on its side, and I was slumped in my seat, hanging down towards Calahan, who seemed to be unconscious. The side airbag had gone off, probably saving my life.
I twisted around and looked right into Harry’s tearful, terrified face. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. Thank God. Then, “You’re all....” Harry pointed to his face. “Blood.”
Now I knew what the wetness was. “It looks worse than it is,” I told him, and hoped that was true. “Just hold on, it’ll be okay.”
I turned back to the front and checked on Calahan. He was stirring and mumbling but he wasn’t making much sense. There was blood on his head: he could be concussed. I tried to remember what happened. This is all my fault, I realized with a sickening lurch. We’d been distracted, Calahan had touched my hand, I looked at him…. I must have not seen the truck.
Movement in the wing mirror caught my eye. Someone was approaching from behind, maybe a cop or a passer-by. I struggled to see—
Not a cop. The mirror was cracked but I could make out a man in jeans and a leather jacket with long, dark hair, walking purposefully towards our car.
It hadn’t been an accident.
Oh God. Oh no. “Calahan!” I shouted. “Wake up!”
Mumblings and groans. He was out of action. And even if he could help, I was on top of him. He couldn’t get out until I moved. It was up to me.
The man had almost reached the car. I frantically unfastened my seatbelt and almost went slithering down into Calahan’s lap. I had to cling onto the steering wheel just to stay in place.
My door swung open. The sun was right overhead and it blasted down into my face: all I could see was a silhouette as the man reached behind me, over my wheelchair, to Harry in the rear seat. “No!” I yelled. “No! Don’t you touch him! Harry! Don’t go with him!”
Harry was screaming and kicking, terrified. I heard his seatbelt come free. Then the man was hauling him out of the car. “No!” I yelled. “No!”
I got one hand, then the other up onto the door sill and heaved myself up onto the side of the car, like lifting myself out of a swimming pool. The car rocked unsteadily as I dragged myself up and made a grab for the man. But he was already out of reach, walking away with the struggling Harry in his arms.
“Yo—YOLANDA!” screamed Harry.
I dragged myself along the car, reaching uselessly after them. I was sobbing, tears stinging where they ran into the cuts on my face. Just make my legs work this once, I thought desperately. Just let me walk for thirty seconds. That’s all I ask. Please! But my legs stayed useless, dead weights. And the man was getting farther and farther away, heading for a parked car. “Calahan!” I yelled in desperation.
There was a groan and a lot of cursing from inside the car.
My vision was blurring with tears but I could see the man struggling to open the car door while keeping hold of the wriggling child. “Calahan, he’s here! He’s got Harry!”
There was a thump and the sound of cracking glass. Another thump. Then the whole windshield broke free of the car and went skidding along the street. Calahan climbed out through the hole, cursing up a storm. He got to his feet and started stumbling towards the man, taking two steps right for every one forward, clearly concussed. He pulled his gun and aimed it, the barrel swaying drunkenly.
“No!” I yelled in panic. “No! You might hit Harry!”
Calahan grimaced but didn’t fire. He started running towards the man, still staggering. But by now they were in the car—
When he was still six feet away, the car started up and roared away. Calahan chased it for a few more steps and then fell to his knees.
We’d lost them.
44
Yolanda
I SAT in my wheelchair with a gauze pad held to my forehead, watching the chaos around me. FBI agents were going over the truck the killer had used to ram us, hoping to find a clue. The school principal was giving a statement to another pair of FBI agents. A tow truck was in the process of righting my car. And right in front of me, Carrie was listening as Calahan gave his side of things.
“I’ll take the heat,” he said as he finished. “You can make it clear that I was acting on my own. Hell, tell them I ran it past you and you told me not to do it, if it helps.”
Carrie sighed and looked around at the scene. The principal was giving all of us an evil glare. “No,” she said. “That wouldn’t be right. It was the wrong call but it wasn’t a dumb one. I’ll support you. But I’m not sure I can save you. I’m not sure I can even save myself.”
I listened, stunned that she was willing to put her neck on the line for Calahan. My boss at the security firm would never have done that for me.
Carrie went off to try to smooth things over with the principal. Calahan sat down on the step of an ambulance, next to me. “I should have listened to you,” he said.
“You were just trying to protect Harry.”
But Calahan just sighed. I understood how he felt. We’d delivered Harry right into the killer’s hands. Whatever happened to him now, it was on us.
There was a crash from down the street. The tow truck had just succeeded in pulling my car back onto its wheels. It was a write-off, one side caved in as if punched by a giant. It was a miracle we’d all survived.
“How’s your head?” I asked.
He touched the lump on his scalp and winced. “I’ve had worse. How’s the face?” He reached for my gauze pad.
I flinched away. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Let me see.”
This time, I let him remove the gauze from my forehead. He kept his face carefully neutral.
“Bad?” I asked.
“You’ll have a scar,” he said breezily. “But just a little one. Under your hair.” He climbed up into the ambulance, talked with a paramedic, and came back with cotton wool and water. “We need to clean you up.”
I explored my cheek with my fingers and realized the gash on my head had bled a lot: that whole side of my face was caked in dried blood. “I look that bad, huh?”
It was just meant to be a quip, but Calahan caught my eye and gave me a look. No. Never. I flushed and sat there obediently while he slowly cleaned my face. I knew it wasn’t about getting the blood off
me. It was about being quietly together, just for a few minutes, before he got called away again.
Carrie returned. “We found the car a few streets away. It was stolen, as was the truck. We have an APB out for a man and a boy but I’m not hopeful. They could be anywhere in the city by now.”
She looked at me. “You’re our best hope, now. Go do what you do.”
My heart sank. With the location equations wiped away, I had nothing to go on. If I was their best hope, we were screwed. But I nodded. “Yes ma’am.” I hadn’t planned on calling her that. It just slipped out. But it felt right. I looked at Calahan. “What are you going to do?”
He pushed himself up to standing. “I’m going to see Harry’s parents,” he said. “And tell them how I lost their kid.”
He walked off. I went to call after him but then stopped: there was nothing I could say. All I could do was try to catch the killer before he hurt Harry.
* * *
An FBI agent dropped me at my apartment. I wheeled myself over to my chalkboards and took stock. What now?
We knew the who and the when of the next killing: Harry, 10:31 tomorrow morning. But I couldn’t solve the equations for where because Alison had accidentally destroyed them. There was no math for me to work with.
I sat there despondent for a few minutes. Then I caught sight of my reflection in the window and scowled at myself, just like Calahan would. Get a fucking grip, I told myself. So what if things had gone wrong? There was a five year-old out there, scared out of his mind, and his only chance was me. I wasn’t just a mathematician, I was a hacker. How would the hacker part of me approach this? If it was a tech problem, if there was a missing piece I didn’t have...I’d reverse engineer it.
I sat bolt upright. That was it. I had to recreate the equations we’d lost. Instead of just solving them, I had to write them.
I had to put myself in the killer’s mind. I had to think like he thought.
The idea made my insides turn cold. Just working with this stuff was scary enough. Creating it myself would mean going even deeper into that bottomless black. What if I couldn’t get back?
I checked the time. It was almost four in the afternoon. Harry would die tomorrow morning. I was the only chance he had.
I went to work.
45
Calahan
I KNOCKED, but she didn’t answer the door.
I was exhausted, emotionally and physically beat. I’d spent almost an hour with Harry’s parents, explaining what had happened. The worst part was, they hadn’t gotten mad. I’d been ready for anger. I actually would have welcomed it. God knows I deserved it. But instead, when I told them how I’d lost their son, they just...collapsed. Their faces crumpled, their shoulders dropped and they fell into each other’s arms. I’d done that to them. Me.
I told them the FBI was using every resource to find their son. And then I went back to the office and worked with the other agents for the rest of the day and into the night, chasing every scrap of a lead we had. But the killer and Harry had disappeared. I’d tried to check in with Yolanda, but she wasn’t answering her phone. Now, it was past eleven at night and I’d come to her apartment to check in with her. But she wasn’t answering her door, either.
I knocked again. And again, really hammering, this time. Then I cursed and stepped back from the door, preparing to kick it—
The door swung open. But the Yolanda who answered wasn’t the one I knew.
Her silky black hair had turned flat and greasy, as if she’d been running her fingers through it for hours. Her normally pale skin looked gray and there were dark circles under her eyes. But the worst part was her eyes. They were normally so lush and green, so calming. Now, the color seemed to have drained away and they stared right through me. What the hell happened to her? I’d seen her less than eight hours ago, but she looked like she’d been gone for weeks.
She mumbled something unintelligible and wheeled herself deeper into the apartment. The wheels crunched over sheets of paper, all of them filled with scribbled equations. And the paper got deeper as we went, drifting like snow: in the main room, it was over my ankles. More hung from the ceiling and walls, the sheets taped together in long lengths. And twisting across them were the black tentacles I remembered from the first crime scene, hundreds of tiny equations making up the shape.
By the time I’d finished looking, she was back to working. She bent low over her lap, scribbling equations on a piece of paper, her hand moving eerily, unnaturally fast.
“Yolanda?”
She didn’t look up, didn’t say hello.
“Yolanda?” Nothing. She’d only answered the door because my knocking had gotten too distracting. Now I’d stopped, I was irrelevant.
“Yolanda?” I reached out and touched her shoulder. She jerked so violently, the wheelchair almost tipped over and I had to grab the armrests to steady it. Her eyes snapped wide in panic and she flattened herself against the backrest like a cat in a thunderstorm.
“It’s okay! It’s okay, it’s me!” By the last word, my voice was raw with desperation. The lack of recognition in her eyes was terrifying. We stayed there staring at each other for two seconds, three—
And then the color seemed to come back to her eyes. She blinked, nodded, and mumbled something I couldn’t hear, then turned away from me and wheeled herself over to the kitchen counter.
I followed. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
She began making coffee. But it felt...wrong. Normally, she was so quick and deft that I had trouble following her. Now, she stared at each item for a second before she picked it up, as if she couldn’t quite remember how this world worked. And when she tried to scoop the grounds, her hands were clumsy and shaky. As if she was still getting used to having a body again.
I’d never seen anything so disturbing. “What have you been doing? What is all this?”
She started to speak but had to stop and work her lips before she could form syllables. “We don’t have the equations. So I have to recreate them. I have to do what he did, think like he does.”
I looked around in horror. She’d taken her mind to that place where the killer lived, where black magic, theoretical physics and complex math all combined. “When I came in, you were gone.”
She shrugged. “I was deep. You’ve seen that before.”
“No. No, this was different, you were different. You answered the door, but it wasn’t you. You didn’t recognize me. It was like you were sleepwalking.”
She rubbed her eyes. “How long since the car crash?”
“Eight hours.”
That got her attention. For the first time, she took a proper look around the apartment. I don’t think she believed me until she looked out of the window and realized it was night. “Jesus,” she muttered.
I knelt down next to her. “I’m worried about you,” I said, looking her in the eye.
“I’m fine.” She lifted the end of one of the dangling paper streamers and looked at it. Then she cursed and ripped it down. “I need to get back to work.” She turned away.
“What? No!” I grabbed her shoulder and turned her back to me. “I don’t think you should go deep again. Not into this stuff. This isn’t good for you.” I was thinking back to what she’d told me about how fragile minds like hers were. I was no psychologist but the way she’d been a few minutes ago: absent, disassociated, whatever you want to call it...that couldn’t be good, for someone like her.
“Calahan,” she said. “We have less than twelve hours! I need to go deep. I need to go deeper!” She grabbed another streamer of paper and ripped it down. “It isn’t working! I can recreate the parts of his equations but not the whole thing. I can’t see how it all links together, I can’t see the...the—”
She pointed helplessly at the ceiling. Where all the equation tentacles she’d drawn would join, a body, the heart of it all. There was just a blank space.
“You need a break,” I said firmly. And I took the pen from between her fin
gers. She made a grab for it but I was too fast. “Just sit there,” I told her.
She sighed. “Like I have a choice,” she said darkly.
That made me smile in relief. There was a little of the old Yolanda still in there. I raided her kitchen cupboards and found noodles, vegetables and enough ingredients to make a sauce. I started chopping.
She wheeled herself closer. “You can cook?” she asked in amazement.
“I have hidden depths.” I poured her a big glass of water. “Drink that.”
She glugged it down and then stared at the empty glass. “Didn’t even realize I was thirsty.”
“I bet you haven’t drunk anything in eight hours.” I threw everything into her wok and started pushing it around. The scent of sesame seeds and five spice filled the room.
She winced, remembering something “Crap. I’m sorry. How did it go with Harry’s parents?”
“They’re in pieces,” I said.
“And you?”
“The FBI’s launching an investigation into my handling of things.” I tried to shrug it off. “Not my first time.” I tipped the noodles and vegetables into a bowl and pushed it towards her. “Eat. No arguments.”
She reluctantly picked up some chopsticks. But once she’d started eating, she didn’t stop until the bowl was empty. “Thank you,” she said. “Okay, I do feel better, I admit it.”
I smiled at her and she smiled back. But then she held out her hand for her pen. “Now I need to get back to it.”
I looked at her, worried. Some color had returned to her face and her eyes were a little brighter. I turned her pen over and over in my fingers.
Her smile disappeared. “Come on, this was the deal.” She reminded me, just a little, of a junkie. She wanted to be working. Needed it.
“I don’t want you going in there again,” I said.
Hold Me in the Dark Page 20