She squeezes my hand, but she doesn’t believe me.
“Tell me, Aislin. What do I do?”
She heaves a sigh that’s an echo of my own. “It’s a hard thing to go against family,” she says.
“My mother deserves it,” I say. “If she’s really responsible.”
Aislin laughs a little bitterly. “Remember when my dad had that mistress, Lainey, and my mom kicked him out? For a while. Then she let him come back. And my mom’s obviously got a drinking problem, but I think he still loves her. And despite everything I’ve done, they still haven’t thrown me out.”
“They don’t even know where you are,” I say. “Really, Aislin, are we using your family as some kind of example?”
It’s harsh. It’s thoughtless. I know it as soon as I say it.
“Actually, they do know where I am,” Aislin says evenly. “Or at least where I was. I told them I was staying with you up in Tiburon. It’s not my fault I’m not there anymore.”
I absolutely should drop it. But I’m exhausted. I’m confused. I have all kinds of great excuses. “Gee, sorry my problems got in the way of my saving your butt.”
Right there, I stick the knife in our friendship. The one thing I never wanted to be was the bitch of a rich girl.
I hate myself. It’s immediate, I don’t have to think about it, I hate myself. I want to cut my own tongue out. But it’s too late.
There’s a long silence. Aislin gives me time to take it back. But I don’t. And I don’t know why, except that I’m so hating myself I feel like I deserve her anger.
She heads inside. I stand, gripping the railing, thinking how unfair it is that I’m having to hate myself when I really just want to hate my mother.
The door opens again and Aislin comes back out, carrying her purse. She brushes by me.
I say… I say nothing. I’m that messed up. I say nothing.
It’s some kind of overload. Too much of too much. I have the feeling I desperately need to cry. And I just don’t have it in me to deal with another crisis.
I hear her shoes moving away down the pier. Then she’s gone.
Self-pity rushes over me. Can’t she see that I need her to stick with me? Doesn’t she know what I’ve been through? I was nearly killed. I found out my mother’s a criminal. I escaped with my life from some creep who works for my mom.
Or at least, Solo escaped. And took us with him.
Am I a hundred percent sure he’s told me the truth? I don’t even know him. One kiss—even that kiss—doesn’t make us best friends forever.
No, bitch, your BFF just walked away.
Well, I’m sick of Aislin’s neediness. And I’m suddenly wondering if I’m just being manipulated by Solo. After all, he’s good with technology. Maybe all those pictures were a fake. Maybe this is all some elaborate fraud to let him hurt my mother. He hates her enough to do it.
Maybe I just need to grab a taxi and get back to Spiker and tell my mother…
No. No, I know that’s bull. I healed in days from something that should have taken months. That much, at least, is true.
And my gut tells me those pictures were real.
They return to me, unwanted, like some hideous slide show. The pig. The girl. That tattooed freak, standing in the room of freaks.
The tattooed guy. It clicks: He’s the same guy who came rushing from Solo’s room.
Maybe he’s the bad guy. Maybe he’s guilty and my mother is innocent.
As bad as that is, it would be so much better than the alternative.
At least I owe her a chance to explain. Right?
I’m freezing. I’m going to get my phone and call her. I’ve turned off the tracking so she can’t use it to find me. There’s no risk.
I have to give her the chance. She may be a cold bitch, but she is, still, my mother.
And if she can’t explain? Then I give Solo the flash drive.
Inside the warehouse it’s not much warmer, but it’s some improvement, at least. I go to my purse.
Solo is no longer on the couch. He must be… He must be where, exactly?
“Solo.” Nothing. “Solo?”
I know then. I begin the careful, then increasingly desperate, search that will confirm what I already know: The flash drive is gone.
And so is Solo.
– 32 –
I am familiar with the ferry, though I’ve never been here before. A driver has dropped me off at the pier. I have a wallet with money. I have a credit card, too. I have a phone that does everything. It even answers my questions.
I know each of these things, just as I know where to buy the ferry ticket, and how to go aboard. I know in advance what the terminal looks like on the other side of the bay—the bay that I also know even though I should not.
The ferry leaves from Tiburon, which is Spanish for “shark.” I don’t speak Spanish, but I know what that word means.
I’m a few minutes early. There’s a coffee shop full of early morning commuters.
Do I like coffee? I don’t know.
Terra Spiker says I absorbed well. My intelligence is functioning well. My body works. But no one has yet told me what I like or dislike. I only know that I love and care for Evening Spiker. She made me.
I walk into the coffee shop. I know how to order. It almost feels as if I have ordered before, but I haven’t. It’s puzzling.
I reach the counter. A woman is taking orders. Her eyes open wide. Her pupils dilate. She swallows hard.
“What would you like?” Her voice catches.
“Coffee. A cappuccino.”
“Anything else? A pastry?”
“No. Not a pastry.”
“That’ll be three dollars and ten cents.”
I count out some money.
I wait for my coffee. People stare at me. Some of the men don’t like me. Some of the men do. All of the women like me. Some of them pretend not to notice me, but they steal a glance, then look away.
A couple joins the group of people waiting for their orders, a young man, maybe twenty, and a girl, maybe a little younger. The girl looks at me and her mouth opens. The boy moves between us, blocking the girl from view. She steps out from behind him. She’s smiling just a little. She bites her lower lip.
My coffee is ready. I take it. I say, “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” the barista says.
The ferry is pulling in. I can see it through the plate glass. I head toward it. A man holds the door open for me.
I’m aware that people are following me. They are not in a precise line behind me. They form a loose knot, keeping pace with me. They are close, but not too close. Other people are jostled. I am not.
The sun is coming up behind tree-covered Angel Island. The fog lies between us and the city and I know this because I know a great deal about the area, though I’ve never been here.
An idea occurs to me. I try to think of what lies to the east of this area. I make it as far as a city called Berkeley. I have detailed information that far, street by street information, but then the map in my head turns vague. I know that somewhere out there is a city called Chicago. And another one called New York. And a place called Europe. I know a little about them, but only a very little.
Interesting. I’ve been incompletely educated. I know a lot about finding Evening, and I know almost nothing about anything else.
I lean on the rail of the ferry, out on the bow where the salt spray flies up and soon moistens my face. A young woman comes to stand beside me.
“Excuse me, I know you must get this a lot, but are you a model?”
“No,” I say. I’m curious. “Why would you think that?”
The young woman shakes her head ruefully. “You must know.”
“I don’t know a lot of things I should know.”
“Dude, you are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”
“Am I?” I look around and see two girls nodding their heads in unison.
“Oh. Thank you,” I say.
“You should definitely be a model. Or a movie star,” the young woman says. “Or do ads or endorsements or…” She shrugs.
“He could sell me anything,” a middle-aged mom with two kids says. “Anything.”
Their words make me uncomfortable. I hunch my shoulders forward and drop my head a little. Then I stare out at the water and refuse to look behind me until we are docked in San Francisco.
Terra Spiker has given me a list of three places to look for Evening. The first is the family home. It’s a distance away in a neighborhood called Sea Cliff. I know that I can walk, or take a series of buses, or hail a cab.
There’s only one cab and his “out of service” light is on. I will need to walk, or take the bus, unless—
The cab swerves across three lanes and the window goes down.
“You need a ride?” the driver asks.
– 33 –
I’m frantic. I still have my phone, but I don’t have Solo’s number. I ask my phone where I can find a computer for rent. I follow the directions and head toward it at a trot.
This is happening too fast. I can’t let Solo do it.
Can I?
The copy center is closed. It doesn’t open for another two hours. I look around, desperate. I’m in the financial district now, a midget at the feet of giants. The Transamerica Pyramid is in one direction, the Bank of America building in the other. I head toward the B of A, hesitate, stop, wish I had psychic powers, look carefully in every direction. Nothing. No one but a street person, an older woman, who pushes a shopping cart toward me while muttering, “I told her it was okay, I told her it was okay.”
Schizophrenia, a genetic condition. The kind of terrifying disease that might be cured with the right knowledge, if you knew just where to find the particular genetic codes and could snip, snip, paste, paste.
Would the mentally ill street person want to be cured if she knew that it meant a basement full of freaks and monsters?
Don’t be a fool, I tell myself. Of course she would. Just about anyone would.
Where did Solo go?
He could be anywhere, I realize. He doesn’t need to wait for some library or printing company to open. There are computers all around me. They’re piled seventy stories high. Solo, being Solo, may have already found an office left unlocked, or charmed his way past a security guard. The odds are that the deadly data is already propagating across the Web.
This isn’t his decision. It’s our decision.
“Yeah, well, screw you, Solo,” I say bitterly. “You can drop dead and die!”
I’m aware of the redundancy in that statement.
I head dejectedly back to the pier warehouse. I pause at a doughnut shop. I go in, telling myself I’ll just grab a cup of coffee. I come out with a dozen doughnuts, some of them still so fresh they’re hot. I devour two on my way home.
It isn’t far back to the pier. The door’s unlocked, just as I’d left it. Some part of me hopes Aislin’s returned. I want to hear her tease me for resorting to comfort pastry.
Some other part of me is hoping Solo’s returned, so I can scream at him and then, quite possibly, kiss him for several days.
More doughnut.
As soon as I’m inside, I know I’m not alone.
The rising sun beams through the high windows. It lights the tops of the statues glaring down at me with animal ferocity.
The sun also lights one side of his face.
He sees me.
He doesn’t move.
“Evening?” he asks.
“Adam,” I say.
– 34 –
SOLO
On the twenty-seventh floor of the Bank of America building I find a big law firm. They aren’t open for business, but they work the lawyers hard at places like this. A rushing, harried young woman is on her way in. She fumbles with the key, gets it finally, and throws open the door before hurrying inside.
The door swings shut, but not fast enough. I stick the toe of my sneaker in, just barely, to keep it open. I wait three minutes to make sure the lawyer has gotten to her own office. Then I slip inside.
The lights are dim, the reception desk empty, the floors carpeted. I try to guess which way the lawyer has gone, decide it was to the left. I go right. Some individual offices are locked, others are wide open.
Their computers look pretty up-to-date, but I’m able to find one with a USB port. I enter the office and close the door behind me. There’s a nice view down California Street.
The computer’s password protected. I try the basics: 1,2,3,4. QWERTY. YTREWQ, which is querty backward. PASSWORD. A few others. Whoever uses this computer isn’t quite that dumb. They are, however, dumb enough to write it down in the corner of the desk blotter.
I check the clock, stick in the flash drive. It’s slow to load. Very slow, since there are a lot of hi-res images.
From here it will be simple. All I have to do is attach the file to a dozen e-mails: CNN, the New York Times, various members of Congress from both parties, contacts I know in the hacker collective Anonymous, the FBI.
I type the addresses in. Each will know the others have received the same documents, so there will be no chance of a cover-up.
All I have to do is push “send.”
All. I have to do.
Is push “send.”
What follows won’t happen overnight. The world doesn’t move that fast. But in days or weeks the FBI will descend on Terra Spiker.
Congress will schedule hearings.
Documents and files will be seized. In the end, likely, handcuffs will grind shut around the wrists of Terra and Tattooed Tommy and probably lots of others.
I sit, unmoving, staring at the screen.
A crime’s been committed. Many crimes. Some may be more than criminal; they may be evil.
But I can’t lie to myself and pretend that’s my only motive. I’m angry at Terra Spiker for the life she’s given me. For treating me like one of her low-level employees after my parents died. For keeping me, if not quite a prisoner, then close to it in the walled-off world of Spiker Biopharm.
For doing to me what she did to Eve.
“Do this,” I tell myself.
Chaos and madness. Unleash it. What’s that phrase?
Cry havoc?
I actually pause to Google it.
“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” I read.
Then I read that “cry havoc” was a phrase from Shakespeare’s day, a signal to soldiers to burn and pillage and rape.
So, a bad choice of things to think about.
Shakespeare used the phrase in two other plays. He must have liked it. One is something about a stained field. Bloodstains, of course. The third is from a play I’ve never heard of.
“Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt with modest warrant,” I read aloud.
I gaze at the words on the screen.
Seriously, Solo? You’re hesitating? You’ve lived for this moment.
Let slip the dogs of war!
Or…
Hunt with modest warrant.
Just theoretically, I ask myself, what would that mean, to hunt with modest warrant? What’s the step that isn’t quite dogs of war?
I’m agitated. I feel bouncy and twitchy all of a sudden. Frustrated, in more than one way.
Really, Solo? A Google search stops you?
A Google search and a kiss. That’s the truth of it. That’s what has me jumpy and indecisive and looking for an excuse to just not go all dogs of war.
I’m a warrior. I am a dog of war. I’ve spent years… and now the will drains out of me because of a kiss and a Shakespeare quote?
Well, not just the kiss. The rope descent, that was… Yep, breathing a little harder at the memory, and whatever that brings to mind (I know exactly what it brings to mind). Whatever that memory means to me, if I drop my finger on that “send” key, a memory is all it will ever be.
The problem is that I can feel her legs wrapped around me, and I can tast
e her lips, and I can imagine, and imagination is a damned tease, imagination will torture you, but knowing that doesn’t stop it. My imagination is off and running, running through places sweet and sweaty. And it’s not just that, not just the sweaty parts or even the sweet parts, it’s the feeling that my life is a laser beam that just encountered a mirror, that it’s being bent, a sudden turn, a wild veer, a turn, all of that stuff, all that feeling that whatever the hell I thought my life was, maybe it’s not. Maybe the whole story of Solo was just a way to get to this point, only the point is not the poisoned e-mail that rests half an inch below the index finger of my right hand, the point is something I never saw coming and surprise! the Solo story is not all what I thought it was.
Justice and revenge. Or Eve.
My hand flies back. As if I’d suddenly discovered the keyboard was a cherry-red stovetop.
I gasp.
I stare at my hand. My hand made the decision. My hand thinks I’m an idiot. My hand thinks only a damned fool would choose revenge over love.
I think my hand may be right.
One way or the other, the decision isn’t mine to make alone. I need Eve.
– 35 –
“Evening,” he says again.
I nod. Too vigorously. Because my voice is sure to fail.
He’s here.
But he can’t be here.
He’s real.
But he can’t be real.
He’s taller, somehow, in reality. His eyes are alive now, amazingly alive. He’s curious, concerned. He knows me—that much I can tell. He knows who I am.
He’s the most beautiful male I’ve ever seen. Ever. Anywhere. George Clooney and Johnny Depp and Justin Timberlake and all of them, all of them, would be cast as Adam’s less attractive best friend.
I wonder, can he speak anything more than my name?
Although even that’s great. I liked hearing him say my name. I’d like him to do it again.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he says.
“Unh?” I respond brilliantly.
“Your mother sent me to find you.”
Eve and Adam Page 14