She didn’t know what she was going to say, but she knew she couldn’t stay silent. In the pit of her stomach, she felt with a terrible certainty that unless she warned this woman, she’d end up dead like the others who’d appeared on her reminder.
The woman walked down the hall, rounded the corner and disappeared into the ladies’ room. Maggie followed.
The air in the women’s restroom was thick with Glade air freshener. Six stalls lined the wall to Maggie’s right. The one at the end appeared to be occupied.
Maggie stood at the sink and washed her hands long enough to scrub in for surgery. She dug into her pockets, hoping to busy herself with an activity that would explain her prolonged presence. A few seconds of rooting around produced a partially melted tube of ChapStick and a retractable comb. Maggie applied a generous waxy coat of lubricant to her lips, then attempted to smooth her hair, which she knew was hopeless.
The muted sound of a toilet paper roll unspooling from the last stall drifted from beneath the door. Then a flush. The woman emerged from the stall, straightened her skirt and bumped the faucet on with a narrow, rhinestone-encrusted wrist. Maggie turned toward the woman.
Don’t sound crazy, don’t sound crazy, don’t sound crazy, she told herself.
“Excuse me,” she said. “But the strangest thing just happened.”
The woman regarded Maggie in the mirror. “Oh?”
Maggie laughed. “You see, I’ve got this app on my phone that sends meeting reminders with a photo of the person I’m supposed to have a meeting with. And a few minutes ago, I got a reminder with your picture.”
There. Totally not crazy.
The woman pulled a wad of paper towels into her hands. Dried. Folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t say.”
“Yes. And, um…” Maggie opened her purse and fished for her phone. “Hang on, I’ll show you—aw, dammit.”
Maggie dropped the phone. It skipped noisily across the tile. Maggie bent to retrieve it, talking faster in a race to finish before she lost her audience. “Anyway, the reminders I’m getting are actually for someone else because my phone wasn’t adequately wiped.”
She glanced at the woman, whose eyebrows were so high they’d almost disappeared into her scalp. “It’s kind of a long story, but the point is, whenever I get these reminders, the person whose photo appears on my phone ends up…”
A long pause.
“Yes?” the woman prompted impatiently.
“Well, the person ends up…dead.”
And…totally crazy.
“Dead?” Shock rippled across the woman’s lineless face. “Your phone shows you who’s going to die?”
“Well, yes. I mean, no. Sort of.”
Maggie felt her powers of rational explanation ebb away. It was like drowning in quicksand. The more she struggled to explain, the deeper she sank.
The shock on the woman’s face was replaced with a look of annoyance.
“You were staring at me when I got off the elevator, weren’t you?” she asked. The woman swore under her breath. “God, why do I always attract the nut jobs?”
She looked Maggie in the eye, her expression hard. “Listen, I don’t care about your psychic phone or your crystal ball app that shows who’s going to die, okay? I have somewhere to be five minutes ago. Now if you’ll excuse me.” She tucked a red patent leather clutch under a taut, tanned arm and reached for the door.
Maggie leapt in front of her. “I’m only telling you this because your life could be in danger,” Maggie said. She knew her desperation was making her sound even more irrational, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to make her understand. “Please. Just listen. I know this must sound crazy—”
The woman pushed past Maggie and out into the hall. “You think?” she said.
“But the fact that you appeared on my phone…”
“Goes to show that you’re a hallucinating lunatic.” The woman huffed toward the elevators.
“Wait,” Maggie cried, as she jogged behind her. “Please. I think something bad is going happen to you.”
“It couldn’t be worse than this conversation.” She stepped into the elevator and jabbed a button repeatedly. “Ta-ta,” she said to Maggie, stepping into the car. “Oh, and say hi to Elvis, will you? That is, if your psychic phone’s plan includes calls to the afterlife.”
She waved at Maggie with French-tipped fingers. The elevator doors embraced, enclosing the woman in its metallic crypt.
Maggie watched helplessly as the elevator lights counted down to the first floor. In her mind’s eye, she saw the woman exit the building and get hit by a mail truck. Or gunned down by a sniper. Or dive-bombed by a drone from Amazon.com. There were a thousand ways for her to die. Maggie couldn’t prevent a single one.
Or could she?
Maggie hurried to her cubicle, Googled the Collinsburg Police Department’s contact information and dialed the non-emergency number.
“Collinsburg Police Department,” a female voice said.
“Yes,” Maggie said. “I’m calling about a crime that is about to happen.”
“A crime that’s happened?”
“No, about to happen.”
“Are you going to commit a crime, ma’am?” The woman’s tone was at once annoyed and wary.
“No!” Maggie practically shouted. “No,” she said more softly. “It’s, um…” Maggie twirled a strand of hair, considering the best approach. “I have a meeting reminder app on my phone that shows pictures of people I’m scheduled to have meetings with. But the people who appear on the reminders always end up dead.”
Silence.
“I don’t know the people in the reminders,” Maggie pressed on. “I’m actually receiving someone else’s reminders because I have a used phone that still has some of the previous owner’s data.”
Louder silence. Maggie barreled ahead.
“I’d gotten two of these reminders before, and in both cases, the people on my phone ended up dead. I wanted to call you after the second one, but I didn’t want to sound crazy.”
“Right,” the dispatcher said with the careful casualness of someone talking to someone crazy. “What is the name of the person on your…reminder?” She said the word as if it were especially repugnant, like a contagious disease or tapered jeans.
“I don’t know.”
“But you got a reminder that you were going to meet with him?”
“Her. Yes. But like I just said…” Maggie stopped herself. Stay calm. “Like I said, the reminders are intended for someone else. I don’t actually know her.”
“But you want us to save her. From something that might happen.”
“Well, something that will happen. Um, probably.”
A long sigh. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the city is practically under siege by protesters.” Before Maggie could answer, the woman pressed on, her civic-centric soliloquy already gaining momentum. “There are daily demonstrations. Riots in some parts of the city. Our resources are stretched very thin. We were understaffed before, and now everyone’s working overtime. On actual threats to public safety. I don’t know if this is some kind of joke or an actual problem, but the best I can do is pass you along to our cybercrime division. No one’s there right now, but you can leave a voicemail.”
Before Maggie could say anything else, she heard a chorus of chirps and beeps, then an automated invitation to leave a message. Maggie complied, trying to be as specific yet uncomplicated as possible, over-articulating her phone number. She hung up and put her head in her hands.
Maggie: 0
Bad day: 4
She scrubbed her face with her hands, trying to wipe away the dread growing fat on her fear. The fear that she’d be frozen out for being a company snoop and whiner. That she’d be fired, leaving her father destitute. That the meeting reminders w
ould keep coming, one after another, like a trailer for a movie she didn’t want to see.
She stared at her desktop, trying to think what to do next. Then she saw it. Or rather, didn’t see it. The envelope that had been delivered to her desk was gone.
Chapter 13
Maggie trudged up the steps to her apartment door, her legs leaden with fatigue. The evening seemed darker than usual, the inkiness of night blotting out everything but the glow of windows freckling insomniac houses.
Then again, maybe it was her mood that had cast the shadow.
The rest of the day had been a blur. She had searched for the missing folder. Sliding open drawers. Peering into the desk’s built-in filing cabinet. Dragging a hand through her purse. She came up empty each time. It was like playing hide-and-seek with David Copperfield.
It was probably a simple mistake. Wrong file delivered to the wrong desk, then redelivered to the intended recipient—most likely while she was cornering that woman in the bathroom.
But something told her it was more than that. For Maggie, the era of coincidences had ended.
She had called Constantine from the bank drive-through, waiting to make her first deposit into Rx’s charitable fund. She wanted to tell him about the new appointment reminder, imagining what he’d say about the woman who showed up on her phone walking through her office, Maggie’s call to the police, the strange envelope. She also wanted to make sure they were still on for the funeral of Carson Parks, the man who’d trespassed into her phone and now her thoughts. But Constantine didn’t answer. Again. She felt her anger bubble up as she listened to his voicemail message featuring a very bad Jamaican accent accompanied by steel drums. She asked him to call her back.
It seemed that he was never there when she needed him these days.
Not that she needed anyone.
Now she squinted, trying to locate the correct key on a ring that would rival a school janitor’s. It was full dark now. She could barely see her hand.
Maggie looked up. The light bulb that stood guard at her front door was out.
Odd.
She pulled her phone from her purse, turned it on with a flick of her thumb and activated the flashlight app, as she had when she pursued Zartar in the bowels of Rxcellance. She aimed the stream of light at the door, then breathed in sharply. The bulb adjacent to the doorframe wasn’t out. It was gone. Someone had removed it from the fixture.
Maggie’s mouth went dry. The fear that had been sleeping charged out, battering her heart and sending it into a flutter of rapid, irregular beats.
A gust of wind blew her hair across her eyes. The cloying scent of musk, spice and citrus wafted to her nose. Maggie’s stomach contracted involuntarily, a primitive part of her brain cataloging the scent as Miles’s putrid and overpowering cologne.
She spun around, expecting Miles’s hulking figure to tower over her. But the porch was empty. The street naked.
She turned back to the door, a chill climbing her spine. A small bundle was crammed against the hinges. Silhouette against shadow.
Maggie shone her phone’s flashlight on the bundle. It was soft and furry and indistinct. Even with the flashlight’s beam, she couldn’t quite make it out. Was it some kind of animal? A rabbit or a kitten, curled up (dead?) against her door? She swallowed hard and reached out, her hand hesitating over the fluffy object.
She stroked it with a finger. It collapsed into a heap. It wasn’t an animal; it was her cashmere wrap, the one she’d worn to the company gala.
It had been impaled by a giant safety pin. Maggie exhaled, momentarily relieved. Then she saw the note affixed to the safety pin.
You left this in the parking lot.
— Miles
The memory of what had happened that night flooded back. Dropping her wrap as she dug for her car keys. Miles behind her, sizing up the possibilities. Them inches apart, Miles fingering a lock of her hair.
A shudder slithered through her body. She shook it off, her hands ruffling beneath her hair to rid herself of the feeling that something alive and dangerous was scuttling up her back.
She plucked up the wrap from its filthy nest and gave it a gentle shake. Miles’s cologne escaped into the night air. It was as if it had been poured on every inch of her sweater, marking his territory.
She hoped she wouldn’t be next.
Maggie unlocked the door, dropped her purse on the floor, then locked the door behind her. Her phone rang and she jumped, almost dropping it.
“You rang?” said Constantine, doing his best Lurch impression.
“About time.” She aimed for breezy. She missed.
“Aw, sorry, Mags.” Constantine sounded suitably chastised. “It’s been a crazy couple of days. Job interviews all over the region, including weekend wining and dining. I forgot to bring a phone charger, which, as it turns out, isn’t available in the hotel vending machine. The good news is I got a job right here in Collinsburg. One with a paycheck and everything. You’re talking to Quatra Corp’s new IT manager.”
Maggie swallowed her anger and tried to be happy for him. “That’s great. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I was hoping to get a call back from the FBI for a computer and information systems manager gig I applied for. But I guess I’ll just have to play Jack Ryan on weekends.”
“Isn’t Jack Ryan CIA?”
“Close enough. What’s up? You tried to contact me with everything but carrier pigeon and sandwich boards. Something wrong?”
Maggie paused. She could hear the distinctive, musical tinkle of cereal being poured into a bowl. Probably Lucky Charms.
Suddenly, she didn’t feel like telling Constantine about Miles anymore. It wasn’t just anxiety over talking about it, reopening a wound she was trying to close. It was more than that.
Resentment had seeped into her. Bitterness about the missed text and phone call. The Lucky Charms and the easy jokes and the emerging feeling that Constantine didn’t take anything seriously. Constantine didn’t seem to notice the strain in her voice. The hurt and fear she was sure bled through. Maybe he didn’t care.
She knew she was being irrational and selfish and small. She knew she could be just as flip as Constantine. But that was different. She was different. And now she didn’t feel like rewarding Constantine with this new secret piece of her life.
“I got another meeting reminder and the woman whose photo appeared on my phone walked right by my desk,” she said smoothly.
“Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“I tried. I followed her to the ladies’ room, but she didn’t seem to enjoy my company. Or my warning that my phone is the harbinger of her imminent death.”
“Some people are so sensitive,” Constantine said.
Maggie dropped her purse in the foyer and walked to her bedroom. She flopped on the bed and put her feet on the headboard. “I also called the police.”
“Wait, you called the cops?”
“Well, I didn’t 911 call the cops, but yes, I called the station to tell them about the reminders and the other deaths so they could do something. I can’t just sit around waiting for this woman to be murdered.”
“And how did that go over?”
“Like a lead zeppelin. They acted like I was A, wasting their time and B, a total lunatic. They said they’d pass it along to cybercrime or something, but I’m not holding my breath.” She examined her big toe. The nail was torn. She picked at it with her thumb and forefinger until it came off in one thin strip. “Oh, and I also got a call from that friend of yours who sold you the phone. He’s the mayor of Assville. He wouldn’t give me any information about who had this phone before me, then tried to talk me into upgrading to a more expensive model.”
Constantine crunched his cereal. “He’s always been kind of a tool.” He paused, slurped somet
hing. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll go pay him a visit in person. The closer you get, the less sleazy he is.”
“Okay.” Maggie swung her legs off her headboard and sat on the edge of the bed. “Let me know when. And we’re still on for the funeral for Carson Parks on Sunday?”
“I’ll turn on the Constantine charm.”
“The panties will fly. Pick me up at ten?”
“I’ll be there with bells on. No, really. I will. It’s a little game Miss Vanilla and I play.”
“Goodbye, Constantine.”
They hung up and Maggie padded to the kitchen. She made macaroni and cheese, ate from the pot, then streamed It Happened One Night on her laptop. For Maggie, nothing beat the classics. She fell asleep in bed without brushing her teeth.
An electronic beep jolted her back into consciousness. Maggie rolled over and looked at her phone, which she’d propped against her Goodwill table lamp.
It wasn’t a meeting reminder. Thank God. But it didn’t sound like a text or email alert either.
She reached for the phone and brought it to eyes bleary from sleep.
There was a tiny “1” next to an icon she didn’t recognize.
She clicked to open it.
You have 1 ZipLip message, it cheerfully informed her.
Huh?
ZipLip was the latest iteration in time-limited messaging apps, used to send photos, videos or messages that could be viewed for up to ten seconds, then disappear from both the mobile device and the ZipLip servers forever. This message will self-destruct in ten seconds.
Maggie had never received a ZipLip. She didn’t even realize she had the app on her phone. She tapped the app. It opened to reveal a still frame of a video. Curious, she tapped the play icon.
A woman moved through a darkened landscape. She strode up to the window of a restaurant and peered intently at something on the glass—a menu? The restaurant’s hours?—then tucked a lock of artfully messy hair behind her ear.
Maggie squinted. The woman seemed familiar. She almost looked like the woman who had appeared on her phone and then at work.
Maggie felt as if her blood had turned to ice. A cold hand gripped her heart. Squeezed.
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