by Naomi Hughes
My hands curl into fists. I turn my back to the wall, to the echoing living room, to the gaping doorways. I face Quint and take a deep breath.
“Okay,” I say. “Lead the way.”
For an evil lair, the agency’s temporary office building on the east side of the city is surprisingly tranquil. The only person visible through the front doors is a lone janitor who seems to be performing some questionable dance moves with a mop to whatever song is playing through his insulated headphones. He’s not the only person we have to worry about, though. At least ten windows in the tall glass-and-steel office complex are still glowing, and any one of them could be housing our blackmailer—if he really could open the files, there’s a chance he could have agency connections himself.
I wipe my hands on my pants. I’ve been loitering across the street for the last ten minutes, building up my courage, giving myself a last-second chance to think of a better idea. This is a government building now, which means the punishment for breaking in is likely even steeper than usual. And even though most of the streets in this district are relatively quiet at two in the morning, there’s always the chance a patrolling cop or a night shift worker or hell, a particularly scrupulous passing homeless person could catch me sneaking in and bust this whole operation. But a few blocks back I passed an old pay phone and used most of my pocket change to call Dad’s cell and Kyle’s work phone—because I wanted to believe my brother might answer—and got nothing but one error message and one line that kept ringing until I couldn’t stand to listen to it anymore. There’s nowhere else I can go. No one else I can trust.
This plan is all I’ve got.
I wait for the janitor to turn his back and then weave through the thin traffic toward the front doors. A taxi slips around me, stopping one building down to pick up a herd of late-working businessmen. They stride past and I duck my head to keep a low profile, which would work better if my soggy blue and white Chuck Taylors didn’t squelch with every step.
“So what’s the plan?” Quint asks from my side.
“I thought this was your plan,” I hiss, stopping to skulk near a bush when the janitor turns back in my direction. Behind me, the businessmen finish squeezing into the taxi and it speeds away.
“No, this is walking,” Quint replies. “After the walking there will presumably have to be some sort of breaking/entering activity. Which could go very badly if we don’t first come up with a plan on how to get inside without the alarms going off.”
First an our, now a we. My lips tighten. “I figure that part of the plan mostly involves hallucinatory reconnaissance.”
“While you do what?”
“My best imitation of a shrub.” I sprint toward a column next to the front door and Quint paces along behind me with an infuriatingly patient expression.
“I was hoping for something slightly more helpful, like ‘locate the hide-a-key’ or ‘look up crime tutorials on YouTube.’”
I give him a look. He pauses, glancing from me to the front door. “Okay,” he says suddenly. “I’ll go in and check out the security system. But in exchange, please stop calling me a hallucination.” He turns and sweeps through the door before I can read the look on his face, leaving me pressed against the column, frowning.
That was—another manipulation? A genuine request? Some strange new combination of both?
Progress, I decide. I think maybe that was progress.
“The janitor’s facing the other way,” he says, popping halfway back through the entrance. “But they’ve got all the exterior doors on automatic personnel-only locks.”
I give him a grim smile and pull out Kyle’s keycard. “I guess I should be glad you convinced me to steal it now,” I say, and my voice is more than a little bitter.
He meets my gaze. “I’m not sorry for that either,” he says quietly, but the words are laced with apology anyway.
I flash the card at the machine next to the door. It hums to itself. A light glows green and the door unlocks with a snick.
The card’s plastic edges dig into my palm—I’m holding it too tightly. I loosen my grip, careful not to look at my brother’s picture, and slide it back into my pocket next to his phone.
I pull the door open and cool air blasts over me. The burly janitor is bobbing his head a few yards away, baseball cap wobbling in protest atop his bulky headphones. I take a single cautious step. My shoe squishes loudly and I freeze, wincing.
The janitor slaps his mop against the ground and whistles tunelessly.
I hold my breath and lean out, peering at the placards on the opposite wall. Most of the slots are taped over with scraps of paper proclaiming each office’s new—and likely temporary—occupant. I search for the name I need, the name that would mean there’s a computer here we might know the password to, and find it three slots down and four to the left. Dr. Evette Lila, second floor, office 209.
I exhale, check on the janitor—still scrubbing at a stubborn stain with his back turned—and edge along the wall, shoes squeaking with every move. Five more feet to the adjoining hallway. Four. Three.
The janitor drops his mop into the wheeled bucket, grabs the handle, and starts to turn. I scurry the last few steps and throw myself around the corner. The bucket rattles past without incident.
“… Huh,” comes a puzzled grunt a few seconds later. I risk a glance. The janitor is next to the entrance, staring down at a row of muddy footprints. He shrugs, drops his mop back to the ground, and starts up the trail I left behind.
Stupid, stupid. I jerk back into the side hall and grab at the nearest doorknob, but it’s locked. Most of them probably are at this hour. The tuneless whistling is only a few yards away now. I lean over, yank off my shoes and socks, and sprint down the hall at full speed. My bare feet pound on the tile. Bathroom, bathroom, there has to be a bathroom somewhere down here.
The hallway dead ends. No bathroom, only a heavy duty door with a vent inset at the bottom. A supply closet.
The bucket rattles into view behind me. With a whispered curse, I twist at the closet’s doorknob—praying—and it opens. I throw myself inside and pull the door shut.
Shapes in the dark. Bottles, brooms, bright orange warning cones. The acrid scent of bleach slithers down my throat and burns my eyes. I worm my way through a rack of uniforms at the back, plaster myself against the cold concrete wall, and try to muffle my breathing.
The whistling is right outside the door. The knob turns. A rectangle of light yawns across the room, stopping a few inches in front of my toes. The janitor steps inside, snatches a roll of paper towels off the floor, and turns in my direction.
I look down. The uniforms I’m hiding behind drape to mid-calf, but my bare feet are completely exposed. All he has to do is turn a few more degrees to his right and he’ll spot them.
Inset into the wall behind me is a sturdy metal shelf. I reach up, grab it, and pull my feet off the floor. My muscles shudder under the strain, but for now, I’m hidden. At least until my grip gives out. Which will likely be soon, judging by my nonexistent levels of physical fitness.
One hand slips. I claw at the shelf, making the uniforms quiver as I regain my grip. Luckily, the janitor is squinting at the writing on the back of a bottle of cleaning solution and doesn’t spot the rustling clothing.
Quint folds his arms, staring up at me. “This is a wild guess, but I’m pretty sure you never took any gym classes, right?”
I shoot him a death glare. Shut up, I mouth.
“Why? He can’t hear me.”
I amp up the death glare by a few watts. One corner of his mouth twitches in a suspiciously smirk-like expression. I want to throttle him, but at the same time, his snark is at least keeping me from panicking, which was probably his intention, now that I think about it.
The janitor starts whistling again. He rips off a paper towel and dabs at a wet spot on his knee, then strolls back out into the hallway. The door closes with a click, but his whistling only retreats a few yards. The mop slurps
and splashes as he resumes his cleaning.
So. We’re safe for now, but judging by the janitor’s prior mopping speed we’ll be stuck here for at least ten more minutes while he finishes the hallway.
I release the shelf and lower myself to the floor, rubbing at my aching arms. My eyes sting and burn from the bleach fumes or maybe from sheer exhaustion. I pat my cheeks, trying to force myself to stay awake. My face is cool to the touch and my wet hair is still pasted to my neck, making me shiver.
Quint glances over and then frowns, scanning me more carefully. He clears his throat. “So,” he says after a long minute. “Gym. Was I right?”
The last few hours have apparently given him an immunity to death glares, so I jerk my head at the hallway and mime the universal shush sign, then add the finger-across-throat or else one for good measure.
He shrugs. “He won’t be able to hear you through his music, and if you pass out in here you might as well glue a giant ‘come murder me’ sign on your forehead. Talking will keep you alert till he’s gone.”
I press my lips together, weighing the options. “The pre-med program at State doesn’t require physical education credits and I’m more into books than sports anyway,” I whisper grudgingly, then hesitate. The picture that had been on the news earlier, the one of me and my ex-friends from last Christmas—it had been taken at a school trip to a Harry Potter theme park the week before I’d been diagnosed. A few months after that I’d started pushing all my old friends away, too embarrassed and scared to risk telling them what was really wrong with me. And a few months after that … I give Quint a sideways glance, then confess before I can think better of it. “I quit school this year anyway. I kept having panic attacks in class so I made my parents switch me to the online program instead.”
Shame colors my cheeks. I lift my chin and wait to see what he’ll say.
But he only settles down next to me, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Ah.”
“Ah? That’s it?”
“Were you expecting a lecture?”
“I would lecture me,” I mutter.
He folds his hands and doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Would you tell yourself that you’re ashamed of you?” he asks at last. “That you should be braver, should try harder, should be stronger?”
I pass a hand over my eyes and sigh. By now, those words should be diluted. They shouldn’t hurt anymore. They’re the same things I’ve told myself every day for a year, because yes, damn it, I should be better. Mom is—was—strong. She got two Ph.D.s and raised a family and even found time to volunteer at the veteran’s hospital every weekend. I’ve wanted to be like her ever since I was old enough to understand how badass she was. And then, what? I turn out to not even be able to sit through my high school biology class because I had a panic attack once on dissection day, and then every time I entered the room I was terrified I’d freak out again. If Mom was the one with panic disorder, she would’ve kicked its butt on day one.
“Yeah,” I tell Quint, and the word comes out muffled because my hand is still over my face.
“Well. You’re more ridiculous than I’d realized,” he responds.
“Don’t hold anything back,” I say sarcastically, but I keep my hand over my eyes because they’re starting to sting even though I do not, do not care what he thinks about me.
“Camryn,” he says, and his tone is serious and a little bit annoyed but also oddly gentle, “in the last week I’ve watched you grieve the loss of people you love, face down two separate blackmail attempts, escape an exploding train station, and break into a government building. And before that, you faced a type of anxiety every single day that most people don’t even understand. You are the bravest person I know.”
The words sink in, ease deep into a place inside me that I didn’t know needed them. I laugh, though it’s a little choked. “You’re just saying that because you only know two people, and one of them is yourself.”
“Yeah,” he says, subdued. “That’s right.”
I drop my hand and look at him. He’s staring at the shelves opposite us, and that worry crease between his eyebrows has returned. He shifts, leans his head against the wall, sighs. “I used to hate you, you know.”
My spine stiffens. So we’re back to this, then.
“I said used to,” he adds before I can reply. He lets his head roll to the side, gives me a rueful half smile. “For the present moment, the jury’s still out.”
“Thanks,” I reply, layering the word deep with sarcasm so he won’t know how off-balance this conversation has me. Then, because I can’t help myself, “You hated me because I’m brave?”
His smile is gone now and he doesn’t look away from the wall. “No. I admire you because you’re brave. I hated you because …” He opens his hands, searching for words. “Three weeks ago you lost your mom,” he says finally, “and I lost everything. Everything, Camryn. You have a body. People who love you. Memories. All I have is you.”
All he has is me. And … until tonight, I did nothing but ignore him. Call him a hallucination. Refuse to talk to him or even look at him, much less help him figure out what he is.
No wonder he hated me.
I swallow and turn to face the shelves, not quite sure how to feel. “If—if it helps, I’ve always believed it’s choices that make a person who they are. And you still have at least a few of those, even if you don’t have … other things.” I wave a hand in his direction, but when I pull my gaze from the wall I realize my fingers have gone halfway through his cheek without my noticing.
I don’t move. For just a second, barely long enough for it to register as a thought, I wonder what it would be like to actually touch him. To feel that barest hint of stubble on his jawline. To smooth away that worry line on his forehead.
He looks down. Something strange and sad flits across his face in the moment before he shutters his expression again.
I drop my hand, flushing, my pulse jumping. We both look away.
“Yeah,” he says, his tone unreadable, and together we wait in silence until the janitor’s whistling is gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHEN I STEP BACK OUT into the hall, the tile is cold and slick against my feet and my teeth start chattering immediately. I’ll be lucky if I don’t die from pneumonia once all this is over. Unless I can miraculously heal from that too.
I grit my teeth. Two hallways down and one floor up; I’m so close to my answers I can taste it.
I creep around corners, slipping past the rows of silent offices, rerouting whenever I come across a door with light still seeping around its edges. Getting caught by a late-working agent would be almost as bad as running into the blackmailer. At least I don’t have to worry about security cameras, though. The agency hasn’t had time yet to install all their usual security measures.
I pause at the top of a stairwell, clutching my shoes to my chest. There’s office 209: antique brass knob, expensive nameplate, a tidy little window looking out on the hall. This is it. Last chance to back out, to find some safe little bolthole where I can wait for someone else to rescue me.
But there isn’t anyone else left, so I stuff my anxiety into the back of my mind and step out of the stairwell.
Quint strides to the end of his ten foot leash and ducks his head through the door. “No one home,” he announces. I approach with caution and give the knob a twist. It’s locked, but once again, I came prepared.
I pull Kyle’s ID out and slide it into the latch. How did he jimmy the lock back at the ticket booth? Sometimes I hate that I have such a good memory—like now, when I can remember not only the way he twisted his driver’s license in the lock but also that tense look on his face, that muttered joke about his misspent youth, the way he didn’t even think to check his wallet for his ID when he opened it.
I bite my lip hard and angle the card just right, slip it under the catch, push it to the side … click. I nudge the knob with a single finger and the door gapes open.
Quint
sidles past to scout ahead. I inch in behind him—the carpet is short and plush beneath my feet, muffling my steps—and wait for my eyes to adjust to the simmering darkness. The ceiling fan is on and a sheer white curtain billows against the window, catching the waning moonlight with every twist. Beyond that, gloom spills across the floor in a tangle of too-still shadows.
I fix my gaze on Quint and order my feet to move.
The shadows shift and resolve into furniture, islands looming in the dark. A white leather couch. A bright red chair. A pile of still-packed boxes. A mahogany desk—holding Dr. Lila’s office computer.
Trepidation forgotten, I hurry around the desk and press the power button. The monitor blinks on. I squint into the sudden brightness; it’s a lock screen, a password prompt. Moment of truth.
I type in the sequence of letters and numbers and hit enter, praying Dr. Lila has the same password for her desktop as she does for her tablet.
A spinning hourglass. A blank green screen. Come on, come on. Quint hunches over the desk at my side and the bright green light washes him out, making him look even more transparent than usual.
Welcome, Evette Lila. The computer stops buzzing.
I scan the home screen; it looks like she uses this computer way less than the tablet because there’s hardly any files saved to it. As long as Quint’s external drive idea works, that won’t be a problem, but if the tablet is well and truly broken then we’ll be right back where we started with nothing to show. I rummage in the drawer for a cord. One end to the tablet, the other to the desktop. I plug them in and hold my breath.
A notification pops up, asking me if I want to access the external drive. I click yes, then choose one of the resulting files at random—and it opens.