Calculated

by Nova McBee

  He relents. “High Street, gate 34,” he tells the driver, holding the girl’s head close to his chest, concealing her bloody face and gently protecting her neck from further injury. She’s out cold, which is better than feeling the pain I do right now. The driver doesn’t ask any questions.

  I’m gripping my head, waiting for streams of numbers to reemerge, when Kai starts to go off on me.

  “Why were you walking around this area alone? At this time of night? Are you crazy? You could have gotten yourself killed! Then what?” He is steaming mad. “Never do this again! Do you hear me?”

  “Since when do you tell me what to do?” I snap, even though I know he is right.

  He doesn’t say anything. He just lets out an incredibly long sigh, shakes his head. I have really upset him, the second time tonight.

  Finally, he rubs his fingers up over his forehead, slowly working them through his hair. “Look, I can’t see you get hurt like that, okay?” he says, his eyes firmly fixed on mine.

  “Okay, I’ll be more careful,” I say.

  “That’s not good enough, Phoenix. Promise me you will never go back to that street again.” He takes my chin and lifts it so I can see him through my left eye, which isn’t swelling. “Promise me.” His voice is sharp, emotional.

  “I promise,” I say. Then I notice his hand, which is still touching my chin. I don’t know why it’s shaking.

  31

  Present: Phoenix

  THE FACTORY, SHANGHAI, CHINA

  We have been in the car for seven minutes. The numbers have returned. Now if only my head would stop pounding.

  Kai sees me wince as I touch my head. “Are you okay?” There is still tension in his voice.

  “I’m fine,” I say, wiping away blood.

  We pull up to the gate at High Street.

  “Phoenix, we need to get her to a doctor,” Kai says as he lifts her still body out of the car.

  “There’s one inside.”

  He looks at me as if I’m crazy, but regardless he heads for the garage entrance of the former China Generation warehouse. After we get inside, the changes astonish him. An Ying rushes out, stopping abruptly when she sees Kai.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Go wake Dr. Ling,” I tell the girl in Shanghai dialect.

  We take the elevator to the top floor. Kai carries the girl to the back room.

  Once she’s safe in Dr. Ling’s hands, Kai accompanies me to the small restroom in the lobby where I clean my wounds.

  Kai takes the washcloth from my hands and washes the blood from my face. He’s upset and confused, but he cares—that much is obvious. Maybe it’s just adrenaline but his eyes lock on to mine as if I might disappear if he looks away. I must have really scared him tonight. Is it possible he’s afraid of losing me?

  “Thanks for coming after me tonight.” I try to make amends. “It could have been a lot worse.”

  “Why does the factory look like a hotel for the FBI?” he says, cutting to the chase. “Who are they? And while you’re at it, why don’t you give me one reason why I should trust you?”

  I’m silent. Contemplating. Analyzing. How can I tell him something without telling him everything? That same lump in my throat rises.

  “Fine. Don’t tell me. Don’t tell anyone anything!” Kai says.

  I expect him to walk away, but instead he takes some antiseptic pads and disinfects the cut on my face.

  “I knew what I was doing,” I start to defend myself, but how can I when Kai came to my rescue? He’s with me now again—I have a second chance to tell him. Calculations never factor in second chances, but here I get one.

  “Yes, just like at the warehouse, huh?”

  “You don’t understand,” I say looking at my bandaged hand. My eye stings when I open it.

  He sits on the chair beside the counter. “Then why don’t you explain it to me?”

  “If I don’t talk about it, they can’t get anything else out of me,” I say.

  “Talk about what?”

  “My gift with numbers.”

  “You being good with numbers isn’t a secret, but I am too, and I can’t do what you do for my father’s company. You’re going to have to give me more than that if you want me to understand what’s going on. I want to understand you.”

  Kai is right.

  Red’s dead. My family’s dead. There’s no one left who knows who I am. But who cares? Why does it matter? No. That’s not true. My mind is playing tricks on me. My insides cry out to be known, helped, loved. If I don’t open up, I’ll be swallowed by death like an ocean, covering over me silently, wave by wave. If I can’t open up now, with Kai, I’ll never open up with anyone.

  Kai leaves the room, frustrated. Through the doorway I see him rubbing his temples. After five minutes and thirty-six seconds, I move slightly and groan. I ache all over—my face, back, leg—so I linger in the antiseptic white bathroom a moment longer.

  The room is void of color and reeks of things meant to be discarded. This will be my life if I don’t choose to walk out of here and share my life with someone. But how can he understand my circumstances? The odds are so improbable, he might think I’m lying. And if he believes me, then he might feel sorry for me, or think he has to try to heal me.

  My mind drifts to our conversation at the beach. There he created a natural segue for me to talk too. Brief as that moment was the feeling was…healing. I once thought healing would come after I buried the pain and it slowly decomposed. But maybe healing will come when I dig it back up? Expose it and let it go.

  I push off the countertop and leave the bathroom. Kai is on the couch in the lounge. Ankles crossed and arms folded across his chest. He looks up, his stare compelling me to sit. So. Kai is the lucky guy who gets the heavy burden of my past.

  I’m nervous.

  “I admit, tonight back in the alley, the calculations were not in my favor, but the fact is, numbers are why I’m still alive.”

  “What does that mean?” he says, still slightly annoyed.

  “You’re familiar with differential equations, right?” The question is more of a statement. He should know with all of his studies in math and finance. He nods.

  “Well, imagine that concept in a person.”

  Kai’s brow wrinkles. He doesn’t understand, so I explain how numbers stream through my head at speeds faster than a computer, calculating everything around me.

  “I’m a mental calculator. That’s why I work for your father. I can calculate anything—money is the easiest of all.”

  He’s silent, like he’s working hard to solve a problem. That problem being me.

  “Back up—if that’s true, what did these numbers predict back in the alley?” he finally asks, speaking calmly this time.

  “Negative outcome. For me at least.”

  “But you moved forward anyway?” he says, leaning forward.

  I nod.

  “You knew you’d get hurt?”

  I nod again. “It was a risk. I was willing to take it to save her life. There’s always a slight possibility that a risk can beat the odds, and it did. We saved her.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you risk your life for a prostitute?”

  “She’s not a prostitute,” I say back, sharply. “Not by choice anyway. That’s why I have to stop Madame.”

  “Who is Madame? What are you talking about?”

  “Madame is a millionaire. A murderer. A liar. An international trafficker and my…former captor.” If my head is spinning, his is too. What will he think when I tell him more? “She’s known by other names, too, like Maxima Moreau.”

  “Wait a minute. Maxima Moreau is Madame?”

  “One and the same.”

  “Start from the beginning,” he says. “Tell me what happened when you got to China. How did your family die? How did you get here? Why do you have those articles about that little girl in your office?”

  So, he saw more than he let on that day. If Kai were a detective, he
’d already have a thick file on me. But there’s no hiding anymore.

  “I am that little girl,” I say, swallowing hard. “I’m the prodigy.”

  His eyes widen. To my surprise, my mouth opens, and I begin to talk.

  At first, it’s a trickle—a word here about my family, there about Seattle, another about my mom. As I let go, the gates are broken down, and words rush out like a flood.

  Kai’s jaw tightens as I relive the details. His eyes don’t flinch. They are solidly locked onto mine.

  I get to the part about how my Dad never came to find me and how Mara gave Madame the details of my PSS job. Years of heaviness crumble away, but it still hurts. Can I ever truly let them go? I don’t know.

  “Did Mara know who Madame was?”

  “Very unlikely. But PSS was a secret, and she talked anyway. Mara certainly didn’t know Madame planned to kill them. It was always Madame’s plan though. She didn’t want me to have anything to go back to.”

  He may want to stop listening now, but he nods for me to keep going.

  “Octavia means ‘the eighth’. Having me was her obsession…” I still hear her voice in my head. We’re the same, Octavia. Powerful. And I’ll make you more powerful yet.

  “Why you? What’s her obsession if not for the money?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I wasn’t there long enough to figure it out. As odd as it sounds, she wanted to love me. She didn’t want me to suffer what the other girls did. It grew hard to remember who I really was and what was real or right or wrong. If it weren’t for Red, I’d have been a goner.”

  Kai rubs his temples. If he knows who Red is or how his father knows him, he doesn’t say. I want to respect Red, who said to wait for Chan to tell me. Which means I may never know.

  I explain the guilt, which plagued me nightly, for obeying her. “I—I had no choice,” I explain. I pull my hair to the side. “This is why I always keep my hair down.” When he sees the scar, he cringes. “Then came Lev…”

  I tell him everything from how Lev attacked me to the Pratt. From meeting Red, to Chan, even what really happened that night at the warehouse. Kai’s fist balls up as I talk. I think he may hit something. But he doesn’t, he only urges me to continue.

  In certain places—I get choked up, but something keeps me talking, pressing this story out once and for all. Three slow, silent tears sting my eyes and roll down my chin.

  Kai shakes his head. He has no idea what to say. He’s very quiet, processing my story, until he jumps to his feet.

  “We need to call the police immediately. Madame, King. They need to be arrested—now.”

  “We can’t. Not yet.”

  He’s confused. I pull him back down to the couch. “At dinner you asked what I was planning. Well, I’m going to make their lives of crime mean something.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  A slight smile rises on my lips. “A generous donation to the super bond.”

  “How do you propose to do this?” he asks.

  I bite my lip. “Your dad.”

  “You aren’t doing anything illegal, are you?”

  “Not exactly.” I breathe in deep. “Let me explain.”

  “A heist? That’s your plan?” Kai exhales loudly, his hand going through his hair.

  I grab more files from the factory office to show him. “It’s the only way,” I conclude, “your dad is the only one who can support this super bond, but we still need a lot more money. Madame and King have it. It’s only fair that what they took for evil should be used for good.”

  He flips through all the notes. “That’s a big plan. You’re going to steal all their money—plug it into our bond—then rescue the girls while shutting down their criminal ring…alone?”

  He sees right through me. “It will work,” I say, my gaze snapping away. It sounded easier on paper, but in reality, I haven’t figured it all out, but inside, I feel it will work. So how can I give up? This is my chance to fulfill my vow to Red. To make his death count.

  Kai rubs the scruff on his chin, thinking. I wonder what he sees in me now. Determination? Hopelessness? Insanity?

  “So what about Song Valley?” he asks, moving on.

  I pull out the map I drew by memory, of the tunnels, the buildings, and the roads from the Pratt to the warehouse and the port. “Loads of money and stolen valuables are in the Pratt.” I indicate the lighthouse. “Donation number one.”

  I spill everything on King, ending with tonight. The girl’s face smeared with makeup fresh in my mind. A sharp pain invades my stomach. A human who was once labeled cargo.

  “Donation number two: If I can get King’s schedule for the Golden Global Shipments, I can reroute Madame’s delivery to King’s private dock at the Shanghai Port.” I explain we have less than three weeks for this to work. “If I can intercept them, it’ll be a flock of birds with one stone. The girls. A half billion in cash. Dirty customs agents. King. Madame’s right hand will be cut off. I just need the schedule and the list of buyers. That’s why it was so important that we weren’t caught at the warehouse.” We talk over the shipments before I hit the last point. “Donation number three: The Expo.” I explain that all I need is the routing number with the spin code to gain access to Madame’s hidden accounts. I don’t tell him that I plan to be the buyer.

  He listens intently. Never taking his eyes off me. “When do the police get involved?”

  “After I get the money and the girls.” And justice. “If we are going to prevent the collapse of the economy, I need to plug that money into the system without any interference from the authorities. After that, anything goes.”

  “What if you gave the police leads for all the international routes Madame uses with the other ring leaders? That way, you can keep the Chinese shipments but gain the police’s trust.”

  I calculate the possibilities. “That could work.”

  Kai grins. “Josephine Rivers, child genius. We should show that article to my dad—graduated at 15 with a PhD. He’ll finally be impressed.”

  “Not likely.” I smirk. “Your dad knows money and degrees can’t bring back the dead. I care nothing for those. All I want is my life back. To start over. Only I can’t yet. I was meant to be here to help stop the economic crisis, or at least try.”

  For a moment, I forget I’m talking to Kai and see my story like an outsider. I didn’t choose Shanghai, but here I am. I was thrust into dark corners, but I was protected, and who would have guessed I’d have learned to operate on a global scale from criminals like King and Madame? Puzzle pieces. Everything fits together, nothing wasted.

  If I can pull it off, this will be my part in history. The fulfillment of Red’s vow—to fight evil with good. I see now what Red meant by choice. I could have walked away. Made my own money and floated on by as the world drowned. I could have left angry and bitter, forgotten everything, and started over. I could have let King and Madame roam the streets with no one to stop them. But I didn’t. I chose to stay. I don’t know if I can help the crisis or save the girls, but I choose to try. Choose to risk. Believe the odds can be beaten—this is who I am. It’s my destiny, with or without math.

  “You know, the way you are going about this,” Kai breaks in, “no one will even know it’s you who prevented the crash.”

  “It’s not about that,” I say. “I don’t need to be in the history books. I just need to do my part.”

  Kai is silent. One, two, three minutes tick by. Maybe he thinks my plan is stupid or dangerous. Maybe he’s confused about the J.J. Bond or overwhelmed by my depressing life story. What can he say? Sorry about your life? That won’t change anything. My secrets are out like jewels thrown on the ground. It’s up to him whether he picks them up and treasures them.

  His big dark eyes peer into mine. I shiver. Eyes communicate much deeper than what numbers calculate, or words express. Right now, words aren’t necessary, and numbers can’t tell me how I feel as I stare into his eyes. Thrill mixes with fea
r. The unknown collides with hope and desire. With each quarter of a second his stare intensifies, as if he’s climbing another wall into my heart. I feel bare. What is he thinking? Will he treat me differently now? Can I trust him?

  The numbers fade again—an after effect of the mist? I don’t care right now because my belly is doing backflips. His hand stretches out and his fingers run through my hair, and down to my cheek. It’s warm. “If I could multiply anything, it’d be you.” His hand moves to find mine. “There should be more of you all over the world. At the same time, I’m glad there is only one of you. And that you’re here with me. No coincidence, right?”

  “What?” I say meekly, cheeks burning.

  “What I mean is, it’s not a coincidence that…”—he draws closer—“that our paths crossed.” He leans in. “That you are two inches from me.” Our knees are touching. His eyes flash to my lips and my heart pounds out of control. “That you are beautiful.” Both of his hands cup my cheeks. “That we need each other.” Our lips touch. The warmth of his breath is on my mouth. “My father warned me about this. But it’s too late. Josephine.”

  He softly brushes his lips over mine before pulling me into him. My first kiss is softer than I thought it would be, more perfect than what I’d imagined as a girl of thirteen, but that’s not what produces electricity in my heart. Kai called me Josephine. The first time someone has said my real name in more than 700 days. It’s like music, magic. He knows what I’m thinking because in between his lips kissing different parts of my face, he keeps whispering my name in my ear. Each time I hear it, Josephine comes back to life a little more.

  Finally, he wraps his arms around me and holds me tight. I sink into his arms and nuzzle my face against his chest. The sensation is warmer than any blanket and safer than any locked door.

  32

  Present: Phoenix