seated at his desk, having just watched the video of me stepping between Donny and Cressida, my poorly executed cut and dye job barely a disguise at all. And then, unbidden, text appearing on his screen with his own name attached. I can see him calling Bruce, demanding to know how someone might have accessed his account. And then I see his horror when he realizes the only person who would have had the opportunity to steal the password—and a vested interest in watching him—is me.
I stand and press my fists against my eyes, tears seeping through the creases. “I can’t do this,” I whisper into the empty room. “I can’t. I can’t.” I open my eyes and grab the wallet, the nearest thing to me, and hurl it against the wall. The change purse pops open, a cascade of pennies and dimes falling down and burying themselves somewhere behind the dresser while the wallet itself lands with a thump on the surface.
But something inside of me loosens, the sudden action releasing just enough anxiety, like a pressure valve, yanking me back to center, the dingy room coming back into focus. I don’t have the luxury of falling apart. Rory knows I’ve been watching him. Listening in on conversations he believed were private, watching his panic over what Charlie knows about Maggie Moretti. There has to be some way I can use that.
Behind me, Kate Lane’s voice catches my attention.
“A little less than a week ago, Flight 477 crashed into the waters off of Florida. Ninety-six people perished in the crash, and investigators are one step closer to figuring out what happened with the recovery of the black box.” The screen cuts to old footage, the same bobbing coast guard boats, the same pieces of floating wreckage they showed last week. “Vista Airlines officials declined to comment on rumors that flight attendants failed to confirm the total number of passengers with a head count. But anonymous sources inside Vista Airlines report that this is not unusual when flights are delayed. Airline officials say they have confidence that the manifest was accurate, that the number of passengers matched all flight records.”
I freeze, absorbing this information, thinking back to the thread I’d read, the commenter who was so certain a person couldn’t get scanned onto a flight without actually getting on it, because of the head count.
But now, I see that Eva might have done it. A laugh, incredulous and tickling, tumbles around inside of me, and I sit back in my chair, trying to imagine her out there in some anonymous hotel room, watching this same report, having somehow slipped off the plane and vanished.
I think about the risks Eva took to gather the notes and the recordings—things that implicated her alongside whoever that man was on her porch. And I wonder what went wrong, why she didn’t turn it over. Whatever it was, it had her running, unable to return home.
And I wonder what she’d want me to do with it.
I stare at the wall, though I’m looking beyond what’s in front of me to the image of Eva, laughing and running away from me, backlit and growing smaller the farther away she gets. I watch her until she’s just a dot. Just a nothing. Almost gone.
I trace the edge of the thumb drive with my finger, certain there are secrets there Rory wants to keep hidden. I just don’t know what they are.
But Rory doesn’t have to know that.
As if Eva were whispering in my ear, an idea begins to unfurl, outrageous and bold. But it will require me to come out of hiding and confront him. To pick up a phone and dial his number, telling him what I have, embellishing and fabricating across the blank spots, weaving just enough of a story to make him believe I know more. Not just about Charlie, but the contents of the hard drive, wrapped up and ready to deliver to the media and authorities. Unless he gives me what I want.
And yet, the idea of calling him, of hearing his voice on the other end of the line, like a hook drawing him toward me, makes me shudder. Because if I’m wrong and this doesn’t work, it will make everything worse.
I pick up Eva’s cell phone, glad I brought it with me, a way to contact him without revealing my exact location. But I hesitate before turning it on, my instincts still snagging on how Danielle managed to track down