Recursion - Blake Crouch Page 0,111
something, Julia.”
He looks out at the Hudson. The breeze coming off the water carries a cool bite, and the sun is warm on his shoulders. Tourist boats go up and down the river. The noise of traffic is ceaseless on the highway above. The sky crisscrossed with the fading contrails of a thousand jets.
“I was angry with you for a long time.”
“I know,” she says.
“I thought you left me because of Meghan.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It was too much to keep breathing the same air as you in those dark days.”
He shakes his head. “I think that if you and I could go back to before she died, even if we could somehow prevent it, you still would have gone your way, and I would’ve gone mine. I think we were meant to be together for a time. Perhaps losing Meghan shortened the life-span of us, but even if she had lived, we’d still be apart in this moment.”
“You really believe that?”
“I do, and I’m sorry I held on to the anger. I’m sorry I only see this now. We had so many perfect moments, and for a long time, I couldn’t appreciate them. I could only look back in regret. This is what I wanted to tell you: I wouldn’t change anything. I’m glad you came into my life when you did. I’m glad for the time we had. I’m glad for Meghan, and that she came from the two of us. That she couldn’t have come from any other two people. I wouldn’t take back a second of any of it.”
She wipes away a tear. “All these years, I thought you wished you’d never met me. I thought you blamed me for ruining your life.”
“I was just hurting.”
She squeezes his hand. “I’m sorry we weren’t the ones for each other, Barry. You’re right about that, and I’m sorry for everything else.”
BARRY
November 5, 2018
The loft is on the third floor of a converted warehouse in San Francisco’s Dogpatch, an old shipbuilding neighborhood on the bay.
Barry parks his rental car three blocks away and walks to the entrance of the building.
The fog is so dense it softens the edges of the city, laying a gray primer on everything and diffusing the globes of illumination from the streetlights, turning them into ethereal orbs. It reminds him, in some ways, of the color palette of a dead memory, but he likes the anonymity it provides.
A woman heading out for the evening opens the front door. He slips by her and into the lobby, heading up two flights of stairs and then down a long hallway toward Unit 7.
He knocks, waits.
No one answers.
He knocks again, harder this time, and after a moment, a man’s soft voice bleeds through the door.
“Who is it?”
“Detective Sutton.” Barry steps back and holds his badge to the peephole. “Could I speak with you?”
“What is it regarding?”
“Just open the door, please.”
Five seconds elapse.
Barry thinking, He’s not going to let me in.
He puts his badge away, and as he takes a step back to kick the door in, the chain on the other side slides out, and a dead bolt turns.
Marcus Slade stands in the threshold.
“How can I help you?” Slade asks.
Barry walks past him, into a small, messy loft with large windows overlooking a shipyard, the bay, and the lights of Oakland beyond.
“Nice place,” Barry says as Slade closes the door.
Barry moves toward the kitchen table and picks up a sports almanac of the 1990s and then a huge volume entitled The SRC Green Book of 35-Year Historical Stock Charts.
“Little light reading?” he asks.
Slade looks nervous and annoyed. He has his hands thrust into the pockets of his green cardigan, and his eyes keep shifting back and forth, blinking at irregular intervals.
“What do you do, Mr. Slade?”
“I work for Ion Industries.”
“In what capacity?”
“Research and development. I’m an assistant to one of their lead scientists.”
“And what kind of stuff do you guys make?” Barry asks, perusing a stack of pages that were recently printed off from a website—historical winning lottery numbers by state.
Slade walks over and snatches the pages out of Barry’s hand.
“The nature of our work is protected under an NDA. Why are you here, Detective Sutton?”
“I’m investigating a murder.”
Slade straightens. “Who was killed?”
“Well, this is a weird one.” Barry looks into Slade’s eyes. “It hasn’t happened yet.”
“I’m not following.”
“I’m here about a murder that’s going to happen later tonight.”
Slade swallows, blinks. “What does this have to do with me?”
“It’ll happen at your place of work,