The Herd(83)

“Thanks, Bradleys,” Mikki said, giggling and sniffling as we let her go. “You two are all right.”

“More than all right,” I replied. “We’re all fucking badasses.”

“It’s true.” She wiped both eyes and exhaled, whew. “Okay, I’m going to sleep.”

We bid her good night and then I pulled out another book: A Wrinkle in Time, plus all its sequels behind it.

“Katie?” Hana looked at me intently. “Why were you trying to write a book about Eleanor?”

I leaned on my palm and looked out the window, where everything was as round and gray and marshmallow-soft as everything else. “I didn’t even want to write it,” I said softly. “But I couldn’t write Infopocalypse. I was backed into a corner and scrambling for a way to not ruin my career.”

I looked down at the yellowed paperback in my hands. There was a broad-winged Pegasus on it, and below it the face of a glowering red-eyed man.

“What happened in Michigan?”

“I’m so ashamed, Hana,” I said, my voice breaking. “I wish I could take it all back.” And then I told her, in fits and starts as gray-white swirls rolled past the window, as if the Walshes’ estate were actually on the moon or in a cloud or at the bottom of the ocean, wherever we’d found ourselves.

“I’m sorry,” I finished. “I fucked up over and over. I don’t even know what to say for myself.”

“Aw, Katie. I’m sorry too,” she said. “I’m sorry I was mean on the train. And for all the times I made you feel less-than. I want to do better.” She gave me a hug. It felt like an ending, a coda, and so I left her with Eleanor’s books spread out around her like ripples in a pond.



* * *



—

In the morning, I woke to Hana banging on the door.

“They spotted Cameron,” she called. “We need to move.”





CHAPTER 23





Hana


TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 8:48 A.M.

I packed my things in a haze, concentrating hard on the fabric under my fingers, folding clothes into small, neat rectangles and smoothing them into my suitcase. I popped into Katie’s room and helped her strip the bed and heave the mattress back inside the sofa’s belly. We dropped her sheets in the laundry room, and suddenly it was like we’d never been here, like this was all a dream.

Ratliff’s voicemail had run through me like ice: A search of the automatically catalogued license plates stacked up at the US Customs and Border Protection in Derby, Vermont, showed Cameron had driven into Canada around 9 p.m. last night. He’d used a fake passport and had a huge lead on us. Finally, she believed us. If Eleanor showed us anything, it’s that innocent people don’t try to run. Ratliff was coordinating a search with local precincts, and she was eager to have us back in New York.

Not eager enough to send a police escort, however. The Amtrak was sold-out, of course—all twelve trains left in the day were full, even the one that got in at 2:30 a.m. So instead we killed time at a diner, then clambered onto a low-cost “express bus,” which was neither express nor, it turned out, low-cost when you bought the last three available tickets a few hours before its departure. We stood waiting in the cold parking lot, stomping our feet to stay warm while Mikki cried on and off, and I stupidly remarked that at least we’d be able to sit together, since we were first in line.

“There’s something else I didn’t tell you,” Mikki said at one point, her voice rickety, her hands tucked into her armpits. “Cameron told me that Eleanor broke up with him right before that weekend in Beverly. The one with Jinny. He said she basically hung up the phone from setting up her investor pitches and called him to break things off. But she told him she wanted to be the one to tell her parents, since they were gonna be heartbroken, so he shouldn’t tell anyone just yet. I guess he was super, super hurt.”

“Yikes.” My nose scrunched in sympathy. “I remember us asking where he was that night, why he couldn’t come party with us, and she just said he was busy. I thought they broke up a week or two later.” I could imagine how Cameron must’ve heard it: I need a fancy New York boyfriend to go with my fancy new life. You’re not good enough for me.

“I know,” Mikki said. “He’s been carrying that around for nine years. When he told me, he just seemed hurt, but maybe he was…angry too.”

A beat. “So we really think Cameron did this?” Katie looked back and forth at us, her eyes wide, like Cosmo when he wants to be fed.

Mikki erupted into tears and I rubbed her back. “Yeah. We do.”

The bus croaked to a stop in front of us. Mikki slumped in a window seat and I took the one next to her. I dozed off, then awoke in Jersey, and across the Hudson, the Manhattan skyline was glittering and two-dimensional, like a vast cardboard set piece studded with bluish lights. The Empire State Building was green and red, which made me sad. Christmas comes but once a year, and future ones would forever be a reminder of today, painful echoes.

The bus dumped us on Seventh Avenue and we blinked under the bright streetlamps, as we milled around in the cold.

“So do we just go home?” Katie asked.

“I’m not ready to be alone,” I said.