The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(75)

“It doesn’t belong to you, either.”

Alex was about to take another drink, but stopped. “It hardly matters. The equation doesn’t work.”

She sat back in her chair. “I don’t understand.”

“It doesn’t work.”

“You wouldn’t be here if it didn’t.”

“The equation is junk, Hazel. The map is a tease. Isaac left behind just enough information to suggest the real thing. Sure, the map’s predictions are accurate: Isaac’s own death, numerous violent deaths around the city. But the dots stop: Union Station is one of the last . . . Do you know what Isaac left on that computer?”

“How would I know?”

“A phony equation. Trompe l’oeil math—get up close enough, and it completely loses its dimension. Beautiful, sure, and real enough to fool most people, but not me.”

She wondered if Alex was making this up to get rid of her. “But if the map works,” she reasoned, “the real math behind it must be somewhere.”

“Yes, but where? You were obviously the decoy.”

She shook her head. “Isaac wouldn’t do that to me,” she said, trying to swallow back a tightness in her throat. “He wouldn’t make me go through all this trouble just to throw somebody off the trail.”

“Are you sure about that? The password was numerical, by the way, hidden in that silly game of checkers that was staring at us all night. Designed for someone like me to solve.”

She looked away, thinking of her grandfather’s letter, of the riddles he had crafted just for her. But she would never have decoded a checkers game. So Isaac didn’t trust her after all? Was that the ultimate answer to the riddle? “Ha-ha, you thought I meant you?”

She laughed sadly. “So I’m just a sucker, is that it? Played not only by you but also by my own grandfather?” It stung to say these things out loud.

“I didn’t play you, Hazel.”

“No?” She could feel her face getting hot. “You bait me at the Halloween party. You manipulate your way into the hotel room.” She cursed her quavering voice, but continued. “You play the adoring Isaac fan—the poor little rich orphan abandoned by his parents—all the while biding your time until you could steal what you wanted.”

Alex closed his eyes briefly. “I won’t deny that I took what didn’t belong to me.” He leaned across the table. “But you have to understand: I never hid the fact that I wanted to see the equation. I didn’t hide that I’ve had a less-than-ideal childhood and that I’ve clung to Isaac and his work as a result. I didn’t hide that I was hoping to draw somebody out, somebody who had the information I wanted. I was glad that person was you. But now I’m sorry it was.”

Hazel listened, not wanting to believe any of what he said but also knowing that he no longer had any reason to lie to her. Hadn’t he gotten what he’d been after? Even if it ended up being a fake? She thought back to the moment she had first seen him at the funeral: the awkward academic at the podium.

“That equation you read out loud,” she said. “What was that?”

“It’s exactly what I said it was, Hazel, a scrap of his math I found long ago.” He leaned back, his voice dropping dramatically but his eyes still fixed on hers. “I thought someone might recognize it. If it turned out to be a piece of the equation I was looking for, I figured I could get a reaction from the person who had the rest.”

He was talking so quietly now that Hazel had to lean forward to hear him.

“But the scrap was just that, a scrap of nothing, and all I ended up doing was looking like a fool.”

“I can barely hear you. Why are you talking so softly?”

“Because,” he said, “I want your face nearer to mine.”

Alex leaned across the table and, eyes zeroed in on her mouth, kissed her. Her immediate impulse was to pull away, but when she didn’t—when she realized that she’d wanted this since the first time she saw him—a heady current surged through her.

After a few seconds, she sat back in her seat. “What was that for?”

“For the hallway, at the hotel. When I wanted to kiss you but couldn’t because I knew I was about to betray you.”

“I wish you’d picked the kiss.”

“I really wanted to, Hazel.”

Her face and neck still burned with the memory of his lips on hers. She wondered if they might do it again, but Alex set his chin in his palm and just looked at her, his eyes taking her in. There was, in fact, a look of regret in his face, mixed with something else: admiration, adoration? It wasn’t conspicuous, as if he were trying to convince her of it, but buried, mingled with other emotions and loyalties that were bearing down on him. The arrogance she thought she had detected earlier had disappeared, as had her own anger.

She wondered where this left them, if anywhere. Was the kiss a one-time thing, or might they do a great deal of it in the future? Alex’s expression suggested the latter, but then his brow transformed rapidly into a frown. He appeared to be focusing on something just past her shoulder.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Did you tell anyone you were here?”

“No.”

“No one?”

“Why?”