The Last Flight(56)

And that’s when I see them. Three separate cell phones, pointing at us, recording.





Eva


Berkeley, California

December

Two Months before the Crash

Eva rewound the tape and listened again to Dex’s voice. He refused to do what he was told. I don’t want the same to happen to you.

It still wasn’t enough, so she began to keep a log, writing down the number of pills made and the dates she passed them over to Dex. She couldn’t always risk recordings, and she didn’t even know if Castro could use them. It was like trying to drive blind. She had to intuit her way toward what she’d need through instinct and guesswork.

And throughout it all, she tried hard not to think about what might happen if she was discovered. Despite her efforts to remain focused, images flashed like a movie behind her closed eyes, jerking her awake at night, sweaty and panicked, certain it would never work. Convinced they already knew. But she used that fear, allowing her to get even more work done, her sleepless nights growing more and more frequent as she waited to see if Castro would return. She could feel him out there, a heavy presence that lurked in the dark corners, biding his time, and she only hoped she’d be ready when he showed up again.

Downstairs, someone knocked on the door. She and Liz had plans to shop for a Christmas tree at a special tree farm Liz had found online. Eva had declined—not once, but twice—citing reasons that Liz stepped around. She’d badgered until Eva capitulated, rationalizing that it was easier to accommodate Liz than to keep avoiding her. Liz would only be there for another month, and then she’d be gone, back to Princeton for spring semester. Eva tried hard to ignore the sharp stab of sadness she felt every time she imagined Liz’s apartment quiet and empty. But if all went well, Eva would be gone shortly after that and it would no longer matter.

She hurried down the stairs, reaching for her coat as she swung the door open. But it wasn’t Liz. It was Dex.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He didn’t waste time with a greeting. Instead, he stepped into her house, kicking the door closed behind him, his expression hard. “What are you playing at?”

Panic pulsed through her, at the thought that somehow someone had figured out what she was doing. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“Last week’s package was one hundred pills short.”

“What? No. That’s a mistake.”

“No shit it’s a mistake,” Dex said. “What the fuck, Eva? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

She shook her head, desperate to make Dex understand, desperate to get him out of her house before Liz showed up. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’m not sleeping. I must have miscounted.” She couldn’t explain the bone-deep exhaustion that accompanied trying to be two completely different people simultaneously.

“You need to fix this.”

“I will.”

“Today,” he insisted.

Next door, she could hear Liz’s footsteps descend the stairs, and Eva closed her eyes momentarily. “I can’t today.”

Dex looked incredulous. “Do you have something more important to do?”

She looked down at the coat, still gripped in her hand. “My neighbor and I are shopping for a Christmas tree.”

Dex looked up at the ceiling, as if he couldn’t believe what she was telling him, and swiped his hand across his jaw. “Jesus Christ,” he said. Then he looked at her, his gray eyes piercing through her. “Do you realize how hard I had to work to convince Fish to let me handle this? How close he came to sending someone who wouldn’t ask questions or give a shit about a fucking Christmas tree?” His voice was growing louder, and Eva worried that it would travel through the wall. Or onto the front porch, where Liz would be any minute.

As if on cue, she heard Liz close her front door and lock it.

“You need to go, Dex. I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

He looked at her, as if he were trying to see beneath the surface, to glean whether something bigger was going on. “By tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow,” she agreed.

He pulled open the door and came face-to-face with Liz, startled, her hand raised to knock.

“Hello,” she said, her gaze traveling between Dex and Eva, curious.

Dex’s expression shifted into an easy smile. “I hear you two are shopping for a tree. Have fun.” He gave them a wink, ever the performer playing his part, before bounding down the stairs and striding away.

“Who was that?” Liz asked. “He’s handsome.”

Eva tried to gather her wits, to lighten her expression to match Dex’s friendly tone. The last thing she wanted to do now was shop for a tree, but if she backed out, Liz would have a hundred questions. “That was Dex,” she said.

“Are you two…?” she said, trailing off.

Eva pulled her door closed and locked it. “It’s complicated,” she said. “Let’s go.”

As they drove north toward Santa Rosa, Eva let the miles put distance between herself and what happened, compartmentalizing it into a tiny ball, where it sat, like a pebble in her shoe. She was furious with herself for being so careless. For working herself so thin she’d made a mistake like that. She couldn’t risk any kind of targeted attention, and yet she’d invited it in.