The Last Flight(62)
I heft my tray back onto my shoulder and make my way carefully toward the house. As I cross the threshold, one voice lifts up above the others. A woman’s, bright with surprise and joy. “Oh my god, Claire! Is it really you?”
Heat zips up my spine, spreading outward, growing into a white-hot panic as the party swirls around me. My eyes dart toward the exits—front and back—measuring which one might be closer, but people press in on me with no clear path of escape.
I should have left when I had the chance. And now it’s too late.
Eva
Berkeley, California
January
Seven Weeks before the Crash
Cold January wind and a resolution—one way or another, she was done. Either Agent Castro was going to help her escape or she’d do it herself. They were meeting in a deserted beach parking lot in Santa Cruz, an hour and a half south of San Francisco. Eva hoped Fish’s reach didn’t extend so far. She’d driven slowly, watching her rearview mirror for anyone following her. The road that wound through the low hills separating the 101 freeway with the coast was only two lanes. Several times she pulled over and let cars behind her pass. No one appeared to notice her. No cars doubled back. By the time she pulled in next to Agent Castro’s car, she felt confident they were alone.
They walked down the stairs that led to the beach without speaking. Wind blew her hair around her face, and the pounding waves seemed to vibrate through her. She wondered what they looked like to outsiders, walking on the beach in the middle of winter. Would people think they were a couple, hashing out an argument? Or perhaps siblings, come to scatter the remains of a loved one? She was almost certain they would never guess drug dealer and DEA agent.
“You’re making the right decision,” he said.
Eva stared out at the ocean, salt spray misting her face. She resented the word decision, as if she were choosing between a sofa and a chair, deliberating between options, weighing the pros and cons.
She felt time slow down, forcing her to notice the moment that separated before and after. The last time something had split her life so cleanly, the consequences had bled far into the future, staining everything. “I haven’t decided anything. But I’m willing to listen to what you have to say,” she said finally.
Agent Castro shoved his hands in his pocket, his eyes squinting against the wind. “Felix Argyros is someone we’ve been tracking for a long time. As I’m sure you’re aware, his reach in the Bay Area is extensive and deep. And he’s dangerous. We have at least three active murder investigations that we think are connected to him.”
Eva gave him a sharp look. “You’re wasting your time trying to scare me. I know what he can do to me, which is why I won’t agree to anything until you can offer me protection.”
Agent Castro’s brown eyes studied her face, and she held his gaze, digging deep to hold it, to show him she was determined to do this her way. She had what he wanted, and if he wanted it bad enough, he would agree to her terms.
“Of course we’ll offer you protection. We’ll be with you twenty-four hours a day until after you testify, and I’ve been authorized to offer full immunity.”
Eva laughed and looked down the beach, where in the distance, a lone woman threw a stick for a golden retriever into the ocean. “‘Immunity’ is a meaningless word. I’m talking about witness protection. Giving me a new identity, setting me up somewhere else.”
Agent Castro blew out hard, thinking. “I can ask,” he said finally. “But I can’t make any promises. It’s not as common as you might think, and we don’t usually do that for people of Fish’s caliber.”
Eva knew he had to say that, to try to direct her to what was simpler and cheaper for his bosses. But she wouldn’t be deterred. “I know how hard it is to make a conviction stick on a guy like Fish. I know how likely it is he’ll get off on a technicality. And if he does, what do you think will happen to me? Your immunity won’t help me then.”
“I understand,” Agent Castro said. “All I can do is assure you we know what we’re doing.”
“Like you knew what you were doing getting Brittany involved?”
“Brittany was a mistake,” he conceded. “But it wasn’t a complete disaster, since she led us to you.” He turned his back on the ocean to face Eva, and his coat billowed out like a parachute. “You have to trust us.”
Eva nearly laughed out loud. Trusting others had never turned out well for her, and this would be no different. “If you can’t offer me witness protection, I don’t think I can help you.”
Castro’s eyes softened, and she noticed the laugh lines that framed them. Someone, somewhere, must know what he looked like when he was happy, and she found herself wondering who that was, what it was like to love a man who spent his days chasing shadows.
“Look,” he said. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve seen a lot. Of all the people I know in this business, you’re the one who doesn’t fit.”
Eva looked beyond him, out across the churning waves and whitecaps to the horizon line, knowing that it was just an illusion, that it would always be out of reach no matter how far you traveled, how hard you tried to get there. “You don’t know anything about me,” she said.
“I know you grew up in a group home. I know what happened to you at Berkeley, and I know you shouldn’t have been the only one punished.”