The Last Flight(68)

Claustrophobia began to overwhelm her, the heat of the arena, the people crammed into narrow seats that spiked upward toward the roof, giving her the sense that they were all pressing in on her. Eva checked the time on the scoreboard. “Let’s get a head start,” she said. “Beat the crowds. I’m starting to get a headache, and I think I want to go home.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice.” Dex pushed himself out of his seat and slid past the people in their row, Eva following behind him.

*

They were first in line at the bathroom, and the drop took less than thirty seconds. “See you next week?” Dex asked, pulling his coat tight around him.

Eva looked out the window of the clubhouse, down to the baseball diamond below them, thinking ahead a few months to spring when the players would be down there, running bases and spitting sunflower seeds into the grass. Hopefully, she’d be gone by then, one way or another.

She looked at him, taking in the profile that had become as familiar as her own. This was a hard life, and he’d done his best to teach her everything he knew. And she’d learned well. For a long time, she’d been happy enough. But those days felt far behind her, like faded snapshots of a person she used to know. “Sure,” she said. “Stay safe.”

“Always,” he said, giving her a wink.

Back on the crowded concourse, she glanced at the time. She had five more minutes to get across the arena and meet Jeremy. She wasn’t lying about the headache, which was creeping around her temples, and she knew it would be a full-blown migraine by the end of the night. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and texted Jeremy again.

Meet me at the entrance to section two instead.

She pushed through the doors of the clubhouse and maneuvered her way back into the crowd.

People squeezed past her on their way back to their seats, and she searched for a small corner to claim while she waited. She looked across the court, to section ten, trying to see if Jeremy was over there waiting for her, when someone caught her eye.

At first, she saw just the back of him—short brown hair. A sport coat large enough to conceal a holster. As if in slow motion, she watched him glance at his phone, read something, and push off the wall, heading in her direction.

She glanced at her own phone, as if seeing it for the first time, realization creeping over her, blurring her vision around the edges. She thought back to every text she’d sent over the past few weeks. To Dex. And to Jeremy, telling him exactly where to meet her, and when. And there was Castro, where Jeremy was supposed to be.

In a flash, she saw it all again. A piece of white paper being handed through an open car window. Brittany. Who had her number and was able to pass it on. The Whispr app was useless if someone was reading her texts at the same time she was.

She pushed through the crowd, a lone figure against the tide of people making their way back to their seats, keeping her head down. Afraid to look anyone in the eye, certain Castro’s hand would grab her any moment, yanking her backward, asking her to empty her pockets. Explain why she was still selling drugs. Telling her their deal was off.

She burst out of a side exit and into the cold night air, sprinting down the stairs, her compromised phone still gripped in her hand. As she passed an overflowing trash can, she fought the urge to bury it under old food wrappers and empty cups. To get rid of it as soon as possible. But she held on to it, knowing that she had to keep using it, that Castro needed to believe nothing had changed.

She walked briskly toward Sproul Plaza, pulling up her last text to Jeremy and hitting Reply.

By the way, I ran into your mom today. She looks great!

That was the code she set up with all her clients, the one that let them know it wasn’t safe to meet. Hopefully, Jeremy would go back to his spot in the student section and forget about her.

Eva walked up Bancroft and dropped the plain envelope containing Jeremy’s pills into a trash can outside the student union, and turned toward home.





Claire


Sunday, February 27

Mrs. Cook, it’s Danielle. I know you didn’t get on that plane. You need to call me.

A deep, thumping fear passes through me as I set the phone down and back away from it, as if Danielle might be able to reach through it and grab me, pulling me back to New York, where Rory waits.

My mind swirls, cloudy with panic. How did she find me so fast? The video has been up for less than twenty-four hours. And then, a terrible realization. Could all of this have been a setup? How else would Danielle know how to reach me—on a burner phone belonging to a stranger all the way across the country? My breathing comes out sharp and rasping, and I fight the urge to vomit.

If Rory and Eva were connected… I try to grab on to the second half of that idea. Of how they might have met, how they could have hatched a plan to send me to Puerto Rico, swapping tickets at the last minute and leading me somewhere with no friends. No resources, isolated and alone. A perfect target. Because if something happened to me here, no one would know.

But I can’t fit it together. The plane wasn’t supposed to crash. And I never intended to end up at Eva’s. I was going to call Petra. Slip into and out of Eva’s life within a few hours. Rory couldn’t have known I would end up here. He certainly couldn’t have orchestrated it.

I let the silence of the house wash over me, willing myself to calm down and look at events as they really happened, not through the lens of an abused woman, paranoid and seeing threats where there are none. My mind works backward. Somewhere, somehow, there’s a link. I pick up the phone again, tracing the edges with my fingers, staring at the black screen, my faint shadow reflected back at me.