The Last Flight(70)

But everything is as I left it. My bags, undisturbed by the wall, nothing amiss. I sniff the air, but there’s no trace of his cologne. He couldn’t have been inside. I was in the garage for less than five minutes. I press my fingers against my eyes, trying to hold myself together, trying to think rationally amidst the panic racing through me.

I enter the kitchen and nearly step in the puddle of Diet Coke, which has spread out from the tipped-over can, traveling all the way toward the shelves and under it. My eyes follow the path, catching on the cast wheels of the shelving unit. I bend farther down, being careful not to kneel in the brown liquid, and peer underneath, where the Coke has pooled up against the bottom edge of a doorframe.

I circle around to the end of the unit, pushing it forward until I’m looking at a door with a padlock looped through a steel hinge. “What the hell, Eva,” I mutter.

I grab her keys again and find the one that pops the lock, and when the door opens, I feel around on the wall for a light switch, turning it on. A fan below me begins to whir, and I creep down a small set of stairs that leads into a tiny basement that might have been a laundry room at one point.

But it’s not a laundry room anymore. Counters and shelves line the walls, with a small sink and portable dishwasher in the corner. Ingredients are arranged on the shelves—large containers of calcium chloride, at least thirty bottles of various cold and cough medicines. A camping stove sits in the corner, several silicone pill molds upturned next to the sink, as if to dry. High above me in the wall is a boarded up window, the fan centered in it, spinning.

To the left of the stairs is a counter strewn with papers and a voice recorder next to them. I lean over, reluctant to touch anything, and begin reading what appears to be a notarized letter to someone named Agent Castro.

My name is Eva James and this is a sworn statement of events beginning twelve years ago all the way through the present, January 15 of this calendar year. I read quickly, the pages turning faster, the story of a college student who just wanted to fit in. Who took the only option she believed was available at the time, latching on to a man named Dex, who promised her things he had no intention of ever giving her. A life. Happiness. Freedom. It’s the story of a woman who was tired of the corner she’d been forced into, a woman ready to burn it all down on her way out.

Eva wasn’t a con artist or an identity thief. She was a woman like me, for whom the world will never bend, trying to set her path straight.

I pick up the voice recorder and press Play. The sound of a sports arena fills the small space, chants and cheers, an announcer’s voice, a marching band of some kind.

“Seems kind of dangerous to get rid of the guy who was Brittany’s contact.” Eva’s voice, just as I remember it. “Won’t that draw the attention of the police again?”

A familiar voice, one I heard not ten minutes ago on the porch, warning me not to leave my front door unlocked, answers her. “They’ll never find him. Fish has a warehouse in Oakland. Some kind of import/export bullshit. There’s an incinerator in the basement.”

I stop the recording, unable to listen to any more. Like scenes flipping, faster and faster, images appear in my mind. The cash purchase of her home. Eva’s desperation at the airport. The way she shoved her purse into my arms, without even looking through it to see if there was something she wanted to keep. The phone she had with her, and the black one she left behind. No wonder Eva didn’t tell me the truth. This is why she couldn’t return to Berkeley.

And why I need to get out of here. Now.

I leave the lab untouched, but I gather the paperwork and the voice recorder, pressing them close to my chest as I sprint up the stairs.





Eva


Berkeley, California

February

Two Days before the Crash

Eva was meeting Agent Castro at the Round House, a diner that sat at the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge on the San Francisco side. She parked down by Crissy Field and walked up, checking over her shoulder several times as she made her way along the shaded paths of the Presidio. She’d taken the long way into the city, through San Rafael and Mill Valley, instead of crossing over on the Bay Bridge, hoping she wasn’t followed.

A letter had arrived from Liz the day before. Eva touched the folded edges of it, like a talisman, pulling it from her pocket again to read.

Eva,

I’m so sorry we didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I had really hoped we could talk one more time before I left. I feel like I owe you an apology. I made some assumptions that I shouldn’t have, so I’m going to spell it out for you, just so we’re clear. There are no conditions on my friendship. I don’t expect you to be anyone other than who you are. Whatever your past is, I accept it. Whoever you want to be, I will still love you.

When you share your problems with someone else, your load gets lighter. And so, I’m here, whenever you’re willing to share what’s troubling you. Just because I’m no longer next door doesn’t mean I won’t be there when you need me. Call me anytime.

And then she’d scribbled a phone number at the bottom. Eva tucked the note back into her pocket where she’d been carrying it since its arrival, wishing she’d met Liz all those years ago instead of Dex, wondering how different her life would have been if all she’d had to confess was one bad mistake in the chemistry lab. She could see how that might have been something Liz could forgive. Eva had been young and stupid. She certainly wasn’t the first person to do something dumb for a guy.