Eve and Adam (15 page)

And then he appears. Tommy.

He reeks of sweat and dope. Beneath a skull tattoo on his neck, a blue vein throbs.

“Got into my files, didn’t you? Clever boy. Dumped coffee on me. Jumped on my computer and used the old Wi-Fi. Smart boy. But were you smart enough to load it to the cloud? Or is it still trapped inside your computer?”

I don’t answer.

Tommy strides over to the desk where my laptop and my pad both lie. He drops into the chair and taps the pad. The four-digit-code screen pops up.

“What’s the password?”

“One, two, three, four,” I say. I’m pleased at how calm I sound.

Tommy’s skeptical, but he types it in, anyway. He scowls at me. “Cute. You have a separate security software installed.”

I shrug. “Too easy to break a four-digit numeric password. So I added a little something.”

“Give me the code.”

I shake my head.

“You know, bagel boy, it’s bad enough you left the Wi-Fi on,” Tommy says. “You also neglected to consider the fact that I have three separate micro surveillance cameras installed at my workstation.” He clucks his tongue. “Very sloppy.”

“What can I say? I’m an amateur.”

“Give me the code,” Tommy snaps. He casts a significant look at one of the security guards.

A split second later my head’s jolted by a full-palm slap.

It stings. But I box. I’ve taken a lot worse.

“Okay,” I say. “Don’t hurt me. The code is FG6H8D55lMSU1LQWVFOP7FD34MHUTDLK.”

Tommy types as I speak. “What is that, like, thirty characters?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Paranoid much?”

On the pad’s screen, a graphic of a middle finger appears.

Tommy curses. He knows what I’ve done.

The screen goes dark. All the data on the pad has just been erased and rewritten. A lab with the right equipment and trained personnel might still be able to salvage some of it, but it would take days, maybe weeks. Even then they’d just get fragments.

“Want the password for my laptop, too?” I ask.

Tommy leaps up out of the chair. He still has my pad in his hand. He smacks it against the side of my head, shattering the glass.

He brings it down again, this time on the top of my head, hard, with both hands and all the leverage he can get.

I’m not exactly home for a few seconds. Not all the way unconscious, but not functioning, either.

One of the guards, the younger one, pulls Tommy back before he can do me serious damage.

“Hey, hey, hey, Dr. Holyfield,” the guard says.

I’ve never seen Tommy this enraged. I’m not surprised. But it’s weirdly fascinating to see such an intelligent man so lost in fury. He’s spitting at me. He’s cursing. He’s straining against the guard until the tattoos on his arms are stretched and distorted.

It takes surprisingly long for him to get hold of himself. Eventually, the guard lets him go. Tommy paces, fingers twitching. He shakes himself out, adjusts his shirt.

“Okay. Okay,” he mutters, and I’m thinking he’s calmed down, but just then he darts in and punches me, a good, solid left jab. Blood explodes from my nose.

The guards are worried. They step in to stop him, but he backs away, hands up. “He had that coming. Little punk.”

Blood runs from my nose and more streams of it come rolling down from my head, pooling in my eyes. I’m still trying to get my scattered wits back.

“Who have you talked to about this?” Tommy asks.

I make a mistake. I say, “No one.” But I say it too fast, and he picks up on it.

“No one, huh? What’s ‘no one’s’ name, huh?”

He looms over me and I don’t think the guards will be enough to stop him if he decides to nail me again.

“You guys are going to be dragged into something very heavy,” I say to the security guys. “I don’t think you’re getting paid enough to be involved in major felonies.”

They exchange a glance. I’ve hit home.

“Walk away right now,” I tell them. “You haven’t done that much so far. We can let—”

Wham!

Tommy nails me again and this one really hurts.

“Whoa,” he says, examining his effort. “That’s going to be ugly tomorrow. Of course”—he moves in close—“a couple days from now, you’ll be good as new, won’t you?”

“Dr. Holyfield, you gotta chill, man, he’s right,” the younger security guard says.

“It’s all recorded, geniuses,” Tommy says. “We already have video of you two. And about the only person who can make that go away is me. So you are already deep in it. But bagel boy makes a good point: You aren’t being paid well enough. Which is why I’m going to give you each, what, let’s say five grand?”

“Each,” the older guard growls.

Tommy grins at me. He reaches out one finger and swipes the blood from my forehead. He sticks the finger in his mouth and licks it.

“Deal,” Tommy says.

And it’s that easy. My life has been bought for ten thousand dollars.

– 26 –

There’s a bell and a button. I stare at them for a while.

It’s late. And I don’t want Solo getting the wrong idea. Me coming to his room. Wearing … what am I wearing? Belatedly I look down and consider the matter.

The gym shorts I sleep in. And the T-shirt. And the lack of bra I also sleep in. And a pair of untied sneakers I slipped into on my way out.

I should have brought Aislin. She volunteered.

But, I don’t know, it just felt wrong. This is about my mother, which means it’s about me. And Solo.

I’m shivering, and it’s not because of what I’m wearing.

I push the buzzer.

He doesn’t answer. I buzz again. Nothing. I press the buzzer and hold it down. I don’t care if he’s asleep, he can damn well wake up and let me in.

The door flies open.

A man—no, more than one man—rushes out. One of them slams me against the wall. I trip and slip to the ground. A third man stampedes by with a heavy step on my once-severed leg.

The door to Solo’s room is ajar. Something is wrong, terribly wrong. Solo isn’t one of the three men.

I climb up and rush into the room. Stupid, really, I probably should call for help or something. I think of this too late.

Solo is in a chair.

The first thing I notice is the blood.

The second thing I notice is the ropes.

“Close the door,” he says in a clotted voice. “Dead-bolt it.”

I do it. Then I rush to him, kneeling down so I can look up into his face.

“Gruesome, huh?” he asks.

He’s wearing nothing but boxers. Thin rivulets of blood have made it all the way down to his shoulders and onto his chest.

“I’ll get help,” I say. But I know that’s the wrong answer.

“No. There’s no help in this place. They’re just shook up because they didn’t expect you.” Solo works his tongue around his mouth. He grunts, and a second later spits out a tooth. “Sorry.”

I run to his bathroom, soak a hand towel in ice-cold water, and run back. Carefully I blot the blood from his head. It’s shockingly red on the white towel. I can’t do a very thorough job because his hair is thick.

I wipe the blood from his face. Forehead. Eyes. Mouth.

I go back to rinse the blood out and as the cold water runs, my brain is racing, then stalling, then racing again, like a very bad driver with a very fast car.

I bring the now-pink towel back and begin to wipe the blood from his neck and chest.

I expect more blood to flow—they say head wounds bleed a lot—but it’s barely a trickle.

I wipe down to the waistband of his boxers.

I look up at him and I’m a little startled. I’m disturbed in about six different ways. I haven’t seen this much blood since it was coming out of me on Powell Street.

I haven’t ever been knocked down, pushed aside before.

I’ve never touched a boy’s body before.

I’ve never knelt in front of a boy before, a boy wearing nothing but boxers and rope.

Rope? “You’re still tied up!”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

I jump to my feet, flustered and scared and overwhelmed. My fingers pick weakly at the knots.

“There’s a Swiss Army knife in my dresser drawer.”

I find it beneath rolled socks. Carefully, carefully, because I don’t trust my trembling hands, I cut him loose.

He stands, turns, faces me, and says, “You looked at the files.”

But I don’t want to talk about it. Because all of that is so horrible and so complicated, and right now he is just so close.

“You—” Solo begins.

He stops talking, too.

We are inches away from each other. If I lean forward, my nose will touch the hollow of his neck.

Somehow we are closer now.

He breathes out and I breathe in.

Closer. My breasts touch the top of his abdomen. A shudder goes through him.

Through me, too.

His fingers tremble as they touch my cheek. I swallow hard. There’s blood on his fingers, and now there’s some on the back of my neck because his hand is under my hair and we are no longer inches away, we’ve gone metric, we are millimeters away and he breathes and I breathe and we both make shaky sounds like we might both be dying but not yet.

Nothing has ever moved as slowly as his mouth coming down toward mine.

It’s a million years.

His lips touch mine.

So, some part of my brain thinks happily: That’s a kiss.

Oh yes, that is definitely a kiss.

Some years and decades and eons later we pull apart. And he says, “Now: We have to run.”

– 27 –

We race to my room and arrive panting, the two of us babbling to Aislin about beat-downs and crazy people and cover-ups.

“We have to get out of here!” I conclude.

Aislin cocks her head. “You have blood on your mouth.”

“What?” I can feel the furious blush. “I must have cut my lip.”

“Yeah. It’s not
your
blood, honey,” she says. She turns to Solo. “So, I guess I missed my chance with you?”

“Um…”

“Where are we running to?” Aislin asks. Not upset, mind you, just curious. As though fleeing from my own mother and her crazed minions is a perfectly normal, everyday occurrence.

“Just out of here,” Solo says. He touches the cut on his scalp and grimaces. “Do you still have the flash drive?”

I dig in my purse and produce the little device with the Apple logo.

The three of us look at it, sitting in my palm.

So small, so dangerous, so terrible.

“Good.” Solo nods tersely. “Hang on to it.”

I rush to pull on jeans, turning away to put on a bra and T-shirt. Only then do I realize that I’m facing a mirror.

“He didn’t look,” Aislin says. In a mystified voice she adds: “He really didn’t.”

“I have excellent peripheral vision,” Solo says, winking a blood-caked eye at Aislin.

“What about Adam?” I say. The thought has come out of nowhere.

“What do you mean, what about Adam?” Aislin asks. “We’re fleeing for our very lives and you’re worried about some software?”

“It’s just—” I begin. But that’s all I have.

Solo says, “Tommy didn’t get his PhD and this job by being an idiot. We surprised him. We threw him off his game. But he’ll be back. We have minutes—if that.”

“My mother won’t hurt me,” I say, sounding pretty doubtful even to myself.

“But what about Solo?” Aislin says. “He’s not her son.” A strange look crosses her face. “You’re not, are you?”

“No, thank God,” he says with an ugly snarl. Belatedly, he realizes how that will sound to me. “I mean—”

I wave him off. “Let’s get out of here,” I say, but for some reason, I stop long enough to grab my sketchbook. I rip out my unfinished life drawing, fold it up, and stash it in the pocket of my jeans.

The three of us race out into the hallway. It’s all very action movie, but feels ridiculous. Seriously, I’m fleeing from my mother? Seriously?

My mother, who made me a lab rat. My mother, who runs a chamber of horrors.

Those images. So many of them. How am I supposed to reconcile them with my mother?

The problem is, it’s all too easy. It’s not like she has ever been some warm, nurturing, hugging, head-patting type. She’s an amoral bitch. That’s the reality.

I’m running down curving, carpeted hallways, trying to dredge up something nice to think about my mother.

It suddenly occurs to me—and yes, it’s a ludicrous setting and circumstance—that I’ve been a bit neglected as a daughter.

We make our way toward the garage, just like we had in our earlier “escape.” But the risks are higher this time. The sense of fun is gone.

We climb into the elevator. It moves, comes to a stop.

The door doesn’t open.

Solo nods, unsurprised. “He’s after us.” He pulls out his phone. “This will work once. Only once. He’ll counter immediately.”

He punches numbers into the keypad.

“We’re between four and five. He’s going to have the garage covered, and if he corners us down there, it’s way too easy for him to finish us off.”

The elevator lurches. “We’re going back up,” Aislin says.

“Yes,” Solo says tersely. “Soon as the door opens we run.”

“Where?” I ask.

“Just stay with me.”