And Then You Were Gone

by R. J. Jacobs

  Cal stayed focused on the screen, his body tense like Andy’s when he spotted a squirrel.

  “Shhh,” he said. “Silver went back in his office and shut the door.”

  The battery indicator on the camera dropped again. I reached again to turn it off.

  “Wait,” Cal said. He sounded impatient.

  Matt returned to his computer, rubbed his eyes again, typing.

  “He took the card,” Cal said.

  “Who?”

  “Silver. He shoved it in his pocket.” Cal panned the camera slightly to the left and focused on Dr. Silver, seated behind his desk. “He took it with him. Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know, Cal. He’s probably about to report me.”

  The battery indicator began flashing. Only a few minutes left.

  “Nah, I don’t think so. He might have told Matt he saw us, but why take it further? And it doesn’t look to me like he’s about to make a call.”

  Cal was right. Dr. Silver stretched his neck from side to side, as if working out a kink. He leaned back in his desk chair, his expression dazed.

  This was different. A man who didn’t know he was being watched.

  He read the card again.

  His face changed. Like he’d just taken off a mask that looked a lot like him.

  He stood, then sat again, raking fingers through his hair. He pursed his lips and gently hit his desktop with his fist.

  That was fear. Frustration.

  The chill hit Cal and me simultaneously.

  “Holy shit,” Cal said. “He’s not calling anybody. He’s glad you think it was Matt, but he looks nervous as hell.”

  Cal was right.

  I couldn’t talk. Everything had just taken a sharp turn. What I understood was upside down. Hatred bloomed inside me. It pressed against my skin, flushing me like a fever. “Do you think he …? Paolo? Sandy?”

  “I don’t know,” Cal said. He walked quickly, his back to me. His boots sent a slight vibration through the tar paper roof.

  I thought back to James Mandel’s description of the charming professor in a white lab coat in his early forties. Now my mind inserted a face into the story. I imagined the depth of evil inside Silver as tears of … what? Of pain, maybe, stung my eyes. The possibility of Silver having somehow poisoned Paolo was unthinkably horrible. I pictured Paolo’s expression as he’d spoken with such admiration about the man. He’d looked up to him like a father and been so naive. We both had. I’d been to a party in his home, for God’s sake. I’d been impressed, too. It took my breath. I searched for what Silver’s motivation could possibly have been, blankly, emptily—like white paint on a white wall. Then fury burned behind my eyes.

  “Silver kept us chasing, suspecting someone else. He was buying himself time,” Cal said. “It’s not Matt’s computer we need.” Cal cleared the path between me and the door, but his eyes narrowed like he was estimating something.

  Mania pushed me forward. Textbooks describe the feeling as “confidence,” but it’s more like an inability to grasp the significance of obstacles. “How …?” I couldn’t talk, was stumbling over my words. “What do you propose?”

  Cal picked up the camera, his other hand holding the tripod tightly. “Tell me everything you remember about what Sandy said she saw, and where. We need to charge this battery. You have to watch for me while I go in there.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “You? Why would you go?” I followed Cal into the hallway, our voices echoing. Marty’s dark office to my left, mine to my right. Cal’s jacket was cold as I grabbed it, the fabric rough under my fingernails.

  “Because I can get into the computer and download what we need. What would you do? Grab it and try to run out of the medical center?”

  I pictured Vanderbilt Police surrounding me. He had a point.

  “It’s the only way,” he said. His speech accelerated as his southern accent deepened, blurring the hard edges of his words. His eyes had caught fire. “Do you think I want to do this? I don’t. I’m scared. It’s a fucking bad idea. But it’s not the scariest thing I’ve ever done. And it’s the right thing to do if there’s a chance to stop him. I don’t want to have seen Silver reacting like he did. I want to live in last week, go to sleep at my house, work my job, tinker around in my yard. But I can’t—not today.” He pointed an index finger north toward the medical center. “I’ve gotta go; there’s no other option. I can’t let what we think happened stand.”

  I understood. I couldn’t get Silver’s reaction out of my mind either. I shook my head to clear it. So, why was I holding Cal back? He’d chosen to help me, for God’s sake. He was about to take the risk for both of us. What accounted for my impulse to stop him?

  I pressed against my temples as if holding together the image of what we’d seen. Picturing Silver’s expression felt like a near miss by a speeding car—heart racing after jumping back to the curb.

  I used the wall for stability, staggering, telling Cal every detail I could remember about Sandy’s description of the data and where she’d found it. “But she didn’t find it on Silver’s computer; she saw it on one Matt used.”

  “It’s a closed network; remember what Silver said? His computer will have access to all the others.” Calm and steady.

  “How are you going to get in without anyone seeing you?” I asked.

  Cal raised the camera. “Just watch his office, just the way we were before. The lab’s front door is open—people were walking in and out. You saw how everything’s arranged. Matt’s back is to the door and his eyes are locked on that screen in front of him. Those assistants are behind the wall on the other side. They won’t notice me slip behind him. I only need about thirty seconds. I’ll text you when I get close. You text me when Silver walks out.”

  “We’re going to wait until he walks out? He could be there all day.”

  Then Cal read my mind. “I’m not going to pull the fire alarm, Emily.”

  Think.

  I snapped my fingers. “I’ll call him when you get there and say I’m downstairs. Somewhere that’s a five-minute walk. He already thinks I’m that crazy, especially after the flowers. He’ll come down, and you’ll slip in. You just need a minute, right?”

  Cal nodded. “Less.”

  My stomach was tight.

  He paused, squinted at the doubt showing in my eyes. “Emily, we need this. Right now, all we have is a reaction.”

  We’d known evil the second we’d seen it. But Cal was right—a smile was not evidence. There were too many questions, too many possibilities. Lies to unravel. We needed to take the next step.

  Then it hit me—Silver really could have been weaponizing the results. The idea that Matt had been doing it seemed far-fetched in hindsight, but Silver was fully capable of navigating a deal like she’d described, of manipulating samples, of faking data.

  My mind flashed to Paolo’s description of an H1-N24 outbreak. I pounded the wall with my fist to stop myself from shivering.

  “We have to stop him now,” I said.

  “I’m sure I have a few thumb drives in my glove box. I’ll grab one on the way there,” he said. “I don’t even have to get in his email. If he typed it on that computer, there’s a trail. Even a hard delete would only take me an extra minute to find. Two minutes if he thinks he really wiped it gone. But honestly, I doubt he did. I got this.”

  Cal located an electrical socket, plugged in the camera, and turned it on to verify that the battery was indeed charging. His hands shook, the metal buckle on the strap rattling against the plastic case.

  “In the time it takes me to get over there, the camera will be charged enough.”

  Cal was both there and somewhere else. But, in a strange way, his distance made him more present. Even more focused. “It’s going to work,” he assured me. “Watch. Okay? Keep watching.”

  “Okay.”

  Cal straightened his back. He checked the cord once more.

  Would this work? I wondered. Another par
t of me thought, Why not?

  Something Marty had said in supervision once, years before, came to mind: Ideas don’t have to be complicated to be effective. Sometimes simple strategies work best. Of course, he was probably talking about something like behavioral interventions for bed-wetting at the time, but still.

  “Here,” Cal said, extending his hand, nodding at the phone in my front pocket. “I’ll put in my address. After I leave the lab, meet me out there.”

  I handed him the phone and he navigated to a maps app. “We can’t look here?” I motioned toward the decade-old laptop resting on my desk.

  Cal shook his head. “I’ll need the computer in my home office to break anything they’ve encrypted. Once I have access at home, it’ll take ten minutes.”

  “Then we’ll call the police?”

  “Right.” He dropped the phone back into my palm. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  What did he just do to your phone?

  Stop. It’s just paranoia from lack of sleep.

  I let out a breath, nodding quickly.

  Cal squeezed my shoulder and tromped down the stairs.

  The sound of his Volvo starting.

  I was alone.

  It was one forty-five, I noticed. About fifteen hours from then, Silver would be in the air, on his way to London—or somewhere away. If he’d been making a weapon like Sandy suspected, who knew where he might be going, ultimately.

  When the camera had charged adequately, I went back up on the roof and resumed my position on the tar paper—elbows and knees grinding into the dusty black material, my senses too heightened to wince at the slight petroleum smell coming off of it. I rubbed my eyes as my body tensed, rejecting its return to the cold. My heart, which in my office had slowed to a heavy gallop, was back to jackhammering. My pulse throbbed against my windpipe. The sky was brighter by then, an atmospheric blue so vivid it looked nearly unnatural. I adjusted the light meter on the camera, powered on, and found the lab.

  I swallowed, texted Cal: NO ONE’S MOVED.

  A second later, his message appeared: I’M HERE, READY.

  I glanced at the time. He’d gotten over there fast, I thought.

  There was a small piece of guilt to watching Matt; in that moment he looked younger. I couldn’t help but see him as a person, like me, who lacked full understanding. The me of thirty minutes before could relate—Matt there working diligently, unaware of what had been going on all around him for—how long? Years? Was he in danger? Were the others in the lab?

  My fingertips were cracked, trembling in the cold. A fleck of blood had dried against the nail. GET READY, I typed into my phone.

  This had to work.

  I dialed Silver’s number.

  Watched as his head turned. He picked up the receiver.

  His voice mirthful, ripe with lies. “Hello?”

  “Jay, this is Emily Firestone. I’m standing where we met yesterday, and I have something very important. Something you’ll definitely want to see. This is evidence, Jay. Trust me.”

  Before he could speak, I hung up, held my breath. My eyes focused on the tiny screen. I couldn’t blink.

  Silver stood and stretched. He leaned and touched his keyboard, took his jacket from the back of his office door. Slipping it on, he leaned toward his reflection on a framed diploma. Smoothed his hair.

  You bastard.

  His office went dark. He was gone. Off to meet me.

  Cal had predicted the sequence. ANTICIPATION? OR DID HE KNOW?

  A shadow bobbed in the square hallway windows as Silver strode away.

  Cal’s message appeared: THAT WAS HIM?

  Where had he stood to see but not be seen? The plainness of what he was doing seemed unbelievably gutsy.

  I texted: GO.

  The lab door opened and Cal slipped in, looking like a movie actor who’d wandered onto the wrong set. He moved quickly through Silver’s office door, leaving the light off. Like he’d predicted, Matt, who must have been used to ignoring movement behind him, barely shifted in his seat, the screen a steady glow in his eyes.

  The screen lit Cal’s face, his exaggerated silhouette huge on the wall behind him, making him appear all the more focused.

  I was counting to myself. Thirty seconds. A minute. Another.

  Matt glanced over his shoulder, rubbed his neck, and turned back to his screen.

  COME ON.

  Time passing at its own pace, both stubborn and indifferent.

  Another thirty seconds.

  Cal stood. He looked at the screen, froze with hesitation, sunk back into Silver’s desk chair.

  Shadows moved in the hall—amorphous shapes, identities impossible to discern.

  CAL, COME ON.

  Another minute passed that seemed like an hour.

  Finally, Cal stood again, waved the thumb drive up to the window, showing me, and moved quickly back out into the hall.

  Matt never flinched.

  I stood, turned the camera off, looked up at the sky to thank God. Then I gathered up the camera, tucked the tripod under my arm, and headed up the stairs for my keys. Cal would tell me what he’d found, then we’d call Allie, who would call Andre Mason. This would all be over in a few hours.

  My phone lit up—Cal.

  “Oh my God, you did it,” I said, answering.

  His breathing was fast as he walked. “Emily, it’s bad. This is bad. It’s not just a poison. This is bigger than us. Leave now, meet me at my house. Go.”

  “Cal? What is it?”

  “Emily, go. Now. I’m leaving.”

  I hung up, dropped the phone into the pocket of my coat. Sprinting to the door as best I could with my ankle, I reached for the light switch.

  Then a voice came up the stairs.

  “Dad?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  At first, the voice was so faint I couldn’t even tell to whom it belonged. But a part of me knew. A pinprick, a grain of sand inside me dropping so fast its wake left pure nausea. The height from the top of the stairs spun my stomach.

  I jogged down, the boot like a block of cement around my foot. I dragged my fingertips against the walls to keep from toppling forward.

  “Please, no,” I said to myself. An auditory hallucination, I wished, birthed from utter fatigue. We’d get the thumb drive into Mason’s hands, then I’d submit to the sleep that so desperately wanted to shatter my consciousness.

  But I hadn’t imagined anything.

  “Dad?” No question it was Olivia. Playful, curious. It made sense after the phone call.

  She was already in the stairwell when I found her. Bright-yellow raincoat, sandy-brown hair in a tangle. Her eyes and mouth in a delighted, if slightly impish, smile. Her freckled cheeks, reddened by the cold, were the color of some tender flower.

  I’d spent enough time with kids to read the expression immediately. Accomplishment. Pride.

  “Miss Emily, I walked here by myself,” she said enthusiastically, two thumbs to her chest like she’d just won a prize.

  Fuck, I thought.

  I worked to keep my voice calm. “You walked?”

  “I walked from Mom’s. It’s less than two blocks.” She pointed behind her, voice confident using the borrowed phrasing.

  I sank onto the stairs and put my hands on her shoulders. The sound of rumpling vinyl as they ran up and down the arms of the raincoat she’d worn for some reason. “Honey, you should not have done that. Where’s your mom now?”

  Please say right outside, I thought. I wanted there to be a running car in the driveway, a harried mom rushing in the door. There was neither.

  Cracks showed in Olivia’s expression, my concerns seeming to dilute her pride in having found her way. She’d so clearly hoped for enthusiasm in exchange for her big triumph.

  “With Billy.”

  Who the fuck is Billy? I wanted to scream.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Mom’s writing partner. She’s usually gone an hour, but sometimes it’s more. B
ut not much more. Really.” She could see that all was not right in my eyes and flipped into the mode of defending her mom. “She put on a movie; she’ll be back before lunch. There’s plenty to eat.”

  “Honey, it’s okay.”

  It was not okay. Cal’s words rang in my memory: Like having two kids sometimes. But there was no time for judgment. This had happened. Cal and she would sort it out later.

  “Where, um … where’s my dad?” she asked, looking past my shoulder.

  A flock of golden leaves spun like a miniature tornado at the bottom of the stairwell. I brushed a wind-tangled twist of hair off her cheek, regretting already what I was about to tell her. “I’m on my way to meet him. I was on the way out the door.” A truth so incomplete it sounded dishonest.

  “Oh.” She flashed disappointment.

  Then just as quickly, she linked her tiny fingers through mine, tugging me the rest of the way up the stairs.

  “Dad said this is your office? You work here?”

  “I do.” I was trying to sound calm, but adrenaline had raised the pitch and volume of my voice. And, aside from that, I was wild-eyed, surely. The space felt unsafe suddenly. I forced in a deep breath to calm down.

  We went into my office and I pulled the door until I heard the brass inside clink. My heart thundered in my chest as I dug for my phone, dialed Cal’s number.

  We’d talked—what? Two minutes earlier.

  Pick up, I thought. Please.

  No answer.

  On a wire outside, black birds—two together, one apart.

  He’s driving. He’s turned the ringer off, or can’t hear it over that old engine.

  Panic swelled inside me.

  Olivia kicked off her boots and reclined on my couch, stretching her fingertips and toes as she tried touching both ends. “It’s quiet here,” she said.

  It was true. The heat was off-cycle for the moment, waves of distant traffic the only sound.

  I shook my head to snap my mind back. Three days, three hours’ sleep. My chest felt hollow. My mouth was an empty coffee cup.

  If ever there was a time to be freaked out, it was right then.