I pushed back from my desk, stretched, and looked around for Calahan. And found myself looking right into those clear blue eyes. He was slumped on my couch, staring right at me. Has he been watching me, that whole time? A wave of heat rippled down my body and I quickly looked away. I grabbed the tin where I store the granola bars and threw him one while I told him about Lily.
“These are good,” he said, unwrapping the granola bar. “Who makes them?”
“My mom. I don’t, um... call her much. So she sends me care packages of granola bars. I have a whole freezer full.” I looked at my freezer sadly. “I don’t want to throw them out.”
“You should call her,” he muttered.
I nodded. “I know. But we don’t get along since….” I glanced down.
“Even so,” he said gently.
With anyone else, I would have told them not to lecture me. But I knew where this was coming from: he’d seen Becky lose her mom suddenly and be unable to set things straight. I closed my eyes and held up my hand in defeat. “You’re right, you’re right. I should. I will. I know how rough it was on Becky.”
I opened my eyes and found him staring right at me. “How do you know about Becky’s mom?” he asked. He stood up, looming over me. “How do you know about Becky?”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. Oh shit.
He turned the full force of those blue eyes on me, his gaze soaking deep into me and reaching right into my soul. This is how criminals feel, when he interrogates them. I couldn’t lie, when he looked at me like that. All I wanted to do was confess.
And then I didn’t have to because my eyes, desperate to escape that gaze, flicked to my computer.
“You hacked me.” He said it slowly, as if he was tasting the words to see if they could be true. “You read our messages.” His voice turned bitter. “Becky and me.”
I started to speak, but he turned away and stalked over to the window. I watched, horrified, as those huge shoulders began to rise and fall: big, shuddering breaths as he tried to control his anger. Oh God, I’d really crossed a line. He massaged his forehead. Rubbed at his stubble. He was breathing faster and faster, the veins in his neck standing out….
I rolled a half inch towards him and extended my hand. “Calahan—”
“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?” He turned and roared it at me, the words a weapon. I shrank back in my chair and instinctively rolled a few feet back. But he was advancing, each stomp of his foot sending shockwaves through the room. “Hackers!” he spat. “Don’t you have any sense of people’s privacy?”
I rolled back another foot. “I just wanted to—I only wanted to know what happened!”
“It’s none of your business, what happened!” He was almost on me, now, his long legs eating up the distance faster than I could retreat.
“I’m sorry! You’re just so... sad. All the time. I was just looking for why, I wanted to help!”
Thunk. I’d backed up against a wall. He had me.
He stepped right up to me, his ankles nudging my dangling feet. I had to crane my head right back to look up at him. We stared at each other and the only sound in the room was my tight, shaky panting and his big, shuddering breaths.
“She’s dead,” he said. It started as an attack, but by the time he reached the second word, his voice was breaking and he didn’t look angry, anymore. He just looked lost. And hurt. And disappointed in me. Why did you have to do this to me?
I had no words. I was re-running all those messages from Becky in my head. I’d been assuming they broke up. I’d never considered… oh God. No wonder Calahan was the way he was. And now I’d brought it all back to him—
I’d never felt like such a complete piece of shit. I just wanted to squirm out of his sight. “Calahan,” I managed at last. “Sam. I’m sorry.”
He turned away. He couldn’t even look at me.
“I’ll never hack you again,” I said.
He still had his back turned, brooding. But I thought I saw him nod his acknowledgment. I had no idea what to do next. I wanted to talk to him about it. I wanted to comfort him. But I couldn’t, not when it was so obviously painful for him.
“I think,” he said at last, “under the circumstances, I get a free question.”
He turned and glared at me, letting me know that the subject of Becky was closed forever.
“Yes,” I said immediately. “Whatever you want.”
He took a deep breath and let it out, calming down, but a long way from calm. “What’s in the dove loft?”
I blinked at him, speechless. I’d been expecting how did it happen or do you miss walking or even something about sex. “How did you know?” I said at last.
“What you said in the car didn’t make sense,” he said. “I believe that you want to be high up. But there are taller buildings so that can’t be the only reason. You wanted this penthouse. I checked and the only thing special about this building is its age. Fancy balconies, gargoyles...and the penthouse has a dove loft on the roof.” He stepped closer. “So what’s in the dove loft?”
I got it. He wanted to talk about something else, something not Becky. And I more than owed him that.
I swallowed. “Can you keep a secret?”
20
Calahan
SHE LED ME to a private elevator that was really only big enough for one person. She backed in first and I had to stand facing her, so close that my legs brushed hers. We ascended, and I closed my eyes and rubbed at them as if I was tired. Really, I was trying to sort through my feelings.
I was hurting. I get through each day by pushing this stuff down inside me. She’d hauled all the memories to the surface, a million glittering, razor-sharp shards, each one slicing deep, the guilt welling up. Becky. I’m sorry.
Hacking me had been wrong, but Yolanda had only done it because she was worried about me. And that was my own fault: I’d let her get too close. What the hell was wrong with me? I was normally good at keeping women away. I did it with Hailey, at the FBI, for years. But Yolanda... she’d got under my skin in a matter of days.
The elevator jerked to a stop and I opened my eyes. She was looking right at me, her eyes frightened. Are we okay?
I hesitated... and then nodded. I couldn’t stay mad at her. Not this woman.
I pushed open the door and stepped out onto the rooftop. All around us were fantastic views of the city. But the rooftop was something all on its own.
I’d been on plenty of rooftops back when Hailey and I were doing surveillance on the Russian mob, and they were just gray jungles of aerials and air conditioning ducts. Yolanda’s roof was more like a church: the parapets had little balconies you could step out onto, with gargoyles hunched on the corners, their beady eyes watching the streets below. There were stone benches and even an arch that framed the view of Central Park. And there was a white-painted building the size of a two-car garage with a peaked roof that I guessed must be the dove loft.
Yolanda rolled across to it and opened the door. The only window was a circle of stained glass, high on the opposite wall, so it was dark inside. I blinked as my eyes adjusted and then—
The bottom third of the building must have once been filled with boxes for the birds to roost in: I could still see the marks on the walls where they’d slotted in. But all that had gone. The space was full of something that looked like the inside of a steamship: huge cylinders and pistons and about a million pipes. Suspended above that was a gleaming floor made of metal mesh with some sort of computer workstation. And hanging above that—
At first, I thought it was a bird: that was what it looked most like. But it was huge, at least six feet across. I looked at Yolanda.
“It’s a drone,” she said.
I gazed at it again. “Where did you—”
“I built it.” She kept her voice carefully neutral, but I could hear the pride there.
I walked slowly up the ramp and onto the walkway to get a better look. It was nothing like the military drones I’d seen o
n TV, brutish and bristling with weapons. This was slender, elegant, and gleaming white. Feminine, almost. It was beautiful. But what did she need a drone for?
She pulled a lever and a section of the wall hinged down in front of us. Behind us, another, bigger section hinged down. She could launch the drone from here, I realized, fly it over the city and land it again. But why? Why do all this?
She picked up a thing made of white plastic, connected by cables to the computer. It was only when she pulled it onto her head that I recognized what it was: a virtual reality headset. She turned her head and there was a whir as cameras at the front of the drone turned in sync. She can see through its eyes.
She groped blindly for me, gripped my arm, and tugged me away from the drone. She hit a button and there was a hiss so loud that it made me clap my hands over my ears, and a thump of metal on metal. And the drone was gone, just a speck of white I had to search for against the sky. I knew what the machinery under our feet was, now. A small version of the steam catapult they use to launch fighters off aircraft carriers.
I saw on the computer screen what Yolanda was seeing, a view from the drone as it dived into the canyon formed by two buildings. It banked hard and hooked around a corner, nimble as a bird, windows flashing past almost close enough to touch. Then it rolled and soared high, heading into the blue.
Yolanda laughed. Breathless, delighted, as carefree as a child. She turned her head, looking at the clouds, the tops of the buildings. I’d never seen her grin so wide. I forgot our fight in a heartbeat. You couldn’t look at her, when she was like this, and not be happy: it was infectious.
I understood, now. However many thousands of hours she’d sunk into building this, it was worth it. Using the drone, she was free. Who needs to walk, when you can fly?
She soared around the city for close to an hour, showing me how she could ride thermals to stay aloft all day, if she wanted to. Twice, we saw police helicopters and I worried she was going to get caught—God knows how many laws she was breaking, flying an unlicensed drone around downtown New York—but the drone was so silent and quick, she lost them in seconds.
At last, she brought the thing in to land. She pulled off the headset, still grinning.
But then she blinked and looked down at herself, and her face collapsed. She tossed the headset on the desk, spun her wheelchair away from me, and raced out of the dove loft. I caught up to her by the elevator, where she was sitting in brooding silence. As we got in, she muttered, “When I’m in that thing, I forget. But when I come out of it, I remember.”
Someone grabbed hold of my heart and crushed it in their fist. All I wanted to do was scoop her into my arms and hold her against me. But I couldn’t. If I let her get close to me, she’d get hurt. I couldn’t bear to see that happen.
We descended to the penthouse and Yolanda raced back to her desk, her voice determinedly light. “Let’s get on with it.”
With Lily’s help, Yolanda wrote a program that would sift through everyone’s search queries, looking for the right combination of math and witchcraft myths. Between them, they got it done in an hour. It was almost frightening, what even just two of the Sisters of Invidia could do.
Yolanda started the program running then leaned back, stretched, and announced she needed coffee. She wheeled over to the kitchen area, the laptop on her knees so she could talk to Lily. Then she put it carefully on the counter while she measured out coffee grounds.
“Hey,” said Lily, “turn on your camera. I haven’t seen you in weeks. Are you still letting your hair grow?”
Yolanda froze. Her eyes went from the laptop to her desk and back again. “Um—”
And I suddenly realized, Lily doesn’t know. Yolanda hadn’t told even her closest friends about her legs. When she was sitting at her desk, with the camera carefully positioned, Lily wouldn’t be able to tell, just as I’d been fooled when I first met her. But out here in the kitchen, the wheelchair was in full view.
“C’mon,” said Lily. “I don’t mind if you’re still in your PJs.”
Yolanda stared at the laptop and bit her lip. Her eyes went moist and I could see the guilt on her face. She hated lying. But she wasn’t ready to tell the truth, either.
“Yolanda?” called Lily in a singsong voice.
I stalked over, picked up the laptop, and turned the screen to face me. Then I toggled on the camera.
Lily had gone full cowgirl, since the last time I’d seen her. A brown Stetson sat on her head and a red-and-white plaid shirt hugged her curves. There was a wooden wall behind her and for some reason, it was moving up and down. “Calahan?” she squeaked, staring at the screen. “You’re there?”
I realized I hadn’t spoken the whole time they’d been working on the program. I hadn’t talked to Lily since she first sent me to Yolanda, what felt like weeks ago. “Yup.”
Lily gawped at the screen. Then she leaned over her shoulder and hollered, “Bull!” The sudden movement made the wall behind her rock even more crazily and I realized she was sitting on a porch swing. She leaned close, until the screen was just a pair of big green eyes, and whispered into the microphone. “You’re in Yolanda’s apartment? How long have you been there? Is this a thing?!”
I quickly turned down the volume. Luckily, Yolanda was busy getting back behind her desk, and didn’t hear. “Of course not. Just working a case. Yolanda’s helping.”
I heard heavy footsteps approaching. Then Bull loomed into view, “Calahan?” He took a seat next to Lily and put his arm around her. “What are you doing there?”
Lily gave him a meaningful look. Bull gave me a huge, Texan grin and an approving nod. I felt my neck flush. “It’s not like that,” I whispered, glancing cautiously across the room at Yolanda. But as soon as I saw her again, I blushed even harder. What was it about this woman? I only had to look at her, hear her voice, smell her damn scent and I was a teenager again.
“Uh-huh,” said Lily.
Yolanda nodded to me that she was ready. I quickly said goodbye to Lily and Bull and carried the laptop over to her, only turning it round to face her at the last second. As Yolanda took it from me, her fingers brushed mine and we both froze and just stood there with it held between us. She gave me a solemn nod, her lips pressed tight together, thanking me for stalling Lily, thanking me for understanding. And I nodded back, like, what are friends for?
But while she chatted happily with Lily, I brooded. This is wrong. Yolanda barely left the apartment. The other two Sisters of Invidia were her only real friends and now it turned out even they didn’t know about her injury. She didn’t let anyone see the real her, except—
My stomach knotted. Aw hell.
I tore my eyes away from her and stared off into the corner. No. I couldn’t be with her for about a million reasons. Because I didn’t deserve love, or happiness. Because no way was I letting another woman pay the price for getting mixed up with my world. Because she needed a genius who understood her, not a dumb jock like me. I shaped my resolve into something iron-hard and unbreakable. We were working the case and that was it.
I heard the call end. I glanced at Yolanda and found her staring straight at me. And as soon as I looked into those lush green eyes, as soon as I saw that lock of silky dark hair brushing her cheek, that iron resolve melted like a pat of butter held over a fire.
“Lily says hi,” said Yolanda, her voice carefully neutral.
I hadn’t heard much of their conversation. I felt my neck heat up again. What did Lily say? I nodded carefully.
She stared at me. She kept staring at me, as if deciding something. All I could do was stare back into those green eyes and wait.
At last, she said, “Violet.”
I blinked. I felt like I’d missed something. Violet what? Ultraviolet?
“My name,” Yolanda stressed. “Is Violet. Violet Hepler.”
I slowly drew in my breath, stunned. “Thank you.”
She looked at the floor, flushing. “Yeah, well, now you know why I stick
with Yolanda.” She frowned warningly and I put up my hands in defense. Fine, I’d call her Yolanda. But I felt honored to know the truth.
At that second, Yolanda’s laptop beeped. “We got a hit!” she said. “There’s one person in New York who matches the criteria. Lots of searches for advanced mathematical concepts and lots of searches for myths about witches and other people of power. IP address traces back to an apartment on the Lower East Side.”
I stood up. “Let’s go pay him a visit.”
21
Calahan
I PARKED UP, switched off the engine, and settled back in my seat.
“So what do we do now?” asked Yolanda.
“We wait.”
I’d already knocked on the door of the apartment and gotten no reply. There were no signs of life, but the sun was setting and he had to come home at some point. So I’d found a perfect spot across the street with a good view of the building. And luckily, we’d brought my battered old Chevy, which was a lot more discreet than Yolanda’s sports car. All we had to do now was—
“Really? We just wait?” asked Yolanda.
I turned to her. “We wait.”
She nodded. Seventeen seconds later, “What if he’s not back for hours?”
“Then we wait hours,” I said patiently.
She looked at me incredulously. I couldn’t help it: I grinned. It was strange, and sweet, to see her flummoxed. With math and hacking, everything went as fast as her brain could handle. She’d never known what it was like to be on someone else’s schedule.
I took pity on her and pointed through the windshield. “That place does fancy coffee, but their pastries aren’t great. That one does old school cup o’ joe, but the donuts are amazing. Which do you want?”
“Cup o’ joe and donuts,” she said instantly.
I brought us big takeout cups of coffee and a box of glazed donuts, still warm from the fryer. Outside, the street was getting dark, the lights coming on one by one. It started to rain in freezing gray sheets that hissed off the sidewalk. People ran past us, hurrying to shelter. But in my Chevy, nursing our cups, we were dry and snug.
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