“You were planning to kill yourself.”
And there it was, simple and unvarnished. My face went hot. I wanted to throw up. I jumped up off the bench and took a staggering step away from her. “No! No, I wouldn’t—”
“Sam, I could see it in your eyes.”
Oh God, it was over. We were over, almost before we’d begun, because how could she like me now, now she knew I was so weak? I turned my back on her and started to stalk away towards the elevator.
She raised her voice. “I know that look. I’ve seen it in the mirror!”
I stopped and spun around. So many emotions flooded my brain in just a few seconds. Shock, first. Then anger, that she’d say something like that when it wasn’t true. And then the slow, sickening realization that it was. In two running steps, I closed the distance between us and fell to my knees in front of her, my hands gripping her shoulders. “What?!” I rasped.
“Usually,” she said, “It’s when I finish using the drone. But sometimes it’s as soon as I wake up. When I remember. I came up here and—” She looked down at her legs. “When the contractors were renovating the dove loft, I had them remove a section of parapet from the roof.” She nodded to the west. “Over there. There’s a gap where there’s nothing to stop me. I could just go the edge, tip myself out of the chair and—”—her voice cracked—“It would be like flying, for a few seconds.”
I gave a groan of horror and pulled her to me, locking my arms around her back like I was never going to let her go. My humiliation was forgotten. All I cared about was—“No!” I growled into her neck. “No, you hear me? No, not ever. You got that straight?”
I felt wetness where her face was pressed against my cheek. And then her arms locked tight around my back. I drew back just enough to look into her eyes. The raw determination there hit me like a punch in the chest. This was an ultimatum. A promise that had to go both ways.
It was the hardest thing in the world to give up and I did it in a heartbeat. Because it was her. “Okay,” I managed, my own eyes going hot. “Okay.”
We clung to each other like that for a long, long time.
34
Yolanda
HE LEFT as dawn broke. We both agreed, in that self-consciously sensible way people have the morning after sex, that he had to get back to the FBI and I had to get to work. But that didn’t make it any easier to let go of him, as he hunkered down to kiss me goodbye in my doorway.
I was still reeling from how much things had changed in one night. It felt like I’d stepped through a door to a parallel universe, one in which I had a boyfriend. One in which I could have a boyfriend. And it wasn’t just about the sex, however mind-blowing that had been. For the first time since my brother died, I didn’t feel alone. When I was with Calahan—I still couldn’t think of him as Sam—I felt...grounded. I knew he’d keep me anchored and I trusted him more than I’ve ever trusted anyone.
Maybe that’s why I admitted to him about sometimes feeling suicidal. I’ve never told anyone that before. I always thought they’d think I was weak, or ungrateful. I mean, I survived the bridge, I lived when my brother died. Suicide would be the ultimate act of selfishness. But Calahan had understood. He’d been that low, too. And now we’d made a promise. Both of us had something more to live for, this morning.
The difference was, he knew why I’d sometimes been that low. My broken, useless body, being cut off from society, the guilt of having survived. But I didn’t know why he had. It wasn’t as simple as losing Becky. It was more than loss and survivor guilt. It was something darker, something that was growing inside him instead of fading, dragging him into a downward spiral. I couldn’t help him unless I knew what it was. But I wasn’t going to make the mistake of prying again. I’d just have to hope he could open up to me.
I took a shower, threw on some jeans and a hoodie...and stopped. There was something on the kitchen counter, a plastic bag. Crap! It was that scrap of evidence I’d pulled out of Calahan’s coat pocket. I’d had it in my hand when we’d come down from the roof and I must have put it down and then forgotten to give it to him. Now that I could see it properly in the light, I could see it was the corner of a wrapper, only about an inch across. It was red, but not a bright, fiery red. More like the purple-red of a cherry, with a tiny curl of creamy white at the edge.
I put it down and went to work on the chalkboards. It had been good to get out of my head: Calahan’s punching trick had worked...in fact, just being with him was the perfect antidote to all the time I was spending deep. With him around, maybe I’d be able to worry a little less about my mind snapping.
But for now, it was back to work. I was still trying to figure out the location of the next murder using the equations from the previous one. But whatever I tried, the numbers came out way, way too big to make sense. And—
I looked over my shoulder at the evidence bag. Something was scratching at the very back of my mind. That color combination, cherry-red and cream. A memory….
I shook my head and went deep, fitting the equations together in my head like jigsaw pieces. But an hour later, I emerged no closer to figuring it out. And we were running out of time: Clara would be killed in less than three hours.
I needed coffee. I shot over to the kitchen and started to make it, venting my frustration on anything and everything: slamming down my mug, stabbing the button on the coffee machine, grinding the coffee beans like they were personally responsible for my failure. What if I can’t solve this? What if Clara dies because I can’t find the answer?
As soon as the coffee was brewed, I took a big gulp. Then I grabbed the bag of beans to put them back. Only I was in so much of a hurry that they slipped through my fingers and landed on the floor. Crap. At least they hadn’t spilled. I picked them up and stuffed them back in the freezer.
I was halfway back to the chalkboards when that memory itched at the back of my mind again. The cherry-red and cream wrapper….
I spun around, went back to the freezer, and pulled out the bag of coffee beans. Then I dropped them on the floor again.
That was it. That sound. I closed my eyes and did it again. Not right, but close. I sat back in my chair, sipped more coffee and groped for the memory, like trying to grab a fish that’s the same color as the water around it. Little...things. The sound of hard little things, rattling in a packet—
And suddenly it was there, bright and clear at the front of my mind. My eyes snapped open. There was a crash as my coffee mug hit the floor but I just stared fixedly ahead, unseeing.
Oh no.
The realization was like being slowly dunked in freezing black oil, the sickening, slick touch of it crawling up my body until it drowned me. No….
I erupted into life. I grabbed the evidence bag, threw open the door and raced down the hall. The elevator ride down seemed to take hours, with me staring at my reflection in the mirrored wall, white-faced and staring, come on, come on….
I shot across the parking lot and swung myself into my car. A few seconds later, I was tearing through the streets, asking the GPS to take me to the nearest grocery store that would be open this early in the morning…
When I got there, I screeched to a stop right outside the doors, flung out my chair and lifted myself into it. I was inside the store before I realized I’d left my car’s door wide open, but I wasn’t going back now.
I needed to know.
I shot along the aisles, searching for the right one. Where the hell is everything? I hadn’t been in a grocery store since the accident, I got everything delivered. I cursed and searched the signs and eventually found the candy aisle, tipping up on two wheels as I swerved around the corner. I was dimly aware that everyone was looking at me, and that this was some sort of milestone: I was out, on my own, surrounded by people, and I’d barely even noticed. I couldn’t have done this, a week ago. But I didn’t care about any of that, right now. I just needed—
There. Cherry-red wrappers, swirled with creamy white. And... they were out of
reach. I muttered a long string of curses but it did no good. I was going to have to—
I took a deep breath. Felt the stab of helplessness but did it anyway. “Um...Sir?”
An old man turned around to look at me.
“Could you please pass me a packet of those?” I asked, pointing. “I can’t reach.”
He gave me a kindly smile and passed one down. I thanked him and stared at the packet. Toffee Cores. Spheres like little planets with a glossy, hard coating that melted on your tongue to reveal a mantle of milk chocolate and finally a core of hard, chewy toffee. The packet had a cherry-red background and curly cream lettering. I compared it with the fragment in the evidence bag.
Identical.
I ripped open the packet and hard brown spheres rained across the floor, bouncing and rolling. The smell hit me, sugary sweet and chocolatey with a hint of buttery toffee—
Noises around me. A crowd of people had gathered and a shop assistant was nervously approaching, looking at the candy scattered around me. “Miss? Miss, are you okay?”
I didn’t answer. I just sat there, stock-still, the memory exploding in my mind.
I was kneeling on his bed, my arms wrapped around him. “It’s okay,” I told him. “It’s all okay, now.” And as I held him in the dark, I offered him the bag of Toffee Cores to comfort him. He took one and sucked it, glad of the distraction. His chest was still heaving with fear, his cheeks shining with tears.
When he was six, my brother Josh went through a stage of night terrors. Toffee Cores were what I’d give him to comfort him, when he woke up sobbing at two in the morning. The stage passed. We grew up. I hadn’t thought about them in years.
But for a while, Toffee Cores used to be Josh’s best defense against the monsters in his head. What if they still were?
What if now, as an adult, he’d started eating them again, subconsciously craving their comfort, because he’d repeatedly been exposed to something far more terrifying than any childhood monster? What if that was why the fragment of packet was at the crime scene?
What if my brother was alive...and what if he was the killer?
35
Yolanda
I PACED. One long, hard shove on the wheels to send me down to the end of my apartment. A light pressure from my hands to slow myself, as I approached the wall. A quick turn. And repeat.
I’d been having the same circular argument with myself for over an hour.
It’s just a coincidence. A scrap of candy wrapper found at a crime scene, the same candy my brother used to eat, twenty years ago, when he was a scared kid. I’d been to the manufacturer’s website: they sold over two hundred thousand bags of Toffee Cores in the US every day.
It doesn’t even make sense, I reasoned. Josh is dead.
But a little voice inside me whispered: they never recovered the body.
If he had survived the bridge, he would have come home, I told myself sternly. He wouldn’t have disappeared for an entire year.
But he was smart enough to have written these equations, the little voice said. He was always smarter than you.
I’d never known a problem like this. Math is all hard, solid numbers and beautiful, intricate mechanisms that connect them. It might be complex, but it’s always certain. This was anything but. I just kept going round and round—
I clamped my hands down hard on the wheels, jerked to a stop, and yelled in frustration. “Stop! Just stop!” I sat there panting, staring at my useless legs. Be rational. Yes, Josh was smart enough to have written the equations but he wasn’t crazy. He was the most level-headed person I’d ever known. And like me, he didn’t believe in superstitions. He wouldn’t chase after witches or write spells. And Josh would never, ever, hurt anyone.
I took a deep, shaky breath and forced myself to be calm. And when I did, the whole thing seemed stupid. Of course it’s not Josh! For one thing, I would have recognized his handwriting.
I was exhausted and stressed out of my mind, scared I wasn’t going to be able to save Clara. So when I’d come across this one coincidence with the candy wrapper, I’d latched onto it and concocted this whole crazy theory as a solution to all my problems. If it was Josh, we could catch the killer and I’d get my brother back. It was laughably childish, in the cold light of day. I’m really losing it. The thought sent a chill through me. Losing my mind has always been my greatest fear.
A familiar thump at my door. I opened it and tiredly waved Calahan in. “You okay?” he asked immediately. “Thought I heard you yell, on my way up the hall.”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
He squatted down and looked at me. God, those blue eyes, the way they demanded the truth. He knew I was lying. But there was no way I was going to tell him I was cracking up. I looked away. “I’m just frustrated,” I told him. I nodded at the chalkboards. “I still can’t solve it. And we’ve got less than an hour before Clara—” I closed my eyes, tears pricking at the corners of them. All that time I’d wasted, chasing ghosts! What was wrong with me?
“Talk me through it,” said Calahan. “Even if I can’t understand, It might help.”
I sighed. “To determine a location, you need a couple of reference points. Like, you’d tell someone a coffee shop is one block west of here and two blocks north of there. But I don’t know what the reference points are. And the math doesn’t add up...not unless the reference points are stupidly distant.”
He screwed up his face, confused. “You mean they must be outside New York?” I shook my head. “Outside the US?”
“No, way further than that. They’d be way out in space. So my math must be wrong.”
He started to pace, just like I had. He finally stopped in front of the window, arms stubbornly crossed, and my heart melted. He was so far out of his comfort zone, with this stuff, but he still wanted to help.
He saw something and frowned. Tilted his head to one side as he considered. He glanced over his shoulder at me but then looked away.
“What?” I asked.
“No. Nothing.” He looked at his feet, embarrassed. “It’s dumb.”
I rolled over there. He was so much smarter than he gave himself credit for: I wished he could see that. “Tell me,” I said gently.
He sighed. Scowled. “What if your math is right and the numbers are meant to be that big? This guy thinks he’s doing magic, right?” He nodded at what he’d been looking at: the moon, just visible in the morning sky. “Didn’t people used to do rituals when the stars or the moon or whatever were in the right place?”
I was already running the numbers in my head. “The moon’s too close, “ I said despondently. “And the stars are too far away.” Then it hit me. “But...wait, the planets….”
I did a one-eighty and raced over to my computer, bringing up a list of the planets and their distances from the Sun. Then I shot across to the chalkboards. “Read them out to me!” I yelled. “Start with Mercury and work outwards!”
He read them out and I started scribbling them down, cursing as it all finally began to make sense. How had I not seen this before?! “It’s to do with the orbits,” I said, writing furiously. “It’s as if the orbital paths are visible, and the light reflected by the planets is casting shadows of them onto New York, and where the lines appear to cross….”
I closed my eyes and went deep. Time melted away as I hurtled through the solar system, planets spinning around me. I imagined their paths as thin strands of silver wire, casting a spider web of shadows down onto Manhattan. I just had to figure out exactly where everything would be at the precise instant Clara would die—
I heard my name from somewhere very far away. Then again. “What?” I grated without opening my eyes.
“Thirty minutes left,” said Calahan, his voice tight.
I was staring at Neptune as it spun in front of my face. “I know,” I managed. “But right now, I’m trying to calculate the orbits of nine planets, all moving at thousands of miles an hour.”
“What can I do?” as
ked Calahan.
“Shut the hell up.” Then I reached out, found his hand in the blackness, and squeezed it, and he squeezed back.
I lost myself in space. At first, I moved, turning my head to watch the planets spin by, sweeping my hands around me to trace their orbits. But as it all folded down—as everything does—into beautiful, simple math, I grew very still. I knew time was slipping away but I almost had it, almost had it....I wound my hair into a bun, then let it out very, very slowly—
My eyes flew open and I exploded into life, plugging the orbits I’d calculated into the killer’s equations. My chalk went tak tak tak on the chalkboard. “How long?” I asked without turning around.
“Not long,” said Calahan tightly.
Tak tak taktaktak—Yes! “Plug these coordinates into a map,” I yelled, and read them out. By the time I’d raced over to the computer, Calahan had entered the numbers and we watched together as the map scrolled and zoomed.
“It’s downtown,” he said. He scribbled down the address and we both hurried towards the door. As he jogged along the hallway, he pulled out his phone. “I’m calling in backup. We only have thirteen minutes.”
I shot past him. “We’ll take my car. I can get us there in eight.”
36
Yolanda
WE GOT THERE FAST but the NYPD were faster. An army of officers were already swarming into the building, asking each other what the hell? And I understood because it made no sense.
The building was a shopping mall.
A big black SUV roared up and Carrie and Alison jumped out. Carrie stared at me incredulously. “You’re telling me he’s going to sacrifice Clara in a goddamn mall? There must be a thousand witnesses in that place. Security cameras everywhere. Why would he come here?”
Hold Me in the Dark Page 17
