Soulprint

by Megan Miranda

  We hear a car rumble down the street, pausing for a moment nearby—I hold my breath and count to four before it continues on its way.

  I can sit here all day and think about these questions, or I can get the answers. “I’m ready,” I say.

  Cameron smiles at me, climbs back into the front, and motions for us to do the same. “Let’s go,” he says.

  I’m already in the front seat beside him, but Casey hasn’t moved. “It’s way too light out,” she says.

  Cameron looks over his shoulder. “There’s a reason why most break-ins happen in the middle of the day. Everyone’s at work, or camp, or daycare. Just act like you belong.”

  “This car does not belong,” Casey says, and she’s right. The car was perfect for blending in on the highway, or off, in the mountains. Perfect and nondescript for the congested streets of the city. But it’s not even close to perfect for an upscale community with high-end everything. The yards are manicured to perfection. The homes rise up behind them in varying patterns of brick and stone. Anyone can see this van does not belong.

  “So we’re painting, or doing maintenance,” Cameron says.

  “We should wait,” Casey says.

  “Wait for someone to find us?” Cameron asks.

  But I understand Casey. She sees it, too. We’re here. The truth will be unchangeable. We can never go back to not knowing.

  But right now, my sympathy will be useless to her. “We’re wasting time,” I say. Ivory Street will quickly realize that nobody has been in her house, that nothing is missing, that something is amiss. “We either do this now,” I say, and I fix my eyes on Casey, “or we do this never.”

  I reach my hand back for her, and she shuffles toward the front. The three of us are crammed together in the front seat, Casey running her fingers through her tangled hair as she checks the mirror. I’m too scared to check to see what I look like at the moment.

  “Let’s go,” Cameron says, and he exits the driver’s side while Casey and I slide out of the passenger side.

  We leave the car in front of that house, where it doesn’t belong but might just pass, and we follow Cameron.

  At least we’re out of our uniforms. Now we look like door-to-door salespeople. Maybe we would have better luck carrying cookies.

  Cameron quickly slips between the yards of the nearest houses and walks straight to the backyards, like we have every right to be here. We walk along the outside edge of the back fences, and Cameron makes sure to stand tall and walk with purpose, so we do the same. Just here to check the gas meter. Just assessing the drainage in the backyard. Just visiting a friend. I can see how people manage to break in to homes in the daytime. Act like you belong, and people believe it. We quickly reach the backyards of the homes in the cul-de-sac, and then we’re standing with our backs against the brick wall of her backyard. We sneak around the side—my God, her house is gorgeous. I don’t know if others live here, but there’s more than enough room. It’s been landscaped and there are fancy-looking window treatments visible through the glass. This whole neighborhood looks too formal, too perfect, too planned.

  Her backyard has a black metal gate in the center of the brick wall, like the house we first stayed in after I escaped. There’s no easy access—nothing that won’t push us into full view—so it forces us to the front, and that seems right. We’re standing in broad daylight, a few feet from the person we need. We’re forced out into the light as we try to uncover the truth. We can’t get one without the other.

  I want to gain the upper hand, though. I want to know who she is before we face her. And so I crouch down inside her fancy landscaping and watch as Casey and Cameron do the same. There’s really nothing we could do to talk our way out of this situation. If someone across the street sees us—three teenagers, hiding in the bushes—we’re so screwed. If they find us now, and if they manage to catch us, I don’t know what will happen to me. I assume I will not go back to an island—that’s not a punishment, that’s a containment. This time, I’m sure, I will be punished.

  Jail, like my mother. Like my father. A cage with no window past the tree with the perfect angle to the sky. Land that I am not free to roam but that is scheduled as part of my daily routine. No comforts, no computer, no people taking care of my needs. I feel like my heart is being squeezed into a vise, and for a moment, I cannot take in air. And I understand June running when Liam was captured. I do. I don’t want to be taken in. My soul was not meant to be in a cage. Not then, and not now.

  But then Cameron puts a hand on my back and whispers, “You okay?”

  I nod. I am closest to the window, and I motion toward it, because I hear movement.

  We must be outside the kitchen, because I hear cabinets banging open and closed. I ease onto my knees, my hands pushing off the mulch and soil, and I rise up until I can peer, just slightly, over the ledge into her home. But it’s not a kitchen. It’s an office, and the slamming of doors are filing cabinets and desk drawers. Ivory stands facing the open doorway, her back to the grand oak desk and to us. She is assessing things, and she must be confused. She has a paper in her hand, and she picks up the phone—it must be the number Casey left her, because she hangs up after a few moments, looking perplexed.

  She takes the phone with her as she leaves the room, and I sink back into the soil behind the bushes. “What now?” Casey asks. And the truth is, I have no idea. I don’t want to walk in to this blind, but we can’t stay here all day, either.

  I hear her voice again, coming closer, but I keep below the window. “… not a coincidence. Alina Chase escapes and then someone calls claiming my house was broken into? I’m not being paranoid.”

  There’s a pause, while I guess the person on the other end is talking, but I can hear her as her fingers fly across the keyboard. “I know it makes no sense,” she says, “I have no clue why she’d call my office—” The typing stops. And then a string of expletives fly from Ivory’s mouth. She laughs, but it’s short and cold. “She didn’t know where I lived,” she says. And she laughs again. “I have to go. You better come. She’s here.”

  My arms, my legs, the back of my neck are covered in a rush of goose bumps. She’s talking about me, and she knows. She’s told someone else. I have no cards left, except the present. Except the words I have inside me. I have no time to discuss this with Casey and Cameron, but I know they’ve heard as well. I stand up, in view of the window, even though Cameron grabs my arm, trying to pull me back down.

  “Trust me,” I ask him, even though I’m not sure what I’m asking him to trust me to do. To get us through this, I guess. God, I don’t know if I can do that, either. I’m not only fighting for myself right now, not just for my own freedom, but for theirs. Because if people are coming, they’re coming for all of us.

  He lets go as I walk up the steps to the front door. They’re watching me from the corner of the house, but I don’t let on that there’s anyone else. Just me.

  I ring the bell, and Ivory Street opens the door like she was expecting me. Her eyes behind her wire-rimmed glasses are the deepest shade of blue, and her hair is dyed a shade of red just this side of copper—but her roots show a mousy brown. There’s a fine map of lines around her eyes and mouth, and for a second I think she doesn’t recognize me. Then she steps back, gestures inside, and says, “I can’t believe she actually did it.” But then she smiles, and it’s all ice, as the door shuts behind me. The lines around her eyes and mouth deepen, and, at the sound of the latch catching, so does my fear. “You are one driven soul, child.”

  Chapter 22

  There’s a long table along the entryway wall—lamps and a phone and mail stacked neatly. An old wedding photo, in a silver frame, with the engraving: Ivory & Edmond.

  Edmond.

  She sees me looking. “I assume it was you who called me in my office?”

  I nod, but I don’t speak, just in case it triggers a memory of the phone call and the fact that Casey’s voice is not my own. I also need to figure out wh
at’s happening. I need to weigh her words, her actions, before using my own.

  This is what I’m good at. I’m so good at it.

  “You must be exhausted,” she says. “Thirsty?”

  I nod. I need a moment to take her in, figure her out. So, it seems, does she, because she sways into the kitchen, as if this is a normal house visit and I’m nothing but a long-lost friend. There are no windows here—just cabinets going round and round the room, and a long island in the middle. The light comes down through skylights above us. Behind me is a door, slightly ajar, and I can just make out the top of a wooden staircase leading into the darkness. There’s a deadbolt on the outside, and I’m imagining all the thousands of things that one might keep in there. I strain to listen for the hum of computers, but I can make out nothing behind the walls. I wonder if that could hold the shadow-database. The wonder starts to veer to hope, and I pull myself out of the daydream.

  She takes a glass out of a tall, dark cabinet and holds it under the water dispenser, handing it to me after. I watch her as I drink, then place it on the dark granite counter, and the noise breaks the trance.

  “Tell me, my dear, how did she do it? The whole world wants to know. How did June get you to me?”

  I pick up the glass again and drink the entire thing, letting her questions, and the silence, linger in the air.

  “On second thought,” she says, “I think I’ll have a drink as well.” She walks to the refrigerator and speaks as her glass fills with water. “That was quite the escape,” she says. She turns around, assessing me slowly from bottom to top and back again. I feel too small in these clothes that don’t fit, too exposed in this room with no windows. “I think even June would be impressed.”

  “I think so, too,” I say.

  I put the glass back on the counter, but it shakes as it settles, and she grins, walking closer. “Is she like a ghost for you, too? She is for me. Sometimes, just as I’m waking, I swear I can hear her.”

  We were right. She knew June. She saw her. Heard her voice. My heart beats twice as fast, imagining June standing before her, just as I am.

  Ivory places her glass beside mine on the counter and gestures to the corner of the room, where nobody stands. “I’ll be cooking here alone, just me and an empty room, and then … poof. Sometimes I see her here, standing in the corner of my kitchen … Can she be both your ghost and mine? Can she be in both places at once?” She shrugs. “Or maybe I’m just getting old.” She takes her glasses off, makes a show of wiping the lenses slowly with the edge of her shirt. Buying time. Buying seconds, minutes, because someone’s coming. But I have to wait. I don’t want her to know that June didn’t leave this for me, she made me work for it. She left herself for me, and the path she was taking, and I followed her footsteps here, learning less about her than I am about myself. I still don’t know what this woman has to do with the database.

  “Did you come for the money, sweetheart? I do suppose you’re owed it.”

  Money? What money?

  “It will take me some time to get it for you, dear. How much do you need? I assume it’s a lot. I assume you want to disappear. I assume you need enough to live on. I can do that for you, sure.”

  Something isn’t right. It’s not as we thought—this woman wasn’t broken by June. She wasn’t used by her. She did something. This woman is toying with me as if I haven’t spent years studying people. She doesn’t know who I am at all. I don’t know her either. But I’m learning.

  June didn’t break this woman. This woman broke June.

  And now I’m walking the same path, with the same strengths—the same strengths she can flip around and use to hurt me.

  I look to that corner, to the door with the dark stairwell stretching behind, and Ivory smiles. “It’s a wine cellar, dear. No dead bodies, I promise.”

  Still, it makes me nervous.

  “The money would be nice,” I say noncommittally.

  “Nice,” she says, her hands stilling. “What is it that you want exactly, Alina? What brings you to my doorstep now? I’m not sure what you think I can do for you at this point, other than the money.”

  This is what I want to know: Why did June lead me here? “Who did you just call?” I ask.

  “Ah. Eavesdropping, were we?”

  This is a dance. A tightrope. And I have spent years on it.

  Actions here will mean nothing. Words, everything.

  I think June was trying to find Ivory Street, too—but after. After she got into the database with Liam, after she realized something didn’t add up. After they released the names, after Liam died and she spent over a year holed up underground with nothing to do but think. I believe she wanted to ask Ivory Street. To see if there was a mistake with the study. Though if there was, if June used this study that was so wrong, then she was so wrong, acting on that information. I wonder what she would’ve done, if she realized that.

  “I’ve read your papers,” I say. “Fascinating stuff, really. I couldn’t follow it as well as June. She was much better at that stuff.”

  “Is that so,” she says.

  “You know what?” I say, switching gears, “I do want the money. How much would you say seventeen years is worth?”

  She pauses like she’s mentally calculating the answer. Then she nods. “That’s a lifetime, isn’t it? For me, it’s just a sliver of one. But for you, that’s everything, isn’t it? A lifetime, then. I can get you one more.” As if lifetimes can be bartered and weighed and assigned a value.

  “I assume you’ll need your computer for this. Office?” I point my thumb in the direction that I watched through the front window, and I know I have unnerved her by the look on her face. Let her think I’ve been in here before. Let her think June gave me more information than I truly have.

  I follow her into the office. Her stride doesn’t falter, but she’s slow and deliberate. A second here. Another there. Seconds adding to minutes becoming stretches of time. Someone is coming. She’s counting on it.

  She logs onto her computer but stops. “We’ll have to go to a bank,” she says. “It’s not like you have a bank account.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say. “I have an account.” Well, Casey has an account. She’s got something set up under a false ID, and I realize there’s no way one person gets through this alone. June couldn’t. She didn’t. But maybe—with Casey, with Cameron—maybe I have a chance.

  “How resourceful of you,” she says, cutting her eyes to me for a second. Her hands pause over the keys. “Tell me, is Dominic Ellis helping you?”

  I try to keep my face still, to keep her from seeing that she has unnerved me, too. Instead, I think of the information Ivory is giving me. She has just admitted that she knows who Liam White is in this life. She knows. Casey was right. She has a way to access information in the database. She has a goddamn way in.

  I laugh—I can’t control it from bubbling up and escaping. “No,” I say. “Dominic would love to be here with me, but he’s not.”

  “Of course he’s not,” she says, her hands falling momentarily under her desk. “By the time June showed up here, she’d left Liam White behind as well. He sacrificed himself, he really did, because he thought it was his fault. Can you imagine?”

  She watches my face, but I keep it still, focusing on her arm, still under the table.

  “No, I suppose you can’t,” she says. “Not quite capable of love, my dear? Throw them to the wolves to get ahead?”

  There’s movement at the window, and I smile.

  I’m focusing on her arm, and not her words, so when she pulls it out from under the desk, I’m ready. A gun. She has a gun. And now I see Ivory for what she is—not just a name on the paper, not just someone who might’ve made a mistake with that study, but someone who did something on purpose.

  And just as I’m seeing Ivory, I see June, standing exactly where I am, as she confronts Ivory about those studies. What did Ivory do when June asked about the data?

  I put my hands i
n the air without her asking.

  “Hey, Ivory, tell me. What are the chances of me committing violence? What did you learn from that study?”

  She tips the gun to the side. “I think you know,” she says, buying seconds again. She doesn’t realize I’ve been buying them as well until they become minutes—until they become something solid and real.

  “A likelihood of 0.8, or 0.32?” I ask. “Which is it, Ivory? And if I wasn’t violent before, is that good news or bad news for you right now? Am I predictable?”

  She scoffs. “You are so predictable. You showed up here, just like June threatened to. You demanded answers, like June. You showed up alone, with no one. You showed up thinking you had the power to do anything at all. But I’m the one with the gun right now, Alina. I’m the one with the power. Now back away, slowly, toward the door.”

  “No, I’m not alone,” I say. I close my eyes, and I imagine Cameron at the window, with a gun pointed at Ivory’s head. And it’s in that moment—when all the seconds have added to minutes, and the minutes to this moment—that Casey waltzes into the office.

  “Hey, Alina,” she says, pretending not to notice that Ivory has a gun pointed at my chest.

  She waves to the window, and I can’t stop the warmth from spreading through me as I see him there: Cameron, behind the glass, the empty gun pointed at Ivory, just as I imagined him.

  I smile. “I’m not June,” I say.

  Her hand falters as she glances quickly over her shoulder. “What do you think?” I ask. “Will I tell him to shoot?” I see her debating, and I wonder myself, if that gun was full, if it had been in my pocket instead of Casey’s bag—what would I do? “Put down the gun, Ivory,” I say. “We didn’t come to hurt you. We came for answers.”

  She lowers her gun and moves away from the window. Casey walks across the room, lifts the window, and Cameron climbs inside, the empty gun still in his hand.