The Here and Now (22 page)

We hold hands across the parking lot, walking in a slow, expectant trance, as though if we could slow time down, we’d do better at changing it.

I realize we are different now. It’s hard to know exactly when it happened, but I picture the kiss on my clavicle having the infectious power of a mosquito bite, transmitting a sweet, exhilarating kind of infection, but weakening all the same. We are no longer able to play two reckless teenagers on the lam. We are bound together in a serious way. We have been for a long time, but never like this. Maybe it takes the fragility of our situation to make us see it. It isn’t so much having the bond that separates us from our old selves. It is having the bond to lose.

It was easier to think you could sacrifice everything when the old everything was so pale, so lonely compared to this.

It is time to be bold, but as I feel Ethan’s sweaty hand sweatily clutching my sweaty hand, I don’t feel bold at all. I want to take Ethan back to a safe place, an empty playground, and hold him in my arms until the fateful 51714 is over.

I am again racked with sympathy for people like my mother who don’t want to take any risks or fix the future, but just want to live out another day. Maybe it isn’t corruption or greed that makes you cowardly. Maybe it’s not weakness, suffering, or even fear. Maybe it is love.

I take a long breath. “Okay.”

“Ready?”

“I’m ready.”

“I’ll be close to you all the time. I’m not going to let the guy out of my sight.”

I nod. I’m not sure this makes me feel better.

He kisses me on the temple, another dose, before I go through the glass doors. I cast a last look over my shoulder.

“We’ll be fine,” he says. I can’t so much hear him as see his lips moving through the glass.

NINETEEN

I’d learned what I could about Mona Ghali’s personal life from my research on Ethan’s computer. Mona has two sisters, one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one in Cairo, Egypt.

Her youngest sister, Maya, recently graduated from Boston University and then moved to Egypt, so she isn’t that much older than me.

I arrive on Mona’s floor a little after 7:10. The receptionist at the front desk is packing up for the day. I tell her I’m there to see Mona.

“Your name?”

“Uh, Petra.” It’s strangely hard to spit it out. “I’m a friend of her sister’s. With a delivery.” I am prepared to say more, but I see the receptionist wants to go home and she doesn’t care.

She calls Mona’s office and announces me. “Go ahead back,” the receptionist says, before Mona even responds. “Two lefts and a right, halfway down the hall.”

It isn’t exactly high security. “It’s her birthday,” I say, for no particular reason.

Mona Ghali’s name is on a plastic plate to the side of the door, and the door is open. I try to assume a different personality than my regular one as I walk into her office.

“Mona?” I say.

She is sitting at her desk. She looks up from her computer. She has long wavy black hair and large features. When she stands up, she is almost as tall as me.

“I’m Petra Jackson, a friend of Maya’s from BU.” I hold out my offerings. “She asked me to deliver these in person and wish you happy birthday.”

Mona’s face is sharp and intelligent. “Wow. That’s really nice. Thanks,” she says, taking them. She lets the balloons float to meet the low ceiling. She peers in the box at the cake. She puts it down on her desk. “Maya probably told you I’m an insane chocolate addict.”

I nod, silently thanking bold fortune for that.

“My sisters always make such a big deal about birthdays.” Her face is sardonic. “Were you in her class at school?” Mona asks.

“A year behind. I’m a senior,” I lie.

“Well, thanks for doing this,” she says.

“So listen,” I say, “is there any way I can talk you into going out and getting a glass of wine or a cup of coffee? My treat. I promised Maya I’d try.”

This is one of the gambits Ethan and I had thought of. On the one hand, it would be safer to get her to a public place and away from the scene of the murder altogether. On the other hand, the earlier and more radically we change the circumstances,
the less advantage we have in knowing the future in the first place: What if by getting her out of that building, we only manage to change the venue and the timing of the murder, so we no longer know when and where it will happen?

How tenacious is the future? How tenacious is Andrew Baltos?

Mona rolls her eyes a little. “So Maya’s worried I’m going to spend my birthday alone, is she?”

“No, it’s not that. She didn’t say that.”

“Well, you can tell her that I’m supposed to be meeting up with someone later.”

Alarms are clanging in my head. That must be Baltos. So it’s not a surprise visit—that was one of the things we wondered about.

“Not somebody I’m so particularly eager to see, but contrary to what Maya may think, I’m not just withering alone in my office.”

What does that mean? What is her relationship with him? I look at Mona’s expectant face and I realize I need to stay where I am with her, not get ahead. “I don’t think …” I begin. My talents at sisterly diplomacy are completely insufficient. “I’m sure that’s not what she meant. I think she just wished she could be here to hang out with you, and so she asked me—”

Mona cuts me off with a gesture. “Thanks—is it Petra? I appreciate you trying. Maya has the most loyal friends a person could have, but I’ve actually got to stick around and upload a bunch of things to a new server. Some security breach in our company’s system. Like my work is so super secret and in demand.” The sardonic expression is back.

“Maybe it is,” I say earnestly. I probably shouldn’t have.

Her computer makes a dinging sound and she goes back to it. “One set of files done, four more to go.”

I am trying to figure out a way to stay with her that won’t sound socially ham-handed or weird. “Listen, I understand you not wanting to toast your birthday with a total stranger,” I begin.

“You know my sister Maya. You’re not a total stranger,” she says.

“Even so, I understand it’s kind of an odd offer, and you’ve got stuff to do. But do you mind if I hang out here for another twenty minutes or so? My friend is coming to pick me up, and he’s coming in from the city.”

“That’s fine,” she says quickly. “It’s the least I can do after you came all this way. Anyway, it’s boring waiting for this stuff to load. This whole lab usually clears out by seven, and it gets kind of creepy here, so I’m happy for the company. Here.” She draws a chair from the corner. “Sit.” She’s not unfriendly, but I don’t get the feeling she wants to talk. “I have another computer you can use if you need to.”

“That’s great. Thanks,” I say. I make no move to the computer, but I take a quick look at my phone. “But if you need to go—”

“This guy I’m meeting up with isn’t supposed to be getting here until seven-thirty.”

“Okay,” I say. My pulse is racing. This business is going to unfurl pretty quickly. Hard to imagine how one seemingly ordinary moment in life can stitch to a horrifying, life-ending kind of one.

“How do you like Boston?”

I’ve never been to Boston. “I like it a lot.”

“I did too. You’re on summer break now?”

“Exactly. Yeah.” My eyes are darting around, waiting for the next thing to happen. I cast an eye to her filing cabinet. It looks locked, I think. My nerves are coiling.

Part of me wants to keep talking to her, even though I am mostly lying, and part of me just wants us both to shut up and get on with it.

I poke around on my phone and watch her work, until a buzzer rings and I jump as though I never expected that in a million years.

Not so with Mona. She glances casually up from her computer screen. “That must be him.” She presses a button on her phone, connecting her to an intercom. “Andrew?”

Don’t let him in! Do you know what he’s going to do to you?
I order my mind to shut up. We need to let this play out.

“Hey, it’s me,” I hear a man say.

My heart is pounding in my ears. I try to take normal breaths, to think calmly through the contingencies Ethan and I talked about.
If this happens, then we do that. If this, then that
.

She presses another button, I’m guessing to open the door to the reception area.

I fervently hope Ethan will find a way in through that door behind him. As Mona walks into the hall to meet him, I hang back for a second and push that same button again, just in case.

I can barely bring myself to look at Andrew Baltos walking down the hall. And when I do I am struck by something. He’s medium height, stocky, with hair not much longer than stubble
on his head mostly covered by a baseball cap. My mind leaps around, trying to make sense of the connection. Lord knows what expressions are running amok on my face.

He looks past Mona to me, and I realize he’s studying me carefully too.

Discordantly, I watch Mona greet him with a cool embrace and step aside to make introductions. “Andrew, this is …”

I am fumbly and useless. “Petra,” I burst out. When assuming a fake name, it’s best not to forget it.

“My youngest sister Maya’s friend. Petra, this is Andrew.”

He doesn’t look so cold-blooded, or so collected himself. He sticks out his hand to shake mine.

Now what? I know what is going to happen, but I can’t imagine how it’s going to work.

There is something in his eyes. “Petra?” he repeats. He is trying to figure me out too.

And I realize what it is. His size and shape and the baseball cap on his head remind me in a visceral way of the dark shape I saw running away from my murdered father. Could it be? I couldn’t see him well enough to be at all sure, but what if he is?

And if he is, does he recognize me from that night?
This isn’t what is supposed to be happening!
If he does, is it going to blow everything? My thoughts are like marbles that fall out of my head and are clacking around on the floor. I wish I could gather them all back.

I picture my father curled like a mealworm on the ground. I try to picture the figure in the baseball cap running away.

I come completely unstuck from the moment. I float off to another place in time. By the time I come back, I’ve missed the
juncture I was watching for. Whatever step I might have had, I lose.

It happens so quickly. They are walking back into her office, and Mona is saying something, possibly to me, that I don’t hear. She goes back to her computer to finish the last upload. I am trying to get my excellent eyes to stick on Andrew Baltos, but it’s all changing fast. Suddenly he’s shoving me toward Mona, and honestly it’s as though I never anticipated anything more dramatic than a pleasant conversation.

I fall into her, roughly, trying to regain my balance. He kicks the door shut behind him. Mona is looking up in astonishment, and I follow her eyes to the gun he is pointing at the two of us.

I can’t believe this is happening, in spite of everything I know. Why doesn’t he care that I am here witnessing his crime? I was supposed to be a deterrent if nothing else, cause some confusion and force him to rethink his plans. Is he going to murder the two of us just as easily as one? Weren’t we figuring on some amount of compunction?

Mona opens her mouth, lets out a noise. I put my hand on Mona’s arm. I don’t know why. I guess it is a gesture of comfort. I am welcoming her to her destiny.

And as I am trying to collect my marbles, I wonder,
How am I going to stop this?

“Go over there,” Baltos says, gesturing with the gun. “Sit down against the wall.”

Mona looks at him in disbelief. Her eyes simply didn’t comprehend it enough to be afraid. “Are you serious? What is going on?”

“Go!”

I pull her by the arm to the wall. I sit her down. I comprehend it plenty well to be afraid. A part of me just wants it to be over with. I don’t want Ethan to arrive at all.

Andrew Baltos keeps the gun pointed at us and steps over to her computer. I see the sweat soaking in big U shapes under his arms, patches down his back. With his other hand he navigates her screen. Within minutes of searching, his frustration quickly blooms. “What did you do?” he demands of Mona. He walks toward us. “Where are the EFP studies?”