“It’s the three of us,” Cameron says, and I’m not sure what he means. “That’s it. That’s the only people we trust. The three of us.”
I don’t know what to do with the fact that I’m included in this. What have I done to earn it? I’m not sure. But now that I have his trust, I don’t want to break it. I want to use it for something right. I want to save us all.
We park in front of a long building, curving in on itself in something between a U and a straight line, three stories high, with an artificial green area in the middle. There’s a fountain beside the sign.
“Here’s what I could dig up on Ivory Street,” Casey says. “Her lab received several grants based on proposals from the NSF—a government-run agency that funds proposed projects—and those papers are the result of that research. She published a lot of papers over a span of five years, and then it mostly stopped. There was an announcement about her stepping down from her position about eighteen years ago, which fits in with the time frame—that June managed to break her somehow. Her picture shows up at a lot of political fund-raisers, but she disappears from science journals until this recent one—as the contact for the grant foundation.”
“So what’s she doing here?”
“She’s got an office here, as part of the grant decision-making process. But she doesn’t conduct her own research anymore.”
“So this is a government agency?” Cameron asks, shrinking in his seat. “No way we’re getting close. No way.”
“No, we call and lure her out,” Casey says.
“With what phone?” I ask.
“Any phone,” Cameron whispers, and I know this is yet another crime that will be added to our list. I think how hard it is to disappear with no money: no car, no food, no phone, no place to sleep.
Where the hell did June keep that money? What happened to it? We could use it. We really could. How else are we going to disappear?
And then I think how easy it is to disappear with no money. It’s doable. We’ve been doing it. We’ve made it this far. It doesn’t take money to cease to exist. The world is big. We just need to leave.
One more day, I think. I hope. We meet Ivory Street, we figure out how to access the information in the database, we see what June knew, and we find what Ava saw. After that, we can leave. I have to hope that will be enough.
But right now, we need to borrow a phone.
Cameron looks for a phone in a crowded park nearby. Kids are on swings, with fathers or mothers pushing them, and I picture my own. I wonder if she imagined doing this when I was growing inside her. If she pictured what I would look like, what I would sound like—my high-pitched squeal as I tipped my head back toward the sun at the apex of the swing’s arc. It’s a thought that suddenly feels like a memory. Her laughter a shadow of my own. And I am overcome with a wave of grief that the memory isn’t real. That it doesn’t exist.
Cameron’s hand slides into a purse left abandoned on a bench. He doesn’t take the wallet. Just the phone. Casey and I watch from the van. I look at Casey, but she’s staring at the same scene, seeing something in her own memory. “What?” I ask.
“When we were little,” she whispers, “we had a park in our neighborhood. And Cameron couldn’t pump yet. Me and Ava used to take turns pushing him, because he used to bitch and complain until we did. I pushed him so hard once, he fell off the swing and dislocated his elbow. I was going to get in so much trouble.”
“I can imagine,” I say. Cameron heads back toward us. There’s a man in uniform at the other end of the park, and my heart beats wildly. But Cameron is perfect. He pretends not to notice. Not to care.
“We were all kind of terrified of our father, not that he ever did anything to make us fear him. He was mostly all talk, but the talk …,” she says. “Anyway, he said he fell off by himself. I don’t know why. He was just a kid. We were all just kids. Even then he was protecting me, when it should’ve been the other way around.”
Cameron opens the door just then and hands the borrowed phone to Casey as he climbs in beside us. “Did you see the cop?” I ask.
“Yeah, I saw,” he says.
Casey dials information, asks to be connected to the NSF headquarters, and after a moment, she speaks into the receiver. “Ivory Street’s extension, please,” she says in a very official and bossy tone of voice.
Her face lights up when someone who must be Ivory Street picks up the line. “There’s been a breakin at your residence,” she says. “Someone out walking their dog called it in. We’ll need you to see what’s missing in order to make a statement.” A pause. “Sure. 555-4439.” Then she hangs up.
“Is that the phone number?” I ask.
“I have no idea.”
We watch the front double doors beside the fountain and the sign, and a few people trickle out, but they are too young, or too old, to be her. Casey has the printout of her photo spread between us. And then we see her. A woman in her midfifties, a blouse tucked into a narrow skirt that hits below her knees, moving quickly and deliberately toward a black car across the street.
“Bingo,” Cameron says. He climbs into the front seat, tosses the phone out the window in the general direction of the park, and eases into traffic behind one Ivory Street.
Chapter 21
We follow ivory’s black, expensive-looking car through all of downtown. Eventually, we hit a tunnel, and we’re going to have to pay a toll. Or not pay a toll, as it were. “Get down,” Cameron says, because there are cameras, and we’re going to be reported for failing to pay a toll, and they’re going to see our faces, along with the license plates. He lowers his head, but he’s probably captured. They will be able to trace our route, in reverse, like I am tracing June’s. But we also know, at this point, we’re so close.
We just have to stay a day ahead. We are almost there, I can taste it. I know they can feel it, too, with the way we’re not talking, but the air seems almost charged, and I can feel it humming against my skin.
We don’t even listen to the radio at first, but then Cameron says we need to, to make sure there’s not something we’re missing. And so we do. We listen to other people talk about us. Casey shrinks into herself when she hears her name—I guess she’s not used to hearing others report on her, make things up, twist her life into a two-dimensional, ten-second sound bite.
These are the things being reported: three teens, last spotted in a school, taking shelter. Eating from the vending machine, using the school computers. Last seen wearing school uniforms.
These are the things left behind: evidence of June’s crimes. Evidence that I’m looking to repeat them, or complete them.
This is the trail they’re on: the first car, reported missing from around the school. They have not found where we ditched it. They have not pinned us to the second, to this perfect van. But it won’t be long. They will find the first missing car abandoned somewhere, they will look for the second, and they will see us in the tunnel. They will know our general direction. I don’t know whether they’ve seen the printouts, whether they know we’ve gone to see Ivory Street.
We have to stay a step ahead.