From the front, he looks like anyone’s grandfather. Sparkling eyes, thick glasses, crooked and slightly discolored teeth, and a stomach that hangs over his waistband. Years and years since that picture was taken. A lifetime, for me. “We have a lot in common, Alina Chase,” he says. “We should talk, truly. Ivory Street got me, too, with the past life. Ensnared me for a lifetime of doing her bidding.” He licks his lips, and I wonder who he was in the past life, and who he was in this life, before Ivory Street.
Ivory Street must have discovered something about Mason Alonzo. About his past life. Must’ve learned something he didn’t want revealed and coerced him with it.
“Her study was a lie,” I say. “She falsified the data. Only included the data that supported her theory. You don’t have to do her bidding. She has nothing on you.”
His face twists—first down, then up—before he speaks. “Yes, she does. Everything I’ve done since then, child. Everything I’ve let her do since then. I gave people to her. I let her see data that should’ve been protected at the highest level. I let her use it. That’s my crime now.” There’s a sound of bones popping, but I don’t think he’s moved. Maybe it was his jaw. Or maybe it was Casey, standing behind him. “I suppose,” he says, “when all is said and done, my crimes in this life will far exceed the last. So be it.”
I see it in his eyes: he is that selfish. He doesn’t want to go back, to drag it out into the light. He is fine with the situation. With the power of it all. “You don’t have to do this,” I say. When all I’m thinking is please, don’t do this.
And then he laughs. “Now I get it. Now I get why Ivory was so set on making sure you were found and then contained. It didn’t make sense to me back then: why June and not Liam? It wasn’t the fear of the information June left about accessing the database—we closed that door anyway. It was this. What you just told me. That June knew the truth, and that she left that for you.”
“Ivory had me contained?” I ask.
“She had you sought out—it all happened so fast. And there was no precedent for it. She left no time for debate. Act now, act fast. She pushed, and someone listened. I don’t even know who it was. She has a lot of people in law enforcement wrapped around her finger. Of course, now I’m wondering if she wasn’t just a bit spiteful that June figured her out. If it wasn’t meant to be a punishment, after all.”
I am filled with pure rage, that Ivory was the force behind my containment. I hate her. I hate her and I hope she stays locked in that basement for eternity. But I try not to let it show on my face. I take a deep breath, and I focus on the faces of the people I love instead.
I see my mother, free somewhere, and my father, still in prison.
I see Cameron.
I see Casey.
I see June.
And again I think of her—I see her walking away from me, a small smile as she looks over her shoulder, her blond curls swaying with each step, blue eyes looking straight into mine. I close my eyes, and I thank her for all she has done, and what she was trying to do. That she believed in redemption, in her own life. She discovered she had made a horrible mistake. She was wrong, and she was going to reveal it anyway. She was going to take herself down with them. She was the bell and the whistle. If only she had lived …
I feel her in me—the parts of her I like, the parts I struggle against, all of them—and I gather her close. I think I must love her, anyway. She was beautiful, and she was wrong, and she was brave. I want to see my own life stretched out before me, like she must have, and think not of myself but of truth, and who it belongs to. There is nothing selfish in her soul. Maybe she wasn’t born good or bad. Maybe her choices were both. Mostly, though, they were her own.
As are mine.
“Is that it? The shadow-database is in there?” I ask, gesturing behind him. Casey said it would have to be big to store everything, but it seems impossible that it would just be sitting here, in his office.
“No, no, there’s no complete copy. This is just a piece of it. Just a storage unit—the information we’ve accessed over the years,” he says. He points to the computer on his desk. “It’s all linked. Whatever we access gets copied and stored for when we might need it. The data Ivory pulled for the study. The souls we pulled after, with the new names attached, it all gets copied and stored right here. Funny, huh? How it’s just sitting here, in my lab, mixed in with my other projects? Ivory convinced me, very persuasively, to leave a portal open for myself—to set this up—when I went back in to upgrade security. The irony, right? She’s no different from anyone else, not June or Liam or you, even. Once you get in, you can’t let it be. Too much power in that knowledge. Too much you can do with it. Like moths to a candle, flitting around it while your wings are on fire.”
Casey’s expression is pained, and she’s about to say something. “Don’t,” I say, even though I’m looking at Mason.
“In you go,” he says, gesturing to the room behind us.
“Give her the name first,” I say.
“You are in no position to be bargaining. Can you beat two million dollars?”
I surely cannot.
Except then Cameron stands in the entrance, leaning against the doorjamb, the empty gun in his hand. “They’re both coming with me.”
Mason looks at the gun and laughs. “You think I’m afraid of death? What’s to fear, really? Another chance with another life …”
I catch Cameron’s eye and then Casey’s. “It’s okay,” I say, going willingly into the room. I turn the handle and back inside, the door falling shut in front of me. It’s colder in here, and dark. There are machines, but nothing like the simple computers I’m familiar with. Just equipment, small lights flashing blue and red and green. June. Me. The history of our souls, humming across this sterile room.
I watch through the square window as the sound of the key enters the lock, and the lock turns in the door, sealing me inside. And I listen to their voices on the other side.
Mason Alonzo sits at the computer, but first looks at the gun in Cameron’s hand, spins around to the windows, and slides one open. He pushes at the screen until it pops, then tosses the single key five floors down into the bushes below. “The gun,” he says.
“That wasn’t the agreement,” Cameron says, raising it at Mason—who looks like he is, actually, a bit scared of death after all. “Alina for the name.”
Mason nods and tilts his head toward Casey.
She keeps her eyes closed, not looking at him or Cameron—or me, behind the door window.
“Ava London,” Casey says.
Chapter 26
Mason pauses for several seconds before his fingers tap against the keyboard.
My time is now. This is my chance. I’m alone in this room, and a copy of the data I need is before me. The data that was in the study, and the data left out. The proof is stored inside. I can clear June’s name of blackmail. I can free us both. I just need to figure out how to transfer the data. How to copy what I need …
“I know this name,” Mason says, and I go back to the window in the door. Mason pushes back from the desk, turning his body away, averting his eyes, as the information pulls up onto the screen.
He keeps his back to Casey, to Cameron with the gun, and I know this cannot be good.
Casey moves behind the computer, her face too close to the screen, her eyes too wide, and Cameron, looking way too pale, on the other side of the room.
“I want you to know,” Mason says, “that I am not responsible.” He turns from the window, talking to Cameron since Casey still has not moved. “I get the names, that’s all. I cannot predict who will go along and who will run.”
I close my eyes, and I picture June running. I picture Ava running. I know what happens to both.
Casey cannot move from the screen. She cannot speak. Cameron pushes off the door frame, the gun held with more intent, more authority.
“She had just accessed her inheritance,” Mason says. “Crooked money left behind by a very crooked soul. They had plans for her, and how she should use that money …”
I know, from Mason’s words, from Casey’s expression, that Ava has a soul before and a soul after.
I know from the tears running silently down Casey’s face.