Page 29 of The Last Flight

“It’s like this guy wants me to see him.”

“He probably does,” Dex said. “People make mistakes when they’re nervous, and he obviously wants to make you nervous. The fact that he’s so visible means he doesn’t have anything on you and he’s getting desperate.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Let him follow you. He won’t see anything, and eventually he’ll look somewhere else.”

Dex tossed a couple five-dollar bills onto the table for a tip. Around them, the room erupted in cheers, all eyes on the television, where someone had just scored a touchdown. Eva started to rise, but Dex said, “You should stay a little longer.”

Eva sat back and watched him leave, fighting down a growing panic, like someone waiting her turn to get on a lifeboat and realizing she was going to be the only one left on the sinking ship. Dex was already trying to distance himself.

Around her, the college kids drank and laughed, their biggest worry whether Cal would go to a bowl game. She had never in her life felt that relaxed. Even when she was a student, she’d been guarded. Quiet. Growing up in a group home, she learned from a young age that it was safest to observe rather than jump in with loud laughter or a witty joke. The sisters at St. Joe’s encouraged them to be studious. Respectful. Which Eva had become, all the while figuring out how to break the rules more quietly.

But it wasn’t a home. The sisters were older. Strict and uncompromising. They believed that children should be silent and compliant. Eva remembered the cold hallways of the dorm, tucked behind the sanctuary, smelling of candle wax and damp. She remembered the other girls. Not their names, but their voices. Harsh and bullying, or soft and scared. She remembered the crying at night. How, at the end of the day, each of them was alone.

Eva took a final sip of her beer and stood, weaving her way toward the stairs that led up to the main dining room. She eyed the emergency exit, imagining the sound of the alarm, which was already screaming inside her head. But she bypassed it, knowing now was not the time for anything so desperate. Not yet.

* * *

As she pulled into her driveway, she saw Liz locking her door and heading down the front walk toward her car. Eva glanced up and down the street, forcing herself to slow down and act normal.

“Hello!” Liz called.

Eva had grown curious about Liz since that first afternoon in Liz’s apartment. She found herself listening for her. Watching her come and go. The sound of Liz’s voice still reverberated in her mind, and Eva couldn’t deny she felt drawn to the woman.

Eva locked her car and turned to her with a smile, pointing at Liz’s New Jersey plates. “You drove all the way from New Jersey?” She tried to relax her shoulders and focus on Liz and not on the possibility that Agent Castro’s car might turn the corner at any moment.

But today was not a day for talking, and she breathed easy when Liz said only, “I thought it would be a fun road trip, but already I’m dreading the drive back.” She rounded her car and slid into the driver’s seat with a wave, and Eva continued up the walkway, unlocking her door and slipping inside.

The silence was a relief. She made her way over to the couch and lay down, forcing herself to take several deep breaths, but she couldn’t relax. She could feel Castro’s presence like an audience, watching everything she did. Every coming and going, to the market, to DuPree’s. Every interaction like the one she’d just had with Liz, recorded in someone’s field notes.4:56 p.m.: Eva chats with older neighbor on lawn.She stared at the wall that separated her apartment from Liz’s and wondered if Liz might be a useful person to have around. Become part of the story she wanted Castro to believe about her. That she was just a server who lived a small life filled with mundane details too boring to record.Eva spends evening out with neighbor friend.OrEva and neighbor friend do a guided tour of Berkeley Rose Garden. What might bore them the most?

* * *

Later that evening, there was a knock on the door. A quick peek through the window revealed Liz on the porch, holding a casserole dish. “I don’t know when I’m going to remember to cut a recipe in half,” she said, though Eva suspected Liz preferred to have someone to cook for.

Liz handed her the dish and stepped inside, causing Eva to falter as she carried the casserole into the kitchen. She had just closed the refrigerator and turned around to see Liz bent over, reading the titles of the books on her shelf in the living room. It unsettled her, to have someone in her space, looking at her things. But she took a deep breath and smiled through her discomfort.7:45 p.m.: Neighbor brings Eva food. They chat for twelve minutes.She could do this.

“You’re interested in chemistry?” Liz asked.

Eva shrugged. They were mostly old textbooks from her last year of college that Eva hadn’t opened in years. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of them, as if doing so would toss away a critical part of herself. “I studied it for a little while. In school.”

“These are college texts,” Liz said, pulling one out. She flipped it open, looking at the stamp of the Berkeley student store on the inside cover. “You went to Berkeley? You never mentioned that.”

“For a bit,” Eva said. “I didn’t graduate.”

“Why not?” Liz asked, as Eva knew she would.

“Stuff got in the way.” Eva hoped that her half answers and deflections would end the conversation there.

On the counter, Eva’s phone buzzed, lighting up with a text from Dex. Eva snatched the phone, pressing the Save for Later option on the screen before shoving it into her pocket.

Liz watched her, waiting for her to say something, and when she didn’t, Liz pointed to the open can of Diet Coke on the counter. “That stuff is poison,” she said.

Eva checked her watch, the charade suddenly draining her. How long would she need to entertain this woman? “I’d better get in the shower. I’m working a shift at the restaurant this evening.”

Liz waited a beat, as if trying to read the truth beneath Eva’s words, before saying, “You know, life is long. Lots of things can go wrong and still end up all right.”

Eva thought about her lab, hidden beneath the room where they stood. And she thought it was a fitting metaphor. Liz saw only what was in front of her, while Eva worried about everything hidden beneath the surface that might float to the top, where Agent Castro waited to collect it.

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