Page 102 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘How many people work up here?’ Billy asked, trying to count the desks.

‘Think there’s about fifteen full-time in this office.’ Jet ventured forward, checking her path with the light. ‘Dad has his own separate office down the hall, next to the kitchen.’She showed Billy with the beam. ‘Luke doesn’t have his own office, but Dad let him have a partition. This way.’

She led Billy through the office to the back right corner. Luke’s corner. A folded screen made of white-painted wood and thin glass, to separate his desk from the others. Not quite his own office, but all he was going to get.

Jet dropped into Luke’s chair, way too high, her feet dangling above the ground. It squeaked as she took it for a spin, hand on the desk to catch herself.

Luke’s MacBook screen caught the flashlight, held it there, open on the desk, connected by HDMI to a larger external monitor.

‘OK,’ Jet said, wiggling the mouse, clicking to wake the computer up.

It blinked into life. The lock screen was a family photo of Luke, Sophia, and Cameron taken on the Fourth of July, sprinkles of fireworks dripping onto their shoulders from the background. A gray box blocking out the baby’s eyes, asking Jet for the password.

‘I’m guessing this can’t be Emily’s birthday too?’ Billy said, deflating, kneeling beside Jet, head almost as high as hers.

‘No.’ Jet stretched the fingers of her left hand. ‘But there’s a high chance it’s the same password he uses on his iPhone.’

‘And you know that?’

‘You know it too.’ Jet sniffed. ‘He told us this morning, about thirteen hours ago, when I unlocked his phone to check his messages with Sophia.’

Billy’s mouth dropped open, a twinkle in his eyes. Impressed. ‘You remember that?’

‘I’m good at remembering numbers and all other kinds of useless shit, Billy,’ Jet said, pressing213024on the keyboard. ‘That’s how I passed all my exams. Must have had a good math teacher.’

She regretted it almost instantly, wincing, the guilt reacting to the sudden change in heat, simmering away.

Billy blinked. ‘Better math teacher than she was a mom.’

Jet hesitated. Should she say something; did Billy want her to? ‘That’s not true, Billy.’

‘Shitty math teacher too?’

‘No, she was a good mom. You used to talk about her all the time. I actually used to get a little jealous.’

‘Yeah,’ he sniffed, voice hollow. ‘She was. Probably my best friend after you found Sophia instead. Until she decided to leave me and Dad with no explanation.’

Jet didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t. She pressed enter and crossed her fingers … not literally, had no fingers to spare.

The home screen jumped out at them, icons and files covering every inch of the desktop.

‘It worked,’ Jet hissed, catching Billy’s eyes across the darkness.

She picked up the mouse and guided the on-screen arrow, double-clicking onFinderto bring up Luke’s files.

‘Doesn’t take two of us to go through one computer.’ Billy straightened up. ‘I should keep looking. Does he have files in his desk or …?’ He opened a couple of drawers; just pens, a calculator, a tangled yarn ball of cords with different-shaped heads and metal teeth.

‘There’s a whole room of filing cabinets.’ Jet turned to him. ‘I think Dad’s old-school, likes to keep hard copies of invoices and whatever. It’s the little room, beyond the kitchen. That way.’ She pointed with her flashlight.

‘OK, I’ll go look in there.’

Billy walked away, then came right back, the flashlight on his phone pointed up at his face, distorting it with strange upward shadows.

‘Um,’ he said. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘Anything,’ Jet replied, unhelpfully.

‘Anything. Yeah, cool. Got it,’ Billy muttered to himself, walking away and out of sight, the darkness claiming him.

---