He’d called the little plot his insurance policy. A girl like her didn’t stick with a guy like him unless he gave her a reason. Shaine was betting hard on stability. It worked. They married a year later, and Shaine started building the home soon after.
Nixon stands in front of the door and knocks. “Mira!” he shouts. “It’s me! It’s Trevor!”
There’s movement behind the door and then it opens. Mira’s eyes are swollen. Her cheeks are red. She doesn’t say anything. She leaves the door open and walks back to the table and takes a seat.
Nixon steps inside.
“So you know?” he asks.
She nods and starts to cry again. Nixon takes a seat next to her and moves to put a hand on her shoulder. She dips and scoots away from him.
“What happened, Trevor? I know that you know.”
“I don’t.”
“Bullshit. I know he was in touch with you.”
“Not until recently. He offered me a job.”
Nixon sets the case on the table. “Moving that.”
Mira pulls the case to her and tries to open the top. Nixon watches her try to work the tips of her fingers in between the two halves and pry them apart. He watches as she adjusts her grip and tries again.
She slams the case down on the table and says: “You could have told me it was impossible, Trevor, instead of letting me look like an idiot.”
“Sorry.”
“So what’s inside?”
Nixon shrugs. “I haven’t been able to get it open. And Shaine was …” Nixon stops. He can’t say the word killed. He doesn’t want to hear the words come from his mouth. And he doesn’t know what Mira will do if he does say it.
“Shaine never got a chance to tell me.”
“You were with him?”
“When it happened?”
Mira nods.
“I was.”
Mira breaks down. Her arms are folded on the table top in front of her. She lays her forehead on her forearms and begins to sob. Nixon puts a hand on her shoulder, and Mira covers it with her own.
After a moment he says: “I’m really sorry. I loved him too.”
She raises her head and takes a deep breath to gather herself. “I know you did. He loved you too. You were a brother.”
“That’s why I’m here. It all happened fast, but the last thing he told me was that this job was dangerous and you and the girls aren’t safe.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. But he told me about a ship at the starport…”
“Six twenty eight?”
Nixon nods. “It’s been damaged. Extremely unflyable. And the guys who did it … we had a moment. Chased me out of there.”
Mira stands and begins to say something, but Nixon doesn’t give her a chance to speak.
“You have to go,” he says. “Take the girls and get away from here. It’s not safe for you anymore.”
She’s walking the room now. She’s pulling things off of shelves and digging them out of drawers. They are all going into a large canvas bag with a heavy locking clasp on the top that she pulled from the bottom of a built-in cabinet.
Nixon watches her for a moment before she says: “It’s our disassembled go bag. It was Shaine’s idea. I knew he was working with people …”
Her voice catches. She stops for a moment and leans onto the dining table next to the canvas bag. She breathes deep once. Twice. Then she starts again.
“He didn’t give me a lot of details, but I wasn’t oblivious. He said not everyone using his services was on the up and up. But I didn’t know it was going to come to this. I always thought … if we had to leave, I thought he’d be the one getting this bag together.”
Nixon continues to watch her work. She’s methodical. There’s no hesitation. She knows what goes in the bag, and she knows exactly where to find it. It’s like she’s practiced this one hundred times.
“Where are you going to go?”
“Shaine and I had a plan.”
“And what was that?”
She drops the last of the items into the bag. She connects the clasp to close the top then sets the lock. She looks up to Nixon. “Nope,” she says. “Where we go is just for us.”
She pulls the bag off the table and the weight of it nearly knocks her to the floor.
“Fair enough,” Nixon says.
Mira heads for the door then stops. She puts the bag on the floor and goes back over to the builtins and pulls a vase off the shelf. It’s painted a rainbow swirl of colors. She looks at it one last time then throws it to the ground.
“I’ve always hated that thing,” she says and bends over. She stirs a hand through the shards of broken pottery and pulls out a card with codes written on one side. An address is on the other. She stands and hands the card to Nixon.
He takes it and flips it over, looking at both sides.
“Codes,” Mira says. “To another ship. Kind of our escape hatch if we needed it. Shaine said it was just in case. This feels like just in case to me. Use it.”
Nixon looks up from the card and back to Mira. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t need it where I’m going. Me and the girls will be safe. You on the other hand …”
“I really appreciate it,” he says. “Good luck.”
She puts a hand on his shoulder. “You too. Deliver that box. Do it for Shaine.”
07
Nixon studies the address printed on the back side of the card Mira gave him. It’s familiar. Another
