Eve and Adam

What an interesting way he has of saying it. It’s not a question. It’s not quite a statement. It’s almost a challenge.

“How much does it hurt?” Solo asks.

“It… it doesn’t,” I say. “But that’s because of the pain meds, of course.”

He looks down at his food and chews. He has something to say, but he’s considering it. “Have you seen it without the bandages? I mean, have you seen the actual leg?”

I shake my head. “Not… no.” I frown at him, and he studies the placid water. How does he know I haven’t seen the wound? “I asked. They said it was still too bad. They didn’t want to upset me.”

A knowing smirk comes and goes. “Yeah.”

I push the sandwich aside. “Who the hell are you?” I demand.

“Solo Plissken.”

“I didn’t ask your name,” I say. “Who are you? Why are you here? You’re not old enough to be doing a full-time job at a place like Spiker.”

“Does it always take you this long to start asking obvious questions?”

My face burns. “I’m asking now.”

“I’m your mother’s ward. When my parents died six years ago she sort of, well, inherited me.”

The math is simple. And yet I’m sitting here, astounded. “She’s been your guardian for six years? And she’s never mentioned it to me?”

He looks at me straight, eye to eye. “I wonder why that is?”

Suddenly I am very uncomfortable. He knows things I don’t. He knows things he hasn’t told me. Why the hell am I finding things out about my mother from this guy?

I take a breath, try to focus. “What happened to your parents?”

Again, that fleeting smirk. “The safe question. Or maybe you’re going to sneak up on the truth, little by little.”

“If you don’t want to answer—”

“Car accident. No big story there. No mystery. I was at my grandmother’s. They were on vacation. Without me.” He pauses, takes a swig from his water bottle. “Good thing I wasn’t with them. They went off the side of a road, down an embankment. Crash. Boom.”

I flash back to my dad’s death. The insistent knocking on the door, the grim-faced cops, my mother’s agonized scream.

Imagine losing both your parents in the blink of an eye.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “That must have been horrible for you.” I tear a strip from my napkin. “My dad… well, he died when I was young, too. Why didn’t you go live with your grandmother?”

“She’s eighty-seven. She thinks Roosevelt is president.”

“Why my mother, though? Because she’s so warm and nurturing?”

He laughs. And he has a nice laugh. Damn. I wish he didn’t have such a nice laugh. He’s a temporary blip in my life. He’s not my type. Except for the laugh. Maybe the eyes. Not the smirk, or the hair which needs cutting so badly my fingers are itching to grab the knife and do it myself.

“Your mother and my parents were business partners.”

“So… you own part of Spiker?”

Solo shakes his head. “No. My parents were screwed out of the business by your mother.”

This does not entirely surprise me. Still, for some reason, I feel vaguely guilty. Sins of the mother and all that.

“I guess your dad—he was still alive then—tried to make peace. But it wasn’t happening. Up until then they had all been best friends. My folks died before they could change the will that left me to your mother’s tender mercies.”

“You hate her,” I say.

Solo doesn’t react right away. He thinks. He cups his chin in his hand and carefully considers.

Finally he says, “I don’t do hate.” He grins ruefully. “However, I do resentment pretty well.”

I want to ask Solo more, much more, but my phone chimes. A text.

Need u now. Bad.

When I dial Aislin, the call doesn’t connect. I check my phone: one bar. Figures. Just enough for a text to get through.

“Damn,” I murmur. Aislin in trouble? Not a surprise. Aislin texting me for help? That is unusual. Generally, she just stumbles through her escapades, then regales me with the details later.

“Aislin?” Solo inquires.

Another text. Where r u? Guys after M at GGP. Going there 2 help.

“Damn,” I murmur. “Aislin’s idiot boyfriend’s in trouble. He’s at Golden Gate Park, and she thinks she’s going to save his butt.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“You mean felony or misdemeanor?” I rub my eyes. “You never know with Maddox.”

I text her back. WAIT. I’ll think of something.

“I don’t know what to do,” I tell Solo. “I can’t leave this place, not with… The Leg. Dr. Anderson told me not to put any pressure on it.”

“Dr. Anderson is a tool.”

I shift The Leg back and forth, a couple inches in each direction. No pain. Nothing.

Solo gives a small, approving nod.

I meet his eyes. “If I needed to, say, disappear from here for a couple of hours without being caught, could you help me do it?”

There’s an intriguing arrogance in his face. “Talk to me.”

– 15 –

I’m seeing an interesting side to Solo. He’s not the blushing boy in my hospital room, rendered speechless by Aislin’s antics. He’s totally in control, coolly pushing my wheelchair through maintenance areas and unused kitchen facilities and darkened labs.

As we move, he provides muted commentary. Things like, “This room hasn’t been used probably ever, so I turned off surveillance cameras…. The camera on this part of the stairwell is broken…. I can delete tape of this later—no one will notice…. The scientist who works in this space is a paranoid so no camera…. Infrared is off here so as long as we don’t turn on the light…”

What I’m coming to think of as “Escape from Spiker” involves about sixty different, distinct steps, all inside Solo’s head. The building is massive, but he has it memorized—every door, room, and camera angle.

We reach a set of steps. “How do we get down those?” I ask.

“I carry you. Then I come back up and get your wheelchair.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You want out or not?”

“You don’t look that strong.” I say it, but it’s a lie. He does look that strong.

Another text from Aislin. Maddox in trubble.

Spelling is not Aislin’s favorite thing.

“Lean forward,” Solo says.

I do, and his hand goes behind my back. I feel his arms slide over the clasp of my bra.

“I’m going to lift The Leg.”

“I’m afraid it will hurt.”

“It won’t,” he says, and I wonder what makes him so sure. His palm slides under my thighs and with barely a grunt he has me up and out of my chair. My face is close to his, close enough that his hair brushes my cheek and my nose and I have to fight an urge to sneeze.

I ask myself what I ate at lunch. I ask myself why I didn’t bother with deodorant this morning.