His fingers tremble as they touch my cheek. I swallow hard. There’s blood on his fingers, and now there’s some on the back of my neck because his hand is under my hair and we are no longer inches away, we’ve gone metric, we are millimeters away and he breathes and I breathe and we both make shaky sounds like we might both be dying but not yet.
Nothing has ever moved as slowly as his mouth coming down toward mine.
It’s a million years.
His lips touch mine.
So, some part of my brain thinks happily: That’s a kiss.
Oh yes, that is definitely a kiss.
Some years and decades and eons later we pull apart. And he says, “Now: We have to run.”
– 27 –
We race to my room and arrive panting, the two of us babbling to Aislin about beat-downs and crazy people and cover-ups.
“We have to get out of here!” I conclude.
Aislin cocks her head. “You have blood on your mouth.”
“What?” I can feel the furious blush. “I must have cut my lip.”
“Yeah. It’s not
“Um…”
“Where are we running to?” Aislin asks. Not upset, mind you, just curious. As though fleeing from my own mother and her crazed minions is a perfectly normal, everyday occurrence.
“Just out of here,” Solo says. He touches the cut on his scalp and grimaces. “Do you still have the flash drive?”
I dig in my purse and produce the little device with the Apple logo.
The three of us look at it, sitting in my palm.
So small, so dangerous, so terrible.
“Good.” Solo nods tersely. “Hang on to it.”
I rush to pull on jeans, turning away to put on a bra and T-shirt. Only then do I realize that I’m facing a mirror.
“He didn’t look,” Aislin says. In a mystified voice she adds: “He really didn’t.”
“I have excellent peripheral vision,” Solo says, winking a blood-caked eye at Aislin.
“What about Adam?” I say. The thought has come out of nowhere.
“What do you mean, what about Adam?” Aislin asks. “We’re fleeing for our very lives and you’re worried about some software?”
“It’s just—” I begin. But that’s all I have.
Solo says, “Tommy didn’t get his PhD and this job by being an idiot. We surprised him. We threw him off his game. But he’ll be back. We have minutes—if that.”
“My mother won’t hurt me,” I say, sounding pretty doubtful even to myself.
“But what about Solo?” Aislin says. “He’s not her son.” A strange look crosses her face. “You’re not, are you?”
“No, thank God,” he says with an ugly snarl. Belatedly, he realizes how that will sound to me. “I mean —”
I wave him off. “Let’s get out of here,” I say, but for some reason, I stop long enough to grab my sketchbook. I rip out my unfinished life drawing, fold it up, and stash it in the pocket of my jeans.
The three of us race out into the hallway. It’s all very action movie, but feels ridiculous. Seriously, I’m fleeing from my mother? Seriously?
My mother, who made me a lab rat. My mother, who runs a chamber of horrors.
Those images. So many of them. How am I supposed to reconcile them with my mother?
The problem is, it’s all too easy. It’s not like she has ever been some warm, nurturing, hugging, head-patting type. She’s an amoral bitch. That’s the reality.
I’m running down curving, carpeted hallways, trying to dredge up something nice to think about my mother.
It suddenly occurs to me—and yes, it’s a ludicrous setting and circumstance—that I’ve been a bit neglected as a daughter.
We make our way toward the garage, just like we had in our earlier “escape.” But the risks are higher this time. The sense of fun is gone.
We climb into the elevator. It moves, comes to a stop.
The door doesn’t open.
Solo nods, unsurprised. “He’s after us.” He pulls out his phone. “This will work once. Only once. He’ll counter immediately.”
He punches numbers into the keypad.
“We’re between four and five. He’s going to have the garage covered, and if he corners us down there, it’s way too easy for him to finish us off.”
The elevator lurches. “We’re going back up,” Aislin says.
“Yes,” Solo says tersely. “Soon as the door opens we run.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Just stay with me.”
The elevator comes to a stop and we explode out the door. Solo yells, “This way, this way!”
We dash fifty feet down a long hallway. Solo stops at an office, panting, and stabs some numbers into a keyboard. The door opens. It’s dark inside.
“Office belongs to a dude who’s been on medical leave for months,” Solo explains.
Aislin reaches for the light switch.
“No.” Solo shakes his head. “No lights.”
There isn’t much to see in the office except the view out over the San Francisco Bay. Clouds hang thick on the Golden Gate. The stars are sparse, the moon visible only as a silvery glow without distinct location.
Solo pulls open a file drawer. “Either of you ever do any mountain climbing?” He has a big coil of rope in his hands.
“I have,” Aislin says.
I blink at her, sure it’s a joke. But she’s taken a length of webbing and some metal rings from Solo. She weaves the webbing through her crotch, pulls out one loop of the webbing, and clips on the ring.
“What?” she says, in response to our shared amazement. “It’s not all parties. My dad’s taken me top-roping at Tahoe a few times.”
We move out onto the balcony. The Spiker building glitters beneath us, spreading off to our right, a massive ornament of light perched above black water and invisible rocks. Solo ties the rope to the balcony railing and tosses the coil over the side.
He’s chosen his location perfectly. It’s one of the view spots in the complex where there’s a clear drop without terraces in the way.
The coiled rope falls into darkness. Has it reached the ground? No way to know. I can only hope Solo has planned well.
“Okay, Aislin, you go first,” Solo says. He helps her climb over the railing. “The figure eight may get twisted, so be careful.”
To my amazement, Aislin understands what he’s talking about.
She checks the rope and the carabiner like a pro and winks at me. I lean over to watch her fall, holding my breath. I’m not a big fan of heights.
She’s sort of bouncing down the side of the building, feet hitting balcony rails and plate glass, pushing off,
