Alexandra Maplecroft’s screams were like a siren pitching higher and higher. The sirens from a police car. From the FBI. From the prison van.
Jane knew that she should do something to stop the wailing, but she could only stand there listening to the woman’s desperate pleas for help.
“Jane!” Andrew called from downstairs.
The sound of her brother’s voice broke Jane from her trance. She struggled to put the gag back in place. Maplecroft started thrashing in the bed, pulling at the restraints around her wrist and ankles. Her head jerked back and forth. The blindfold slipped up. One eye spun desperately around before she found Jane. Suddenly, one of the woman’s hands was loose, then a foot. Jane leaned over to hold her down, but she wasn’t fast enough.
Maplecroft punched Jane so hard in the face that she fell back onto the floor, literal stars dancing in front of her eyes.
“Jane!” Andrew screamed. She could hear footsteps pounding up the stairs.
Maplecroft heard it too. She struggled so hard against the ropes that the metal bed frame tipped over onto the floor. She worked furiously to untie her other hand while her leg jerked back and forth to work away the bindings.
Jane tried to stand. Her legs felt wonky. Her feet would not find purchase. Blood was streaming down her face, gagging her throat. She somehow found the strength to push herself up. All she could think to do was throw her body on top of Maplecroft’s and pray that she could hold her down long enough for help to arrive.
Seconds later, it did.
“Jane!” The door flew open. Andrew reached her first. He pulled Jane up, wrapped his arm around her.
Maplecroft was standing, too. She was in the middle of the floor, fists up like a boxer, one ankle still tied to the bed. Her clothes were torn, her eyes wild, her hair matted to her skull with filth and sweat. She screamed unintelligibly as she moved back and forth between her feet.
Paula snorted a laugh. She was blocking the door. “Give it up, bitch.”
“Let me go!” Maplecroft screamed. “I won’t tell anyone. I won’t—”
“Stop her,” Nick said.
Jane didn’t know what he meant until she saw Quarter raise his knife.
“No—” she yelled, but it happened too fast.
Quarter slashed down. The blade flashed in the sunlight.
Jane stood helpless, watching the knife arc down.
But then it stopped.
Maplecroft had caught the knife in her hand.
The blade pierced the center of her palm.
The effect hit them all like a stun grenade. No one could speak. They were too shocked.
Except for Maplecroft.
She had known exactly what she was going to do. While they all stood transfixed, she wrenched her arm across her body, preparing to backhand the blade in Jane’s direction.
Nick’s fist snaked out, punching Maplecroft square in the face.
Blood shot out of her nose. The woman spun in a half-circle, wildly slicing the air with the blade that pierced her hand.
Nick punched her again.
Jane heard the sharp snap of her nose breaking.
Maplecroft stumbled. The bed frame dragged back with her foot.
“Nick—” Jane tried.
He punched her a third time.
Maplecroft’s head jerked back on her neck. She started to fall, but her pinned leg pulled her sideways. Her temple bounced against the metal edge of the bed frame with a sickening pop before she hit the floor. A pool of blood flowered from beneath her, rolled across the wood, seeped into the cracks between the boards.
Her eyes were wide. Her lips gaped apart. Her body was still.
They all stared at her. No one could speak until—
“Jesus,” Andrew whispered.
Paula asked, “Is she dead?”
Quarter knelt down to check, but he leapt back when Alexandra Maplecroft’s eyes blinked.
Jane screamed once before she could cover her mouth with both hands.
“Christ,” Paula whispered.
Urine puddled from between the woman’s legs. They could almost hear the sound of her soul leaving her body.
“Nick,” Jane breathed. “What have you done? What have you done?”
“She—” Nick looked scared. He never looked scared. He told Jane, “I didn’t mean—”
“You killed her!” Jane screamed. “You punched her, and she fell, and she—”
“It was me,” Quarter said. “I’m the one who put the knife in her.”
“Because Nick told you to!”
“I didn’t—” Nick tried. “I said to stop her, not to—”
“What have you done?” Jane felt her head shaking furiously side to side. “What have we done? What have we done?” She couldn’t ask the question enough. This had crossed the line of insanity. They were all psychotic. Every single one of them. “How could you?” she asked Nick. “How could you—”
“He was protecting you, dumb bitch,” Paula said, unable or unwilling to keep the derision out of her voice. “This is your fault.”
“Penny,” Andrew said.
Nick tried, “Jinx, you have to believe—”
“You punched—you killed—” Jane’s throat felt strangled. They had all watched it happen. She didn’t have to give them a replay. Maplecroft had been spinning out of control after the first hit. Nick could’ve grabbed her arm, but he had punched her two more times and now her blood was sliding along the cracks in the floor.
Paula told Jane, “You’re the one who let her get untied. So much for our ransom demand. That’s our leverage pissing on her own grave.”
Jane walked to the open back window. She tried to pull air into her lungs. She couldn’t witness this, couldn’t be here. Nick had crossed the line. Paula was making excuses for him. Andrew was keeping his mouth shut. Quarter had been willing to murder for him. They had all completely lost their senses.
Nick said, “Darling—”
Jane braced her hands on the windowsill. She looked at the back of the house across the alley because she couldn’t bear to look at Nick. A pair of pink sheers wistfully furled in the late morning breeze. She wanted to be back home in her bed. She wanted to take back Oslo, to rewind the last two years of her life and leave Nick before he had pulled them all into the abyss.
“Jane,” Andrew said. He was using his patient voice.
She turned around, but not to look at her brother. Her eyes automatically found the woman lying on the floor. “Don’t,” she begged Andrew. “Please don’t tell me to calm—”
Maplecroft blinked again.
Jane didn’t scream like the first time, because the more this kept happening, the more it felt normal. That’s how Nick had gotten them. The drills and the rehearsals and the constant state of paranoia had all hypnotized them into believing that what they were doing was not just reasonable, but necessary.
Paula broke the silence this time. “We have to finish it.”
Jane could only stare at her.
Paula said, “Put the pillow over her head, or just use your hands to cover her mouth and pinch her nose closed. Unless you want to try to stab her in the heart? Drown her in that bucket of piss?”
Jane felt bile stream up her throat. She turned, but not quickly enough. Vomit spewed onto the floor. She pressed her hands against the wall. She opened her mouth and tried not to wail.
How could she bring a child into this terrible, violent world?
“Christ,” Paula said. “You can watch your own daddy being shot, but a gal bumps her head—”
“Penny,” Andrew cautioned.
“Jinx,” Nick tried to put his hand on Jane’s back, but she shrugged him off. “I didn’t mean to do it. I just—I wasn’t thinking. She hurt you. She was still trying to hurt you.”
“It’s moot.” Quarter was pressing two fingers to the woman’s neck. “She doesn’t have a pulse.”
“Well, fuck,” Paula mumbled. “What a surprise.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Andrew said. “What’s done is done.” He, too, was looking at Jane. “It’s all right. I mean, no, of course it’s not all right, but it was an accident, and we have to get past it because there are more important things at play here.”
“He’s right,” Quarter said. “We still have Stanford, Chicago, New York.”
Paula said, “You know I’m still in. I’m not like little Miss Princess here. You should’ve stuck to your volunteer work with the other rich ladies. I knew you’d wimp out the second things got messy.”
Jane finally allowed herself to look at Nick. His chest was heaving. His fists were still clenched. The skin along the back of his knuckles was torn where he’d punched Alexandra Maplecroft in the face.
Who was this man?
“I can’t—” Jane started, but she could not say the words.
“You can’t what?” Nick wiped the back of his hand on his pants. Blood smeared across like dirty fingerprints. There was more blood on the sleeve of his shirt. Jane looked down at her trousers. Red slashes crossed her legs. Speckles dotted her blouse.
“I can’t—” she tried again.
“Can’t what?” Nick asked. “Jinx, talk to me. What can’t you do?”
Do this, be a part of this, hurt more people, live with the secrets, live with the guilt, give life to your child because I will never, ever be able to explain to her that you are her father.
“Jinxie?” Nick had recovered from his shock. He was giving her his half grin. He wrapped his hands around her arms. He pressed his lips to her forehead.
She wanted to resist. She told herself to resist. But her body moved toward his and then he was holding her and she was letting herself take comfort from the warmth of his embrace.
The yo-yo flipping back on itself.
Andrew said, “Let’s go downstairs and—”
Suddenly, Quarter made a gulping sound.
His entire body jerked, his arms flying into the air. Blood burst from his chest.
A millisecond later, Jane heard the loud crack of a rifle firing, the sound of glass breaking in the windowpane.
She was already lying flat on the floor when she realized what was happening.
Someone was shooting at them.
Jane could see the crazy red dots from rifle scopes slipping along the walls as if they were in an action movie. The police had found them. They had tracked Jasper’s car or someone in the neighborhood had reported them or they had followed Andrew and Jane and none of that mattered now because Quarter was dead. Maplecroft was dead. They were all going to die in this horrible room with the bucket of shit and piss and Jane’s vomit on the floor.
Another bullet broke out the rest of the glass. Then another zinged around the room. Then another. Then they were suddenly completely swallowed by the sharp percussion of gunfire.
“Move!” Nick yelled, upending the mattress to block the front window. “Let’s go, troops! Let’s go!”
They had trained for this. It had seemed preposterous at the time, but Nick had made them drill for this exact scenario.
Andrew ran in a crouch toward the open door at the top of the stairs. Paula crawled on her hands and knees toward the back window. Jane started to follow, but a bullet pinged past her head. She flattened back to the floor. The vase of flowers shattered. Holes pierced the flimsy walls, lines of sunlight creating a disco effect.
“Over here!” Paula was already at the window.
Jane started to crawl again, but she stopped, screaming as Quarter’s body bucked into the air. They were shooting him. She heard the sickening suck of bullets punching into his dead flesh. Maplecroft’s head cracked open. Blood splattered everywhere. Bone. Brain. Tissue.
Another explosion downstairs; the front door blowing open.
“FBI! FBI!” The agents screamed over each other like a crescendo building. Jane heard their boots stomping through the lower floor, fists banging on the walls, looking for the stairs.
“Don’t wait for me!” Andrew had already closed the door. Jane watched him heft up the heavy post that fit into the brackets on either side of the jamb.
“Jane, hurry!” Nick shouted. He was helping Paula guide the extension ladder out the back window. It was too heavy for just one person to manage. They knew this from the training exercise. Two people on the ladder. One person barring the door. Mattress against the window.
Duck and run, move fast, don’t stop for anything.
Paula was first out the window. The rickety ladder clanged as she crawled on hands and knees to the house on the other side of the alley. The distance between the two windows was fifteen feet. Below was a pile of rotting garbage filled with needles and broken glass. No one would willingly go into the pit. Not unless the ladder broke and they plummeted twenty feet down.
“Go-go-go!” Nick yelled. The pounding downstairs was getting louder. The agents were still looking for the stairs. Wood started to splinter as they used the butts of their shotguns on the walls.
“Fuck!” a man yelled. “Get the fucking sledgehammer!”
Jane went on the ladder next. Her hands were wet with sweat. The cold metal rungs dug into her knees. There was a vibration in the ladder from a sledgehammer pounding into the walls below.
“Hurry!” Paula kept looking down at the pile of garbage. Jane chanced a peek and saw that there were three FBI agents in blue jackets swarming around the pile, trying to find a way in.
A gunshot rang out—not from the agents, but from Nick. He was leaning out the window, giving Andrew cover as he made his way across the ladder. The going was slower for her brother. The metal box was clutched under his arm. He could only use one hand. Jane couldn’t even remember him bringing the box up the stairs.
“Fuckers!” Paula screeched as she shook her fist at the agents on the ground. She was drawing a sick sort of excitement from the carnage. “Fascist fucking pig cunts!”
Andrew slipped on the ladder. Jane gasped. She heard him curse. He’d almost dropped the box.
“Please,” she whispered, begged, pleaded.
Forget the box. Forget the plan. Just get us out of this. Make us sane again.
“Nickel!” Paula yelled. “Throw it to me!”
She meant the gun. Nick tossed it across the fifteen-foot span. Paula caught it with both hands just as Andrew was coming off the ladder.
Jane had her arms around him before his feet hit the floor.
“Fuckers!” Paula started shooting at the FBI agents. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was open. She was yelling like a madwoman because of course she was mad. They were all deranged, and if they died here today that was exactly what they deserved.
“Take my hand!” Andrew reached out to Nick, yanking him across the last few feet. They both fell back onto the floor.
Jane stood at the window. She looked across at the shed. The stairs had been found. The snipers had stopped firing. There was an agent, an older man cut from Danberry and Barlow’s same cloth, standing directly across from her.
He raised his gun and pointed it at Jane’s chest.
“Idiot!” Paula pulled Jane down into a crouch just as the gun fired. She reached up with both hands to push the ladder off the edge of the windowsill.
They heard the metal bang against the house, then clatter into the debris.
“This way.” Andrew took the lead, crouching as he ran across the room. They were down the stairs, on the main floor, when they heard cars pull up in the street outside, which was fine, because leaving by the front door had never been the plan.
Andrew felt along the wall with his fingers. He found another secret button, accessed another secret panel, and revealed the steps to the basement.
This was why Nick had chosen the two-story shed after months of searching. He’d told the group that they needed a safe place to keep Alexandra Maplecroft, but they also needed a safe route of escape. There were very few basements in the Mission District, at least as far as the city knew. The water table was too high, the sand too swampy. The shallow basement under the Victorian was one of the city’s many remnants from the original Armory. Soldiers had hidden in the dungeons when the Mission was under siege. Nick knew about the passages from his homeless days. There was a tunnel connecting the house to a warehouse one street over.
Nick clicked the panel closed behind them. Jane felt a chill as the temperature dropped. At the bottom of the stairs, Andrew was trying to push away the bookcase that covered the tunnel entrance.
Nick had to help him. The bookcase slid across the concrete. Jane saw scrapes across the floor and prayed like hell the FBI would not see them until it was too late.
Paula slapped a flashlight into Jane’s hand and pushed her into the tunnel. Nick helped Andrew tug on the rope that pulled the bookcase back into its spot. Quarter was supposed to pull the rope. He was the carpenter of the group, the one who had turned all of Nick’s sketches into actual working designs.
And now he was dead.
Jane switched on the flashlight before the bookcase sent them into complete darkness. Her job was to lead them through the tunnel. Nick had made her run through dozens of times, sometimes with a working flashlight, sometimes without. Jane had not been down here in three months, but she still remembered all the irregular rocks that could snag against a shoe or cause a bone-breaking fall.
Like the one Alexandra Maplecroft had experienced.
“Stop dawdling,” Paula hissed, shoving Jane hard in the back. “Move.”
Jane tripped over a stone she knew was there. None of the practice runs mattered. Adrenaline could not be faked. The deeper they went underground, the more claustrophobic she felt. The dome of light was too narrow. The darkness was overpowering. She felt a scream bubbling into her throat. Water from Mission Creek seeped in from every crevice, splashed up under their shoes. The tunnel was forty-eight feet long. Jane put her hand on the wall to steady herself. Her heart was pushing into her throat. She felt the need to vomit again but dared not stop. Now that she was out of Nick’s embrace, away from his calming influence, the same question kept darting around inside of her head—
What the hell were they doing?
“Move it.” Paula pushed Jane again. “Hurry.”
Jane picked up the pace. She reached out in front of her, because she knew that they had to be close. Finally, the flashlight picked out the wooden back of the second bookcase. Jane didn’t ask for help. She made an opening that was wide enough for them to squeeze through.
They all blinked in the sudden light. There were windows high in the basement walls. Jane could see feet shuffling past. She ran up the stairs, some sort of internal autopilot clicking on. She took a right because she had trained to take a right. Thirty yards later, she took a left because she had trained to take a left. She pushed open a door, climbed through a break in the wall, and found the van parked in a cavernous bay that smelled of black pepper from the building’s previous life as a spice storage facility.
Paula ran ahead of Jane, because the first person to reach the van was the person who got to drive. Jane was second, so she pulled back the side door. Nick was already heading toward the bay door. There was a combination lock.
8-4-19.
They all knew the combination.
Andrew threw the metal box into the van. He tried to get in, but he started to fall backward. Jane grabbed at his arm, desperate to get him inside. Nick rolled up the bay door. He sprinted back to the van. Jane closed the sliding door behind him.
Paula was already driving out of the warehouse. She had tied up her hair and stuck a brown hat on her head. A matching brown jacket covered the top of her shift dress. The sunlight razored through the windshield. Jane squeezed her eyes shut. Tears slid down the side of her face. She was on her back, lying between Nick and Andrew. They were on a futon mattress, but every bump and pothole in the road reverberated into her bones. She craned her neck, trying to see out the window. They were on Mission within seconds, then turning deeper into the city, when they heard the sirens whizzing past.
“Keep cool,” Nick whispered. He was holding Jane’s hand. Jane was holding Andrew’s. She could not remember when this had happened, but she was so grateful to be safely between them, to be alive, that she could not stop weeping.
They all lay there on their backs, clinging to each other, until Paula told them they had reached the 101.
“Chicago is thirty hours away.” Paula had to shout to be heard over the road noise that echoed like a dentist’s drill inside the van. “We’ll stop in Idaho Falls to let them know we’re on the way to the safe house.”
Safe house.
A farm just outside of Chicago with a red barn and cows and horses and what did it matter because they were never going to be safe again?
Paula said, “We’ll change drivers in Sacramento after we drop Nick at the airport. We’ll follow the speed limit. We’ll obey all traffic laws. We’ll make sure to not draw attention to ourselves.” She was mimicking Nick’s instructions. They were all mimicking Nick’s instructions because he claimed to always know what he was doing, even when everything was out of control.
This was madness. It was absolute madness.
“Je-sus Christ, that was close.” Nick sat up, stretching his arms into the air. He gave Jane one of his rakish grins. He had that internal switch, too—the one that Laura Juneau had when she murdered Martin, then herself. Jane could see it so clearly now. For Nick, everything that had happened in the shed was behind him.
Jane could not look at him. She studied Andrew, still lying beside her. His face was ashen. Streaks of blood crisscrossed his cheeks. Jane could not begin to know the source. When she thought of the shed, she could only see death and carnage and bullets ricocheting around like mosquitos.
Andrew coughed into the crook of his arm. Jane reached out to touch his face. His skin had the texture of cotton candy.
Nick said, “Glad you practiced now, aren’t you, troops?” Like Andrew, his face was splattered with blood. His hair had fallen into his left eye. He had that familiar look of exhilaration, as if everything was perfect. “Imagine going over that ladder for the first time without having your training to—”
Jane sat up. She should have gone to Nick, but she leaned her back against the hump over the tire. Could she call Jasper? Could she find a telephone, beg him for help, and wait for her big brother to swoop in and save them all? How would she tell him that she had been responsible for helping to kill their father? How could she look him in the eye and say that everything they had done until this point was not the result of some form of collective derangement?
A cult.
“Jinx?” Nick asked.
She shook her head, but not at Nick. Even Jasper could not save her now. And how would she reward him if he tried, by being part of a plot to send him to prison for healthcare fraud?
Nick crawled on his knees to the locked box that Quarter had bolted to the floor. He dialed in the combination on the lock—
6-12-32.
They all knew the combination.
Jane watched him push up the lid. He removed a blanket, a Thermos filled with water. All part of the escape plan. There were Slim Jims, a small cooler, various emergency supplies and, secreted beneath a false bottom, $250,000 in cash.
Nick poured some water into the cup of the Thermos. He found the handkerchief in his back pocket and cleaned his face, then leaned over and wiped at Andrew’s cheeks until they turned ruddy.
Jane watched her lover clean blood from her brother’s face.
Maplecroft’s? Quarter’s?
She said, “We don’t even know his real name.”
They both looked at her.
“Quarter,” she said. “We don’t know his name, where he lives, who his parents are, and he’s dead. We watched him die, and we don’t even know who to tell.”
Nick said, “His name was Leonard Brandt. No children. Never married. He lived alone at 1239 Van Duff Street. He worked as a carpenter over in Marin. Of course I know who he is, Jinx. I know everyone who is involved in this because I am responsible for their lives. Because I will do whatever it takes to try to protect all of you.”
Jane couldn’t tell whether or not he was lying. His features were blurred by the tears streaming from her eyes.
Nick put the cup back on the Thermos, telling him, “You don’t look so good, old pal.”
Andrew tried to muffle a cough. “I don’t feel so good.”
Nick grabbed Andrew’s shoulders. Andrew grabbed Nick’s arms. They could’ve been in a football scrimmage.
“Listen,” Nick said. “We’ve had a hard time, but we’re back on track. You’ll rest at the safe house, you and Jane. I’ll be back from New York as soon as I can, and we’ll watch the world fall down together. Yes?”
Andrew nodded. “Yes.”
Jesus.
Nick patted Andrew’s cheek. He slid across the van toward Jane, because it was her turn for the rousing pep talk that pulled her back on side.
“Darling.” His arm looped around her waist. His lips brushed her ear. “It’s okay, my love. Everything is going to be okay.”
Jane’s tears came faster. “We could’ve died. All of us could’ve—”
“Poor lamb.” Nick pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Can’t you believe me when I tell you that we’re all going to be okay?”
Jane’s mouth opened. She tried to pull breath into her shaking lungs. She wanted so desperately to believe him. She told herself the only things that mattered right now in this moment: Nick was safe. Andrew was safe. The baby was safe. The ladder had saved them. The tunnel had saved them. The van had saved them.
Nick had saved them.
He’d made Jane keep up her training while she was in Berlin. So far away from everything, Jane had thought it was silly to go through the movements every morning, her hands whipping past each other, fists boxing out, as if she expected to go to war. The thing that had driven her most back in San Francisco was the pleasure of kicking Paula’s ass every time they sparred. With Paula gone, and in truth with Nick gone, Jane had found herself slipping—away from her resolve, away from the plan, away from Nick.
What have you been up to, my darling? he would ask across the scratchy, international telephone line.
Nothing, she would lie. I miss you too much to do more than sulk and mark the days off the calendar.
Jane did miss him, but only a certain part of him. The part that was charming. That was loving. That was pleased with her. That didn’t willfully, almost hedonistically, push everything to the breaking point.
What Jane had not realized until she was safely tucked away in Berlin was that for as long as she had been conscious of being alive, she had always had a ball of fear that slept inside of her stomach. For years, she had told herself that being neurotic was the bane of a solo artist’s success, but in truth, the thing that kept her walking carefully, self-censoring her words, conforming her emotions, was the heavy presence of the two men in her life. Sometimes Martin would wake her fear. Sometimes Nick. With their words. With their threats. With their hands. And sometimes, occasionally, with their fists.
In Berlin, for the first time in her memory, Jane had experienced what it was to live a life without fear.
She went to clubs. She danced with lanky, stoned German guys with tattoos on their hands. She attended concerts and art openings and underground political meetings. She sat in cafés arguing about Camus and smoking Gauloises and discussing the tragedy of the human condition. At a distance, Jane would sometimes catch a glimpse of what her life was supposed to be like. She was a world-class performer. She had worked for two decades to get to this place, this exalted position, and yet—
She had never been a child. She had never been a teenager. She had never been a young woman in her twenties. She had never really been single. She had belonged to her father, then Pechenikov and then Nick.
In Berlin, she had belonged to no one.
“Hey.” Nick snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Come back to us, my darling.”
Jane realized that they’d all been having a conversation without her.
Nick said, “We were talking about when to release Jasper’s files. After Chicago? After New York?”
Jane shook her head. “We can’t,” she told Nick. “Please. Enough people have been hurt.”
“Jane,” Andrew said. “We’re not doing this on a whim. People have been hurt, have died, over this. We can’t back out because we’ve lost our nerve. Not when they took a bullet for us.”
“Literally,” Nick said, as if Jane needed to be reminded. “Two people. Two bullets. Laura and Quarter really believed in what we’re doing. How can we let them down now?”
“I can’t,” she told them both. There was nothing more to add. She just couldn’t anymore.
“You’re exhausted, my love.” Nick tightened his arm around Jane’s waist, but he didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear: that they were going to stop now, that Jasper’s files would be destroyed, that they would find their way to Switzerland and try to atone for the damage they had done.
He said, “We should take turns sleeping.” Then he raised his voice so that Paula could hear. “I’ll fly to New York from Chicago. It’s too hot for me to go out of Sacramento. Paula, you’ll stay with your team and make sure they’re set for Chicago. We’ll coordinate times when we get to the safe house.”
Jane waited for Paula to chime in, but she was uncharacteristically silent.
“Jinx?” Andrew asked. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, but he could tell that she was lying. “I’m okay,” she repeated, unable to keep her voice from wavering.
Nick told Andrew, “Go sit with Penny. Keep her awake. Jane and I will sleep, then we’ll take the next shift.”
Jane wanted to tell him no, that Andrew should go first, but she hadn’t the energy and besides, Andrew was already struggling to his knees.
She watched her brother crawl to the front of the van. He sat beside Paula. Jane heard a groan come out of his mouth as he reached toward the radio. The news station was at a low murmur. They should’ve listened to it, but Andrew turned the knob until he found an oldies station.
Jane turned to Nick. “He needs a doctor.”
“We’ve got bigger problems than that.”
Jane knew instantly the problem he was talking about—not that things had gone sideways, but that Nick knew she was doubting him.
He said, “I told you what happened to Maplecroft was an accident.” His voice was so low that only Jane could hear him. “I went crazy when I saw what she’d done to your beautiful face.”
Jane touched her nose. The pain was instantaneous. So much had happened since that awful moment that she had forgotten about Maplecroft punching her.
Nick said, “I know I should’ve just grabbed her, or—something else. I don’t know what happened to me, darling. I just felt so angry. But I wasn’t out of control. Not completely. I promised you that I would never let that happen again.”
Again.
Jane tried not to think about the baby growing inside of her.
“Darling,” Nick said. “Tell me it’s okay. We’re okay. Tell me, please.”
Jane reluctantly nodded. She lacked the energy to argue otherwise.
“My love.”
He kissed her on the mouth with a surprising passion. She found herself unable to summon any desire as their tongues touched. Still, she wrapped her arms around him because she desperately needed to feel normal. They hadn’t made love in Oslo, even after three months of separation. They’d both been too anxious, then the shooting had happened and they were terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing, then they were back in San Francisco and he had left her alone until this morning. Jane hadn’t wanted him then, either, but she remembered keenly craving the after. To be held in his arms. To press her ear to his chest and listen to the steady, content beat of his heart. To tell him about the baby. To see the happiness in his expression.
He hadn’t been happy the first time.
“Come on, love.” Nick gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Jane let him pull her down to the futon mattress. His mouth went to her ear again, but only to brush his lips against her skin. He wrapped his body around hers. Legs intertwined, arms holding her close. He made a pillow for her head out of the crook of his elbow. Instead of feeling the usual sense of peace, Jane felt like she was trapped in place by an octopus.
She stared up at the ceiling of the van. She had no thoughts in her mind. She was too exhausted. Her body felt numb, but in a different way from before. She wasn’t being shot at or fretting about Danberry’s interrogation or mourning Martin or worrying that they would all get caught. She was looking at her future and realizing that she was never going to get out of this. Even if every facet of Nick’s plan worked, even if they managed to escape to Switzerland, Jane was always going to be living inside of a cartwheel.
Nick’s breathing started to slow. She could feel his body relax. Jane thought to slide out from his grasp, but she hadn’t the strength. Her eyelids began to flutter. She could almost taste every beat of her heart. She let herself give in to it, falling asleep for what she thought was just a moment, but they both woke up when Paula stopped at a gas station just inside the Nevada state line.
They were the only customers. The attendant inside barely glanced up from the television when they all climbed out of the van.
“Snacks?” Paula asked. No one answered, so she loped off to the store with her hands stuck into the pockets of the brown jacket.
Andrew worked the gas pump. He closed his eyes and leaned against the van as the tank started to fill.
Nick didn’t speak to anyone. He didn’t clap together his hands and try to rally the troops. He walked a few yards away from them. His hands were in his back pockets. He stared out at the road. Jane watched him look up at the sky, then out at the vast, brown landscape.
Everyone was subdued. Jane couldn’t tell if it was from shellshock or debilitating fatigue. There was an almost tangible feel among them that they had reached a point of no return. The giddy high they had foolishly experienced when they’d talked about being on the lam from the law, as if they were gangsters in a James Cagney movie, had been eviscerated by reality.
Nick was the only one who could reliably pull them out of free fall. Jane had seen it happen so many times before. Nick could walk into a room and instantly make everything better. She had witnessed it this morning at the shed. Andrew and Jane were quarreling with Paula, who was about to kill them all, then Nick had somehow turned them all into a single, working group again. Everyone looked to him for his strength, his surety of purpose.
His charisma.
Nick turned away from the road. His eyes skipped over Jane as he walked toward the bathrooms on the side of the building. His shoulders were slumped. His feet dragged across the asphalt. Her heart broke at the sight of him. Jane had only seen him like this a handful of times before, so stuck in a fugue of depression that he could barely lift his head.
It was her fault.
She had doubted him, the one betrayal that Nick could not abide. He was a man, not an all-seeing god. Yes, what had happened in the shed was terrible, but they were still alive. Nick had made that happen. He had designed drills and made sketches to map out their escape. He had insisted they practice until their arms and legs felt weak. To keep them safe. To keep them on track. To keep their spirits up and their minds focused and their hearts motivated. No one else had the ability to do all of those things.
And no one, especially Jane, had stopped to think what a toll these responsibilities were taking on him.
She followed Nick’s path to the men’s bathroom. She didn’t think about what she would find when she pushed open the door, but she felt sick with her own complicity when she saw Nick.
His hands were braced on the sink. His head was bent. When he looked up at Jane, tears were streaming from his eyes.
“I’ll be out in a minute.” He turned away, grabbing a handful of paper towels. “Maybe you could help Penny with—”
Jane wrapped her arms around him. She pressed her face to his back.
He laughed, but only at himself. “I seem to be falling apart.”
Jane squeezed him as tight as she dared.
His chest heaved as he took a shuddered breath. His arms covered hers. He shifted his weight into her and Jane held him up because that was what she did best.
“I love you,” she told him, kissing the back of his neck.
He misread her intentions. “Afraid I’m not up for any hijinks, my Jinx, but it means the world to me that you’re offering.”
She loved him even more for trying to sound like his old, confident self. She made him turn around. She put her hands on his shoulders the same way he always did with everyone else. She put her mouth to his ear the same way he only did with her. She said the three words that mattered most to him, not I love you, but—
“I’m with you.”
Nick blinked, then he laughed, embarrassed by his obvious swell of emotion. “Really?”
“Really.” Jane kissed him on the lips, and inexplicably, everything felt right. His arms around her. His heart beating against hers. Even standing in the filthy men’s room felt right.
“My love,” she said. Over and over again. “My only love.”
Andrew was fast asleep in the passenger’s seat when they got back to the van. Paula was too wired to do anything but keep driving. Nick helped Jane into the back. He did the same thing as before, wrapping his arms and legs around her as they lay on the futon. This time, Jane curled into him. Instead of closing her eyes to sleep, she started talking—mundane nonsense at first, like the feeling of joy the first time she had nailed a performance, or the excitement of a standing ovation. She wasn’t bragging. She was giving Nick context because nothing compared to the absolute elation Jane had experienced the first time Nick had kissed her, the first time they had made love, the first time she’d realized that he belonged to her.
Because Nick did belong to her, just as surely as Jane belonged to him.
She told him how her heart had floated up like a hot-air balloon when she’d first seen him roughhousing with Andrew in the front hall. How her spirits had soared when Nick had walked into the kitchen, kissed her, then backed away like a thief. Then she told Nick how much she had ached for him in Berlin. How she had missed the taste of his mouth. How nothing she did could chase away the longing she’d had for his touch.
Then they were in Wyoming, then Nebraska, then Utah, then finally Illinois.
Over the twenty-eight remaining hours it took to drive to the outskirts of Chicago, Jane spent almost every waking moment telling Nick how much she loved him.
She was a yo-yo. She was Patricia Hearst. She had drunk the Kool-Aid. She was taking orders from her neighbor’s dog.
Jane did not care if she was in a cult or if Nick was Donald DeFreeze. Actually, she no longer cared about the plan. Her part was over, anyway. The other cell members were on the frontlines now. Of course, she still felt outraged by the atrocities committed by her father and older brother. She mourned Laura and Robert Juneau’s loss. She felt bad for what had happened to Quarter and Alexandra Maplecroft in the shed. But Jane did not really have to believe in what they were doing or why.
All she had to do was believe in Nick.
“Turn left up here,” Paula said. She was kneeling behind the driver’s seat. She put her hand on Jane’s shoulder, which was alarming because Paula never touched except to hurt. “Look for a driveway on the right. It’s kind of hidden in the trees.”
Jane saw the driveway a few yards later. She put on the turn signal even though the van was the only vehicle for miles.
Paula punched Jane’s arm. “Dumb bitch.”
Jane listened to her disappear into the back of the van. Paula’s mood had lifted because Nick’s mood had lifted. The same had happened with Andrew. The effect was magical. The moment they had seen Nick’s easy grin, any feelings of worry or doubt had vanished.
Jane had made that happen.
“Jinx?” Andrew stirred in the passenger’s seat as the tires bumped onto the gravel driveway.
“We’re here.” Jane let out a slow sigh of relief as they cleared the stand of trees. The farm was just as she had pictured it from Andrew’s coded letters. Cows grazed in the pasture. A huge, red barn loomed over a quaint, one-story house that was painted a matching color. Daisies were planted in the yard. There was a small patch of grass and a white picket fence. This was the sort of happy place you could raise a child.
Jane rested her hand on her stomach.
“Okay?” Andrew asked.
She looked at her brother. The sleep had done him no good. Improbably, he looked worse than before. “Should I be worried?”
“Absolutely not.” His smile was unconvincing. He told her, “We’ll be able to rest here. To be safe.”
“I know,” Jane said, but she would not feel safe until Nick returned from New York.
The front tire hit a rut in the gravel drive. Jane winced as tree limbs lashed the side of the van. She almost said a prayer of thanks when she finally parked beside two cars in front of the barn.
“Hello, Chicago!” Nick called as he slid open the side door. He jumped to the ground. He stretched his arms and arched his back, his face looking up at the sky. “My God, it’s good to be out of that tin box.”
“No shit.” Paula groaned as she tried to stretch. She was only a few years older than Nick, but rage had curled her body in on itself.
Jane sighed again as her feet touched solid ground. The air was sharp, the temperature considerably lower than what they had left in California. She rubbed her arms to warm them as she looked out at the horizon. The sun hung heavy over the treetops. She guessed it was around four o’clock in the afternoon. She didn’t know what day it was, where they were exactly, or what was going to happen next, but she was so relieved to be out of the van that she could’ve cried.
“Stay here.” Paula stomped toward the house. Her boots kicked up a cloud of dust. She had taken off her fingerless gloves, wiped the black charcoal from under her eyes. The back of her hair corkscrewed into a cowlick. The hem of her shift was filthy. Like the rest of them, she had slashes of blood on her clothes.
Jane looked past her to the farmhouse. She wasn’t going to think about the blood anymore. She was either with Nick or she wasn’t.
All or none; the Queller way.
The front door opened. A small woman stood with a shawl wrapped around her narrow shoulders. Beside her, a tall man with long hair and an elaborate, handlebar mustache held a shotgun in his hands. He saw Paula, but did not lower the gun until she placed a penny in the palm of the woman’s open hand.
This was Nick’s idea. Penny, nickel, quarter, dime—each representing a cell, each cell using the coins as a way of indicating to each other that it was safe to talk. Nick delighted in the play on their name, the Army of the Changing World. He’d made them all dress in black, even down to their underwear, and stand in a line like soldiers as he placed a coin in each of their hands to designate their code names.
The jackass didn’t know the word “symbiotic,” so he made up the word “symbionese.”
Jane gritted her teeth as she banished Danberry’s words from her mind.
She had made her choice.
“I don’t know about you, troops, but I’m starving.” Nick looped his arm around Andrew’s shoulders. “Andy, what about you? Is it feed a cold and starve a fever, or the other way around?”
“I think it’s give them both whisky and sleep in a real bed.” Andrew trudged toward the house, Nick beside him. They were both noticeably exhausted, but Nick’s energy was carrying them through, just as it always did.
Jane did not follow them toward the house. She wanted to stretch her legs and look at the farm. The thought of a moment alone in the silence appealed to her. She had grown up in the city. The Hillsborough house was too close to the airport to be called the country. While other girls Jane’s age learned horseback riding and attended Girl Scout retreats, she was sitting in front of her piano for five and six hours at a time, trying to sharpen the fine motor movements of her fingers.
Her hand, as always, found its way to her stomach.
Would her daughter play the piano?
Jane wondered how she was so certain that the child was a girl. She wanted to name her something wonderful, not plain Jane or silly Jinx or the cartoony Janey that Nick sometimes called her. She wanted to give the girl all of her strengths and none of her weaknesses. To make sure that she did not pass on that sleeping ball of fear to her precious child.
She stopped at the wooden fence. Two white horses were grazing in the field. She smiled as they nuzzled each other.
Andrew and Jane would be here for at least a week, maybe more. When Nick got back from New York, they would lie low for another week before crossing into Canada. Switzerland was their dream, but what would it feel like to raise her baby on a farm like this one? To walk her to the end of the driveway and wait for the school bus? Hide Easter eggs in bales of hay? Take the horses out into the field and lay a picnic—Jane, her baby, and Nick.
Next time, Nick told her the last time. We’ll keep it next time.
“Hello.” The thin woman with the shawl called to Jane. She was making her way past the barn. “I’m sorry to bother you. They’re asking for you. Tucker can move the van into the barn. Spinner and Wyman are already inside.”
Jane gave a solemn nod. The lieutenants in each cell had all been assigned code names from past Secretaries of the United States Treasury. When Nick had first told Jane the idea, she had struggled not to laugh. Now, she could see that the cloak and dagger had been for a reason. The identities of the Stanford cell had died with Quarter.
“Oh,” the woman had stopped in her tracks, her mouth rounded in surprise.
Jane was just as shocked to see the familiar face. They had never met before, but she knew Clara Bellamy from magazines and newspapers and posters outside the State Theater at Lincoln Center. She was a prima ballerina, one of Balanchine’s last shining stars, until a debilitating knee injury had forced her into retirement.
“Well now.” Clara resumed walking toward Jane with a grin on her face. “You must be Dollar Bill.”
Another necessary part of spycraft. She told Clara, “We decided calling me ‘DB’ is easier than Dollar Bill. Penny thinks it stands for ‘Dumb Bitch.’”
“That’s Penny for you.” Clara had easily picked up on Paula’s prickliness. “Nice to meet you, DB. They call me Selden.”
Jane shook the woman’s hand. Then she laughed to let her know she recognized that the two of them meeting on a secluded farm outside of Chicago was wild.
“It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?” Clara looped her arm through Jane’s as they slowly headed toward the farmhouse. There was a slight limp to her walk. “I saw you at Carnegie three years ago. Brought me to tears. Mozart’s Concerto Number 24 in C Minor, I believe.”
Jane felt her lips curve into a smile. She loved it when people really loved music.
Clara said, “That green dress was amazing.”
“I thought the shoes were going to kill me.”
She smiled in commiseration. “I remember it was right after Horowitz’s Japan concert. To see a man who’s so accomplished fail so spectacularly—you must’ve been on pins and needles when you walked onto that stage.”
“I wasn’t.” Jane was surprised by her own honesty, but someone like Clara Bellamy would understand. “Every note I played came with this sense of déjà vu, as if I had already played it perfectly.”
“A fait accompli.” Clara nodded her understanding. “I lived for those moments. They never happened often enough. Makes you understand drug addicts, doesn’t it?” She had stopped walking. “That was your last classical performance, wasn’t it? Why did you give it up?”
Jane was too ashamed to answer. Clara Bellamy had stopped dancing because she had no choice. She wouldn’t understand choosing to walk away.
Clara offered, “Pechenikov put it around that you lacked ambition. They always say that about women, but that can’t be the truth. I saw your face when you performed. You weren’t just playing the music. You were the music.”
Jane looked past Clara’s shoulder to the house. She had wanted to keep her spirits up for Nick, but the reminder of her lost performing life brought back her tears. She had loved playing classical, then she had loved the energy of jazz, then she’d had to find a way to love being alone inside a studio with no feedback from anyone but the chain-smoking man on the other side of the soundproofed glass.
“Jane?”
She shook her head, dismissing her grief as a foolish luxury. As usual, she told a version of the truth that the listener could relate to. “I used to think my father was proud of me when I played. Then one day, I realized that everything I did, every award and gig and newspaper or magazine story reflected well on him. That’s what he got out of it. Not admiration for me, but admiration for himself.”
Clara nodded her understanding. “I had a mother like that. But you won’t give it up for long.” Without warning, she pressed her palm to Jane’s round belly. “You’ll want to play for her.”
Jane felt a narrowing in her throat. “How did—”
“Your face.” She stroked Jane’s cheek. “It’s so much fuller than in your photos. And you have this bump in your belly, of course. You’re carrying high, which is why I assumed it was a girl. Nick must be—”
“You can’t tell him.” Jane’s hand flew to her mouth as if she could claw back the desperation in her tone. “He doesn’t know yet. I need to find the right time.”
Clara seemed surprised, but she nodded. “I get it. What you guys are going through, it’s not easy. You want some space around it before you tell him.”
Jane forced a change in subject. “How did you get involved with the group?”
“Edwin—” Clara laughed, then corrected herself. “Tucker, I mean. He met Paula while they were both at Stanford. He was in law school. She was in poly-sci. Had a bit of a fling, I expect. But he’s mine now.”
Jane tried to hide her surprise. She couldn’t see Paula as a student, let alone having a fling. “He’s handling any legal issues that come up?”
“That’s right. Nick is lucky to have him. Tucker dealt with some nasty contract problems for me when my knee blew out. We kind of hit it off. I’ve always been a sucker for a man with interesting facial hair. Anyway, Paula introduced Tucker to Nick, I mean, Nickel. Tucker introduced Nickel to me, and, well, you know how it is when you meet Nick. You believe every word that comes out of his mouth. It’s a good thing he didn’t try to sell me a used car.”
Jane laughed because Clara laughed.
Clara said, “I’m not a true believer. I mean, yeah, I get what you’re doing and of course it’s important, but I’m a big chicken when it comes to putting myself on the line. I’d rather write some checks and provide safe harbor.”
“Don’t dismiss what you’re doing. Your contributions are still important.” Jane felt like she was channeling Nick, but they all had to do their part. “More important, actually, because you keep us safe.”
“Lord, you do sound like him.”
“Do I?” Jane knew that she did. This was the cost of giving herself to Nick. She was starting to become him.
“I want lots of babies,” Clara said. “I couldn’t when I was dancing, but now”—she indicated the farm—“I bought this so I can raise my kids here. To let them grow up happy, and safe. Edwin’s learning to take care of the cows. I’m learning to cook. That’s why I’m helping Nick. I want to help make a better place for my children. Our children.”
Jane studied the woman’s face for a tell-tale grin.
“I really believe that, Jane. I’m not just blowing smoke up your ass. It’s exciting to be a part of it, even on the periphery. And I’m not taking a big risk, but there’s still a risk. One or all of you could end up in an interrogation room. Imagine the kind of press you could get for pointing the finger at me.” She gave a startled laugh. “Do you know, I’m sort of jealous, because I think you’re more famous than I am, so I’m already hating you for hogging all of the press.”
Jane didn’t laugh because she had been in the spotlight long enough to know that the woman was not really joking.
“Edwin thinks we’ll be okay. I set great store by his opinion.”
“Do you—” Jane stopped herself, because she had been about to say the exact wrong thing.
Do you know that Quarter got shot? That Maplecroft was killed? What if the buildings aren’t really empty? What if we kill a security guard or a policeman? What if what we’re doing is wrong?
“Do I what?” Clara asked.
“Cough medicine,” Jane said, the first thing that came to mind. “Do you have any? My brother—”
“Poor Andy. He’s really gone downhill, hasn’t it?” Clara frowned in sympathy. “It’s come as quite a shock. But we’ve both seen it happen so many times before, haven’t we? You can’t be in the arts without knowing dozens of extraordinary men who are infected.”
Infected?
“Jinx?” Nick was standing at the open front door. “Are you coming in? You need to see this. Both of you.”
Clara hastened her step.
Jane could barely find the strength to lift her legs.
Her mouth had gone dry. Her heart was jerking inside of her chest. She struggled to maintain the forward momentum. Up the front walk. The stairs to the porch. To the front door. Into the house.
Infected?
Inside, Jane had to lean against the wall, to lock her knees so that she did not collapse. The numbness was back. Her muscles were liquid.
We’ve both seen it happen so many times before.
Jane had known so many young, vigorous men who had coughed like Andrew was coughing. Who had looked sick the same way that Andrew looked sick. Same pale skin tone. Same heavy droop to his eyelids. A jazz saxophonist, a first chair cellist, a tenor, an opera singer, a dancer, another dancer, and another—
All dead.
“Come, darling.” Nick waved Jane into the room.
They were all gathered around the television. Paula was on the couch beside the man who was probably Tucker. The two others, Spinner and Wyman, a woman and man respectively, sat in folding chairs. Clara sat on the floor because dancers always sat on the floor.
“Andrew’s asleep.” Nick was on his knees, adjusting the volume on the set. “It’s amazing, Jinx. Apparently, they’ve been doing special reports for the last two days.”
Jane saw his mouth move, but it was as if the sound was traveling through water.
Nick sat back on his heels, elated by their notoriety.
Jane watched because everyone else was watching.
Dan Rather was reporting on the events in San Francisco. The camera cut to a reporter standing outside the Victorian house that fronted the shed.
The man said, “According to sources from the FBI, listening devices helped them ascertain that Alexandra Maplecroft had already been murdered by the conspirators. The likely culprit is their leader, Nicholas Harp. Andrew Queller was joined by a second woman who helped them escape through an adjacent building.”
Jane flinched when she saw first Nick’s face, then Andrew’s, flash up. Paula was represented by a shadowy outline with a question mark in the center. Jane closed her eyes. She summoned the photo of Andrew that she had just seen. One year ago, at least. His cheeks were ruddy. A jaunty scarf was tied around his neck. A birthday party, or some kind of celebration? He looked happy, vibrant, alive.
She opened her eyes.
The television reporter said, “The question now is whether Jinx Queller is another hostage or a willing accomplice. Back to you in New York, Dan.”
Dan Rather stacked together his papers on the top of his news desk. “William Argenis Johnson, another conspirator, was shot by snipers while trying to escape. A married father of two who worked as a graduate student at Stanford Uni—”
Nick turned off the volume. He did not look at Jane.
“William Johnson.” She whispered the words aloud because she did not understand.
His name was Leonard Brandt. No children. Never married. He lived alone at 1239 Van Duff Street. He worked as a carpenter over in Marin.
“A fucking question mark?” Paula demanded. “That’s all I rate is a fucking question mark?” She stood up, started to pace. “Meanwhile, poor Jinx Queller gets off scot fucking free. How about I write them a fucking letter and tell them you’re fucking willing and able and ready? Would that make you happy, Dumb Bitch?”
“Penny,” Nick said. “We don’t have time for this. Troops, listen to me. We have to move everything up. This is bigger than even I had hoped for. Where are we with Chicago?”
“The bombs are ready,” Spinner said, as if she was telling them that she’d just put dinner on the table. “All we have to do is plant them in the underground parking garage, then be within fifty feet of the building when we press the button on the remote.”
“Fantastic!” Nick clapped together his hands. He was bouncing on the toes of his feet, amping them all back up again. “It should be the same with the explosives in New York. I’ll rest here a few hours, then start driving. Even without my photo on the news, the FBI will heighten security at the airports. I’m not sure my ID will hold up to that kind of scrutiny.”
Wyman said, “The forger in Toronto—”
“Is expensive. We blew our wad on Maplecroft’s credentials because none of this would’ve mattered without Laura getting into that conference.” Nick rubbed his hands together. Jane could almost see his brain working. This was the part he had always loved, not the planning, but holding them all rapt. “Nebecker and Huston are waiting for me at the safe house in Brooklyn. We’ll drive the van into the city after rush hour, plant the devices, then go back the following morning and set them off.”
Paula asked, “When do you want my team to set up?”
“Tomorrow morning.” Nick watched their faces as realization set in. “Don’t set up, do it. Plant the explosives first thing in the morning before anyone shows up for work, get as far away as you can, then blow the motherfucker down.”
“Fuck yeah!” Paula raised her fist into the air. The others joined in.
“We’re doing this, troops!” Nick shouted to be heard over the din. “We’re going to make them stand up and take notice! We have to tear down the system before we can make it better.”
“Damn right!” Wyman shouted.
“Hell yeah!” Paula was still pacing. She was like an animal ready to break out of her cage. “We’re gonna show those motherfucking pigs!”
Jane looked around the room. They were all wound up the same way, clapping their hands, stomping their feet, whooping as if they were watching a football game.
Tucker said, “Hey! Listen! Just listen!” He’d stood up, hands raised for attention. This was Edwin, Clara’s lover. With his handlebar mustache and wavy hair, he looked more like Friedrich Nietzsche than a lawyer, but Nick trusted him, so they all trusted him.
He said, “Remember, you have a legal right to refuse to answer any and all questions from law enforcement. Ask the pigs, ‘Am I under arrest?’ If they say no, then walk away. If they say yes, shut your mouth—not just to the pigs, but to everybody, especially on the phone. Make sure you have my number memorized. You have a legal right to call your lawyer. Clara and I will be in the city standing by in case I need to go to the jail.”
“Good man, Tuck, but it’s not going to come to that. And fuck taking a rest. I’m leaving now!”
There was another round of whooping and cheering.
Nick was grinning like a fool. He told Clara, “Go wake up Dime. I’ll need someone to help swap out the driving. It’s only twelve hours, but I think—”
“No,” Jane said. But she hadn’t said it. She had shouted it.
The ensuing silence felt like a needle scratching off a record. Jane had ruined the game. No one was smiling anymore.
“Christ,” Paula said. “Are you going to start whining again?”
Jane ignored her.
Nick was all that mattered. He looked confused, probably because he’d never heard Jane say no before.
“No,” she repeated. “Andrew can’t. You can’t ask him to do anything more. He did his part. Oslo was our part, and it’s over and—” She was crying again, but this was different from the last week of crying. She wasn’t grieving over something that had already happened. She was grieving over something that was going to happen very soon.
Jane saw it so clearly now—every sign she had missed in the months, the days, before. Andrew’s sudden chills. The exhaustion. The weakness. The sores in his mouth that he’d mentioned in passing. The stomach aches. The weird rash on his wrist.
Infection.
“Jinx?” Nick was waiting. They were all waiting.
Jane walked down the hallway. She’d never been in the house before, so she had to open and close several doors before she finally found the bedroom where Andrew was sleeping.
Her brother was lying face-down in bed, fully clothed. He hadn’t bothered to undress or get under the covers or even take off his shoes. Jane put her hand to his back. She waited for the up and down of his breathing before she allowed herself to take in her own breath.
She gently slid off his shoes. Carefully rolled him onto his back.
Andrew groaned, but didn’t wake. His breath was raspy through his chapped lips. His skin was the color of paper. She could see the blue and red of his veins and arteries as easily as if she had been looking at a diagram. She unbuttoned his shirt partway down and saw the deep purple lesions on his skin. Kaposi’s sarcoma. There were probably more lesions in his lungs, his throat, maybe even his brain.
Jane sat down on the bed.
She had lasted no more than six months volunteering at UCSF’s AIDS ward. Watching so many men walk through the doors knowing that they would never walk out had proven to be too overwhelming. Jane had thought that the rattle in their chests as they gasped for their last breaths would be the worst sound that she would ever hear.
Until now, when she heard the same sounds coming from her brother.
Jane carefully buttoned his shirt back up.
There was a blue afghan on the back of a rocking chair. She draped it over her brother. She kissed his forehead. He felt so cold. His hands. His feet. She tucked the afghan around his body. She stroked the side of his pale face.
Jane had been seventeen years old when she’d found the old cigar box in the glove box of Andrew’s car. She’d thought she’d caught him stealing Martin’s cigars, but then she had opened the lid and gasped out loud. A plastic cigarette lighter. A bent silver teaspoon from one of her mother’s precious sets. Stained cotton balls. The bottom of a Coke can. A handful of filthy Q-tips. A tube of skin cream squeezed in the middle. A length of rubber tubing for a tourniquet. Insulin syringes with black dots of blood staining the tips of the sharp needles. Tiny rocks of debris that she recognized from her years backstage as tar heroin.
Andrew had given it up eighteen months ago. After meeting Laura. After Nick had developed a plan.
But it was too late.
“Jinx?” Nick was standing in the doorway. He nodded for her to come into the hall.
Jane walked past Nick and went into the bathroom. She wrapped her arms around her waist, shivering. The room was large and cold. A cast iron tub was underneath the leaky window. The toilet was the old-fashioned type with the tank mounted high above the bowl.
Just like the one in Oslo.
“All right.” Nick closed the door behind him. “What’s got you so worked up, Ms. Queller?”
Jane looked at her reflection in the mirror. She saw her face, but it wasn’t her face. The bridge of her nose was almost black. Dried blood caked the nostrils. What was she feeling? She couldn’t tell anymore.
Uncomfortably numb.
“Jinx?”
She turned away from the mirror. She looked at Nick. His face, but not his face. Their connection, but not really a connection. He had lied about knowing Quarter’s name. He had lied about their future. He had lied every time that he had pretended that her brother was not dying.
And now, he had the audacity to look at his watch. “What is it, Jinx? We haven’t much time.”
“Time?” she had to repeat the word to truly understand the cruelty. “You’re worried about time?”
“Jane—”
“You robbed me.” Her throat felt so tight that she could barely speak. “You stole from me.”
“Love, what are you—”
“I could’ve been here with my brother, but you sent me away. Thousands of miles away.” Jane clenched her hands. She knew what she was feeling now: rage. “You’re a liar. Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie.”
“Andy was—”
She slapped him hard across the face. “He’s sick!” She screamed the words so loud that her throat ached. “My brother has AIDS, and you sent me to fucking Germany.”
Nick touched his fingers to his cheek. He looked down at his open hand.
He’d been slapped before. Over the years, he’d told Jane about the abuse he’d suffered as a child. The prostitute mother. The absent father. The violent grandmother. The year of homelessness. The disgusting things people had wanted him to do. The self-loathing and hate and the fear that it would happen no matter how hard he tried to run away.
Jane understood the emotions all too well. From the age of eight, she had known what it was like to desperately want to run away. From Martin’s hand clamping over her mouth in the middle of the night. From all the times he grabbed the back of her head and pressed her face into the pillow.
Which Nick had known about.
Which is why his stories were so effective. Jane saw it happen over and over again with every person he met. He mirrored your darkest fear with stories of his own.
That’s how Nick got you: he inserted himself into the common ground.
Now, he simply asked, “What do you want me to say, Jinx? Yes, Andy has AIDS. Yes, I knew about it when you left for Berlin.”
“Is Ellis-Anne . . .” Jane’s voice trailed off. Andrew’s girlfriend of two years. So sweet and devoted. She had called every day since Oslo. “Is she positive, too?”
“She’s fine. She took the ELISA test last month.” Nick’s tone was filled with authority and reason, the same as it had been when he’d lied about Quarter’s real name.
He told Jane, “Listen, you’re right about all of this. And it’s horrible. I know Andrew is close to the end. I know that having him out here is likely causing him to spiral down faster. And I’ve been so worried about him, but I have the whole group depending on me, expecting me to lead them and—I can’t let myself think about it. I have to look ahead, otherwise I’d just curl into a useless ball of grief. I can’t do that, and neither can you, because I need you, darling. Everyone thinks I’m so strong, but I’m only strong when you’re standing beside me.”
Jane could not believe he was giving her one of his rallying speeches. “You know how they die, Nick. You’ve heard the stories. Ben Mitchell—do you remember him?” Jane’s voice lowered as if she was saying a sacrament. “I took care of him on the ward, but then his parents finally said it was okay for him to come home to die. They took him to the hospital and none of the nurses would touch him because they were afraid of getting infected. Do you remember me telling you about it? They wouldn’t even give him morphine. Do you remember?”
Nick’s face was impassive. “I remember.”
“He suffocated on the fluid inside his lungs. It took almost eight agonizing minutes for him to die, and Ben was awake for every single second of it.” She waited, but Nick said nothing. “He was terrified. He kept trying to scream, clawing at his neck, begging people to help. No one would help him. His own mother had to leave the room. Do you remember that story, Nick? Do you?”
He only said, “I remember.”
“Is that what you want for Andrew?” She waited, but again, he said nothing. “He’s coughing the same way Ben did. The same way Charlie Bray did. The same thing happened to him. Charlie went home to Florida and—”
“You don’t have to give me a play-by-play, Jinx. I told you: I remember the stories. Yes, how they died was horrible. All of it was horrible. But we don’t have a choice.”
She wanted to shake him. “Of course we have a choice.”
“It was Andy’s idea to send you to Berlin.”
Jane knew he was telling the truth, just as she knew that Nick was a surgeon when it came to transplanting his ideas onto other people’s tongues.
Nick said, “He thought if you knew he was sick, that you would . . . I don’t know, Jinx. Do something stupid. Make us stop. Make everything stop. He believes in this thing that we’re doing. He wants us to finish it. That’s why I’m taking him to Brooklyn. You can come too. Take care of him. Keep him alive long enough to—”
“Stop.” She couldn’t listen to his bullshit. “I am not going to let my brother suffocate to death in the back of that filthy van.”
“It’s not about his life anymore,” Nick insisted. “It’s about his legacy. This is how Andy wants to go out. On his own terms, like a man. That’s what he’s always wanted. The overdoses, the hanging, the pills and needles, showing up in places he shouldn’t be, hanging out with the wrong people. You know what hell his life has been. He got clean for this thing that we’re doing—that we’re all doing. This is what gave him the strength to stop using, Jane. Don’t take that away from him.”
She gripped her fists in frustration. “He’s doing it for you, Nick. All it would take is one word from you and he’d go to the hospital where he can die in peace.”
“You know him better than me?”
“I know you better. Andy wants to please you. They all want to please you. But this is different. It’s cruel. He’ll suffocate like—”
“Yes, Jane, I get it. He’ll suffocate on the fluids in his lungs. He’ll have eight minutes of agonizing terror, and that’s—well, agonizing—but you need to listen to me very carefully, darling, because this part is very important,” Nick said. “You have to choose between him or me.”
What?
“If Andy can’t make the trip with me, then you need to go with me in his place.”
What?
“I can’t trust you anymore.” Nick’s shoulder went up in a shrug. “I know how your mind works. The minute I leave, you’ll take Andy to the hospital. You’ll stay with him because that’s what you do, Jinx. You stay with people. You’ve always been loyal, sitting with homeless men down at the shelter, helping serve soup at the mission, wiping spittle from the mouths of dying men at the infection ward. I won’t say you’re a good little dog, because that’s cruel. But your loyalty to Andrew will land us all in prison, because the moment you walk into the hospital, the police will arrest you, and they’ll know we’re in Chicago, and I can’t let that happen.”
She felt her mouth gape open.
“I’ll only give you this one chance. You have to choose right here, right now: him or me.”
Jane felt the room shift. This couldn’t be happening.
He looked at her coldly, as if she was a specimen under glass. “You must have known it would come to this, Jane. You’re naïve, but you’re not stupid.” Nick waited a moment. “Choose.”
She had to rest her hand on the sink so that she wouldn’t slide to the floor. “He’s your best friend.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “He’s my brother.”
“I need your decision.”
Jane heard a high-pitched sound in her ears, as if her skull had been struck by a tuning fork. She didn’t know what was happening. Panic made her words brim with fear. “Are you leaving me? Breaking up with me?”
“I said me or him. It’s your choice, not mine.”
“Nick, I can’t—” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Was this a test? Was he doing what he always did, gauging her loyalty? “I love you.”
“Then choose me.”
“I—you know you’re everything to me. I’ve given up—” She held out her arms, indicating the world, because there was nothing left that she had not abandoned for him. Her father. Jasper. Her life. Her music. “Please, don’t make me choose. He’s dying.”
Nick stared at her, icy cold.
Jane felt a wail come out of her mouth. She knew how Nick looked when he was finished with a person. Six years of her life, her heart, her love, was evaporating in front of her eyes. How could he so easily throw it all away? “Nicky, please—”
“Andrew’s impending death should make your choice easy. A few more hours with a dying man or the rest of your life with me.” He waited. “Choose.”
“Nick—” Another sob cut her off. She felt like she was dying. He couldn’t leave her. Not now. “It’s not just a few more hours. It’s hours of terror, or—” Jane couldn’t think about what Andrew would go through if he was abandoned. “You can’t mean this. I know you’re just testing me. I love you. Of course I love you. I told you I’m with you.”
Nick reached for the door.
“Please!” Jane grabbed him by the front of his shirt. He turned away his head when she tried to kiss him. Jane pressed her face to his chest. She was crying so hard that she could barely speak. “Please, Nicky. Please don’t make me choose. You know that I can’t live without you. I’m nothing without you. Please!”
“Then you’ll go with me?”
She looked up at him. She had cried so hard for so long that her eyelids felt like barbed wire.
“I need you to say it, Jane. I need to hear your choice.”
“I c-can’t—” she stuttered out the word. “Nick, I can’t—”
“You can’t choose?”
“No.” The realization almost stopped her heart. “I can’t leave him.”
Nick’s face gave nothing away.
“I—” Jane could barely swallow. Her mouth had gone dry. She was terrified, but she knew that what she was doing was right. “I will not let my brother die alone.”
“All right.” Nick reached for the door again, but then something changed his mind.
For just a moment, she thought that he was going to tell her it was okay.
But he didn’t.
His hands shot out. He shoved Jane across the room. Her head whipped back, broke the glass out of the window.
She was dumbstruck. She felt the back of her head, expecting to find blood. “Why did—”
Nick punched her in the stomach.
Jane collapsed to her knees. Bile erupted from her mouth. She tasted blood. Her stomach spasmed so hard that she doubled over, her forehead touching the floor.
Nick grabbed her hair, jerked her head back up. He was kneeling in front of her. “What did you think would happen after we did this, Janey, that we would run off to a little flat in Switzerland and raise our baby?”
The baby—
“Look at me.” His fingers wrapped around her neck. He shook her like a doll. “Were you stupid enough to think I’d let you keep it? That I’d turn into some fat old man who reads the Sunday paper while you do the dishes and we talk about Junior’s class project?”
Jane couldn’t breathe. Her fingernails dug into his wrists. He was choking her.
“Don’t you understand that I know everything about you, Jinx? We’ve never been whole people. We only make sense when we’re together.” He tightened his grip with both hands. “Nothing can come between us. Not a whining baby. Not your dying brother. Nothing. Do you hear me?”
She clawed at him, desperate for air. He banged her head against the wall.
“I’ll kill you before I let you leave me.” He looked her in the eye, and Jane knew that this time, Nick was telling the truth. “You belong to me, Jinx Queller. If you ever try to leave me, I will scorch the earth to get you back. Do you understand?” He shook her again. “Do you?”
His hands were too tight. Jane felt a darkness edging around her vision. Her lungs shuddered. Her tongue would not stay inside of her mouth.
“Look at me.” Nick’s face was glowing with sweat. His eyes were on fire. He was smiling his usual self-satisfied grin. “How does it feel to suffocate, darling? Is it everything you imagined?”
Her eyelids started to flutter. For the first time in days, Jane’s vision was clear. There were no more tears left.
Nick had taken them away, just like he had taken everything else.