Julie Clark - The Last Flight

“You’d better answer that,” he said.

It was from Dex.

Are we set for six? Where do you want to meet?

She showed it to Agent Castro. “Stick to public places where my people can blend in,” he advised. “From now on, I don’t want you to be alone with him, or anywhere we can’t get to you quickly. No more sports arenas, no more deserted parks. My team will stay on you until we can get the wire set up. One, two days, tops.”

Eva took her phone back and, with trembling fingers, typed: O’Brien’s? I’m starving.

She imagined driving back to Berkeley and sitting across the table from Dex, forcing herself to act normal while she waited for Castro to line up his fucking wire guy.

Castro must have sensed her rising panic because he said, “You’re going to be okay. Just stick to your routine and do everything you normally would. Make the drugs, meet with Dex. Don’t give him any reason to be alarmed.”

Through the window, Eva could see fog rolling in, the bright orange of the bridge fading before her eyes, and she worried that would happen to her. She’d grow so faint, she would disappear from the page and no one would know she’d been there at all.

The restaurant hummed with conversation, the sound of cutlery against dishes filling her ears, the whole world moving around her while she stood still. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

Castro’s eyes softened with sympathy. “You really don’t.”

* * *

Eva was halfway across the Bay Bridge when she began to hyperventilate, cars on all sides, inching forward, funneling her toward an inevitable outcome. No fucking way could she do this.

She imagined herself driving north—passing the off-ramp to Berkeley, past Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle. She looked in her rearview mirror and studied the people in the cars behind her. Which ones were Castro’s? Whoever was keeping an eye on her would never let her get that far.

* * *

At home, she packed quickly, only taking the essentials, leaving the house as it was. If anyone came looking for her, she wanted it to appear as if she’d just stepped out. That she’d be back any minute. She thought of her lab downstairs, the tools and ingredients, the evidence she’d gathered for Castro, and decided to leave it. Eventually, he’d show up looking for her, and he was welcome to all of it. She was no longer going to play by anyone else’s rules.

Eva’s plan was to park near O’Brien’s. Appear to be on her way to meet Dex, and then slip down into the BART station and catch the first train that came. To make her way back into San Francisco, pay cash for a bus ticket to Sacramento, and then figure out how to keep going. North, and then further north still, until she reached the border.

But the sight of Liz’s glass bluebird ornament on her dresser caused her to pull up short. She picked it up, running her finger over the swirls of blue, the delicate beak, the edges of the wings. The only thing that was ever given to her out of love. From the only person who ever truly cared about her.

Eva thought about Wade, who had promised to take the blame. Dex, who pretended to be someone he wasn’t so he could better manipulate her. And Castro, who expected her to do the impossible, but giving her nothing she needed in return. Men who made promises they never intended to keep. People like Eva were always going to be collateral damage.

And then there was Liz, who saw the very best version of herself. She felt the outline of Liz’s letter still in her pocket. When you share your problems with someone else, your load gets lighter. Like a rat in a maze, Eva’s path was narrowing, leading her toward the only person she could trust.

Eva grabbed her emergency cash—five thousand dollars—and packed her computer, leaving her compromised cell phone on the counter. Then she slipped out of the house, still gripping the glass bluebird in her fist.

* * *

The first train that arrived was crowded. She waited until the doors were closing before jumping on, looking toward the platform for any sign someone was following her. She imagined Castro’s agents above her, moving out in an ever-widening circle with her car at the center, parked at a meter on Shattuck, wondering where she went. What happened to her.

Eva scanned the faces of the people around her, silently discarding a man sleeping in a corner and a couple huddled over an iPad, deep in conversation. But there was a woman directly across from her that Eva caught glancing at her as the train hurled south, toward Oakland. She had a magazine open, but as Eva studied the ads above the woman’s head, waiting for her to turn the page of her magazine, the woman remained motionless.

At the next stop, Eva waited until the last second to slip off the train, and watched the woman, still reading, slide past her and into the dark tunnel. She huddled in a corner of the station, her bag slung over her shoulder, watching commuters board and exit trains before picking another one, this time heading toward San Francisco. For the next hour, she transferred and backtracked until she was certain she was alone.

At the airport, she paid cash for a red-eye ticket to Newark.

“One-way or round-trip?” the ticket agent asked.

Eva hesitated. Had Castro put her on some kind of list? Again his words— midlevel target —flashed in her mind. “One-way,” she answered. The finality of it sent a shudder through her. If she was wrong, a one-way ticket would sound the alarm.

* * *

She didn’t relax until well after takeoff. As the passengers around her slept or read, Eva stared out the window, thinking of an evening just after Halloween, when she’d found Liz sitting on the back steps, looking out at their yard in the deepening twilight. “What are you doing back here?” she’d asked.

Liz had looked up from where she sat and smiled. “I love the smell of the evening, when the sun has disappeared and everything starts to cool down. No matter how much life changes, this never does.” She closed her eyes. “My ex-husband and I used to do this, when we were first married. Sit outside and watch the sky change from day to night.”

Eva sat on her own step, looking at Liz through the iron bars of the railing. “Where is he now?”

Liz shrugged and brushed her fingers along the edge of the concrete step. “Last I heard, he moved to Nashville. But that was twenty years ago. I have no idea if he’s still there.”

Eva wondered how she could be so calm about the man who’d abandoned her with a young child and never looked back. “Does Ellie ever hear from him?”

“I don’t know—we don’t really talk about him. But I don’t think so. He sent cards for her birthday for a few years, but those stopped when she was still young.” Liz looked across the yard, to the back fence and the trees beyond. In a quiet voice, she said, “For a while, Ellie blamed me for that. As if I could make that man care about her. But now that she’s grown, she can see him for who he really is, and understand her childhood was probably better without him in it.”

Eva marveled at her calm tone. “How can you not hate him?”

Liz gave a soft chuckle. “Hate can eat you up inside. I could devote hours a day to despising him. But it wouldn’t matter. He’s out there, somewhere, living his life, and if he thinks about us at all, it’s probably only in passing. I decided a long time ago to forgive him, which is a lot easier than hating him.”

Eva thought about the strength that must have taken, to raise her daughter on her own while still following her own dreams. To set the betrayal aside and choose to be happy.

“Have you always been this way? Able to see beyond the worst in people?”

Liz laughed. “It takes a long time to learn how to see the world as a place where people aren’t doing things to you. My husband didn’t set out to break my heart, or Ellie’s. He was just acting on his own desires, living his own story. I hope I’ve become someone who doesn’t get angry when others are just trying to get by. I hope I can be the kind of person who looks toward forgiveness first.”