Soulprint (28 page)

Maybe there will be a consequence for my choices in the next life. But right now, this is the only one that matters.

I know we're close when we begin stopping more frequently, turning every few minutes. We've moved from the highway into a city, the horns blaring as soon as the lights turn from red to green. I've been reading the science articles again, after Casey looked at them sideways, upside down, and backward. “The only thing in common is her name,” she says. Ivory Street. She's the only thing that stands out.

I think of June's math, and these papers, and the math in these papers. The formulas are similar. The answers are different.

“Stop,” I say.

Cameron stops. In the middle of the street. A car honks and weaves around us.

“Go,” I say. “Sorry. Just listen. June died. She knew she was going to die. She was scared of it. We need to remember that.”

The mood changes inside the van as we remember. We're running not only from the people who would punish us but from those who would stop us.

“It's the three of us,” Cameron says, and I'm not sure what he means. “That's it. That's the only people we trust. The three of us.”

I don't know what to do with the fact that I'm included in this. What have I done to earn it? I'm not sure. But now that I have his trust, I don't want to break it. I want to use it for something right. I want to save us all.

We park in front of a long building, curving in on itself in something between a
U
and a straight line, three stories high, with an artificial green area in the middle. There's a fountain beside the sign.

“Here's what I could dig up on Ivory Street,” Casey says. “Her lab received several grants based on proposals from the NSF—a government-run agency that funds proposed projects—and those papers are the result of that research. She published a lot of papers over a span of five years, and then it mostly stopped. There was an announcement about her stepping down from her position about eighteen years ago, which fits in with the time frame—that June managed to break her
somehow. Her picture shows up at a lot of political fund-raisers, but she disappears from science journals until this recent one—as the contact for the grant foundation.”

“So what's she doing here?”

“She's got an office here, as part of the grant decision-making process. But she doesn't conduct her own research anymore.”

“So this is a government agency?” Cameron asks, shrinking in his seat. “No way we're getting close. No way.”

“No, we call and lure her out,” Casey says.

“With what phone?” I ask.

“Any phone,” Cameron whispers, and I know this is yet another crime that will be added to our list. I think how hard it is to disappear with no money: no car, no food, no phone, no place to sleep.

Where the hell did June keep that money? What happened to it? We could use it. We really could. How else are we going to disappear?

And then I think how easy it is to disappear with no money. It's doable. We've been doing it. We've made it this far. It doesn't take money to cease to exist. The world is big. We just need to leave.

One more day, I think. I hope. We meet Ivory Street, we figure out how to access the information in the database, we see what June knew, and we find what Ava saw. After that, we can leave. I have to hope that will be enough.

But right now, we need to borrow a phone.

Cameron looks for a phone in a crowded park nearby. Kids are on swings, with fathers or mothers pushing them, and I picture my own. I wonder if she imagined doing this when I was growing inside her. If she pictured what I would look like, what I would sound like—my high-pitched squeal as I tipped my head back toward the sun at the apex of the swing's arc. It's a thought that suddenly feels like a memory. Her laughter a shadow of my own. And I am overcome with a wave of grief that the memory isn't real. That it doesn't exist.

Cameron's hand slides into a purse left abandoned on a bench. He doesn't take the wallet. Just the phone. Casey and I watch from the van. I look at Casey, but she's staring at the same scene, seeing something in her own memory. “What?” I ask.

“When we were little,” she whispers, “we had a park in our neighborhood. And Cameron couldn't pump yet. Me and Ava used to take turns pushing him, because he used to bitch and complain until we did. I pushed him so hard once, he fell off the swing and dislocated his elbow. I was going to get in so much trouble.”

“I can imagine,” I say. Cameron heads back toward us. There's a man in uniform at the other end of the park, and my heart beats wildly. But Cameron is perfect. He pretends not to notice. Not to care.

“We were all kind of terrified of our father, not that he ever did anything to make us fear him. He was mostly all talk, but the
talk
…,” she says. “Anyway, he said he fell off by himself. I don't know why. He was just a kid. We were all just kids.
Even then he was protecting me, when it should've been the other way around.”

Cameron opens the door just then and hands the borrowed phone to Casey as he climbs in beside us. “Did you see the cop?” I ask.

“Yeah, I saw,” he says.

Casey dials information, asks to be connected to the NSF headquarters, and after a moment, she speaks into the receiver. “Ivory Street's extension, please,” she says in a very official and bossy tone of voice.

Her face lights up when someone who must be Ivory Street picks up the line. “There's been a break-in at your residence,” she says. “Someone out walking their dog called it in. We'll need you to see what's missing in order to make a statement.” A pause. “Sure. 555-4439.” Then she hangs up.

“Is that the phone number?” I ask.

“I have no idea.”

We watch the front double doors beside the fountain and the sign, and a few people trickle out, but they are too young, or too old, to be her. Casey has the printout of her photo spread between us. And then we see her. A woman in her midfifties, a blouse tucked into a narrow skirt that hits below her knees, moving quickly and deliberately toward a black car across the street.

“Bingo,” Cameron says. He climbs into the front seat, tosses the phone out the window in the general direction of the park, and eases into traffic behind one Ivory Street.

We follow ivory's black, expensive-looking car through all of downtown. Eventually, we hit a tunnel, and we're going to have to pay a toll. Or not pay a toll, as it were. “Get down,” Cameron says, because there are cameras, and we're going to be reported for failing to pay a toll, and they're going to see our faces, along with the license plates. He lowers his head, but he's probably captured. They will be able to trace our route, in reverse, like I am tracing June's. But we also know, at this point, we're so close.

We just have to stay a day ahead. We are almost there, I can taste it. I know they can feel it, too, with the way we're not talking, but the air seems almost charged, and I can feel it humming against my skin.

We don't even listen to the radio at first, but then Cameron says we need to, to make sure there's not something we're missing. And so we do. We listen to other people talk about us. Casey shrinks into herself when she hears her name—I guess
she's not used to hearing others report on her, make things up, twist her life into a two-dimensional, ten-second sound bite.

These are the things being reported: three teens, last spotted in a school, taking shelter. Eating from the vending machine, using the school computers. Last seen wearing school uniforms.

These are the things left behind: evidence of June's crimes. Evidence that I'm looking to repeat them, or complete them.

This is the trail they're on: the first car, reported missing from around the school. They have not found where we ditched it. They have not pinned us to the second, to this perfect van. But it won't be long. They will find the first missing car abandoned somewhere, they will look for the second, and they will see us in the tunnel. They will know our general direction. I don't know whether they've seen the printouts, whether they know we've gone to see Ivory Street.

We have to stay a step ahead.

Casey and I rise back up after we're through the tunnel. Ivory Street is driving recklessly, in a hurry, and my guess is she's not checking her rearview mirror that often. If she were, I'd imagine she could see the blue van, still behind her, turning off the highway, down the ramp, left at the light, into the more residential areas. She'd see us just a block behind her as she turns into a subdivision with a waterfall at the front, and ancient, gorgeous trees that seem to belie the age of the homes. She'd see us follow her to the end of the road, see us stop at the corner as she continued into the cul-de-sac and pulled into the driveway of the first house on the right. She'd see us before
Cameron puts the car in reverse and parks at the edge of a perfectly manicured lawn in front of a house that we aren't here to visit.

Cameron turns off the car, cracks the front window, and climbs across the console into the windowless back with us. Casey is tying and retying her shoes, and Cameron sits extra close to her, taking a deep breath.

“We're here,” he says.

His legs are bent, and he looks too young for this. I imagine we all do. “Ready?” he asks. And I laugh, because none of us look ready. None of us look as if we want to leave the back of this van ever again. They both looked so self-confident when we were on the island, so sure of themselves. But then I remember the way Casey's hand trembled as she placed the dish on the table, how the muscles in Cameron's arm twitched as he gripped the edge of the doorway. And the way I contorted my face to look calm and brave, when inside I was full of fear and panic.

We were all faking.

And now, we are letting each other see.

We're all scared. We've made it, and we're about to come face to face with some sort of truth. And nothing I do will change that truth. Whatever June was leading me toward, we're here. And now I don't want to know what she wanted with Ivory Street. Whether she bribed or tricked or bullied her into giving her access to the database. Whether she offered something in return. Whether Ivory Street was a willing participant.
Or if Ivory can give me the answers I want: Who else was in the database? And if June found out there was a mistake in the study, did she have the chance to tell her?

We hear a car rumble down the street, pausing for a moment nearby—I hold my breath and count to four before it continues on its way.

I can sit here all day and think about these questions, or I can get the answers. “I'm ready,” I say.

Cameron smiles at me, climbs back into the front, and motions for us to do the same. “Let's go,” he says.

I'm already in the front seat beside him, but Casey hasn't moved. “It's way too light out,” she says.

Cameron looks over his shoulder. “There's a reason why most break-ins happen in the middle of the day. Everyone's at work, or camp, or daycare. Just act like you belong.”

“This car does
not
belong,” Casey says, and she's right. The car was perfect for blending in on the highway, or off, in the mountains. Perfect and nondescript for the congested streets of the city. But it's not even close to perfect for an upscale community with high-end everything. The yards are manicured to perfection. The homes rise up behind them in varying patterns of brick and stone. Anyone can see this van does not belong.

“So we're painting, or doing maintenance,” Cameron says.

“We should wait,” Casey says.

“Wait for someone to find us?” Cameron asks.

But I understand Casey. She sees it, too. We're here. The truth will be unchangeable. We can never go back to not knowing.

But right now, my sympathy will be useless to her. “We're wasting time,” I say. Ivory Street will quickly realize that nobody has been in her house, that nothing is missing, that something is amiss. “We either do this now,” I say, and I fix my eyes on Casey, “or we do this never.”

I reach my hand back for her, and she shuffles toward the front. The three of us are crammed together in the front seat, Casey running her fingers through her tangled hair as she checks the mirror. I'm too scared to check to see what I look like at the moment.

“Let's go,” Cameron says, and he exits the driver's side while Casey and I slide out of the passenger side.

We leave the car in front of that house, where it doesn't belong but might just pass, and we follow Cameron.

At least we're out of our uniforms. Now we look like door-to-door salespeople. Maybe we would have better luck carrying cookies.

Cameron quickly slips between the yards of the nearest houses and walks straight to the backyards, like we have every right to be here. We walk along the outside edge of the back fences, and Cameron makes sure to stand tall and walk with purpose, so we do the same.
Just here to check the gas meter. Just assessing the drainage in the backyard. Just visiting a friend
. I can see how people manage to break in to homes in the daytime. Act like you belong, and people believe it. We quickly reach the backyards of the homes in the cul-de-sac, and then we're standing with our backs against the brick wall of her backyard. We sneak around the side—my God, her house is gorgeous. I
don't know if others live here, but there's more than enough room. It's been landscaped and there are fancy-looking window treatments visible through the glass. This whole neighborhood looks too formal, too perfect, too planned.