The World Gives Way: A Novel Read online

  Simpson parked them at a curb just around the corner from the hostel entrance. The building was situated on a steep switchback road, like so many buildings in Kittimer. Sometimes it felt as if the roads were nothing but turns and corners.

  “How many exits?” Simpson asked as they got out of the car.

  “Two,” Tobias replied, happy to be reliable for information. He’d done as much research as he could on the way over. “The front door and another side exit off the kitchen, by the dumpsters.”

  “Got it.” They rounded the corner, and Simpson took an appraising look at the front door. “Why don’t you hang back and cover the rear door. I’ll handle stuff on the inside.”

  Tobias’s face fell. He’d lost Simpson’s respect entirely.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Simpson said in response, and Tobias kicked himself again, this time for being so emotionally transparent. “Myrra Dal has seen you, she hasn’t seen me. Just in case she happens to be hanging around the common space, I don’t want her making a break for it.”

  “OK,” Tobias said, feeling a little placated. He hid around the corner by the dumpsters and waited. He comforted himself thinking about future cases, future successes. He was a rookie, after all. These things happened. Perhaps he’d end up head of a bureau one day, on a different squad in a different city, out of Barnes’s shadow. By that point maybe Barnes would be retired. Maybe he’d be living with Tobias, and Tobias would be taking care of him instead of vice versa.

  He walked a little closer to the door. It was quiet inside. He pictured Myrra in her room cradling the baby, Simpson shattering the whole picture when he came crashing in with tranq guns and handcuffs. He forced himself to push past the sympathy; this was a society, and she had broken the law. Multiple laws. She’d cut off a dead man’s hand. She’d nearly killed him with a fire extinguisher. This case was almost over, then everything could return to normal. He could return home, professional and proud. If he could just get through this case, he would still be seen as competent.

  A crash inside interrupted his daydreaming. The distinctive pop-pop of a tranq gun going off. Somewhere, muffled behind the door, he heard Simpson swearing.

  Tobias unholstered his gun and positioned himself flush against the wall next to the door. He waited. Inside he heard more crashes. A woman shouting. Footsteps running. A baby crying.

  The door swung open in one violent motion, and Tobias found himself looking at Myrra again, which was just as surreal as the first time in Nabat. She was holding on to Charlotte with a tight, instinctive grip. She hadn’t seen him yet.

  “Hold it,” Tobias said, with his gun leveled at her. At first she looked confused, then her face fell. In the span of two seconds her face went from vengeful to exhausted. She took a step toward him and he took a step back. Kept his gun raised.

  “Please,” she said. “Please.”

  In that moment, Tobias wasn’t certain he could say why, he almost lowered his weapon, almost let her run. Something in her tone. The simplicity of it. It was her last play, he knew.

  But a second later, Simpson came crashing through the door behind her, sporting a shoulder wound and carrying a blood-covered broken stick. Simpson leveled his gaze at Tobias, almost as if to say, Well, go on.

  He pulled the trigger.

  25

  MYRRA

  Myrra sat on the floor in another utility closet, this one at the agents’ hotel, hands cuffed around the rail of a heavy set of shelves. She had been sitting in this position for hours now, and her shoulders and hips were starting to feel stiff. A single naked light bulb hummed above her, harsh and cold. They’d cleared out the shelves around her. Nothing left that she could reach for and weaponize. She didn’t know where Charlotte was, and that thought stabbed through her. Her arms felt too light without the weight of her.

  Myrra heard the scrape of a key in the lock on the other side of the closet door. The lock turned, and the blond agent emerged from the other side. He had a blue mug in his hand with a hotel logo on the front: “Kittimer Heights Inn.” The letters arced over a white illustration of a mountain with lines shooting out from behind the mountain on all sides, like radiating light. There was a slight bulge under his blue button-up shirt, at the shoulder. A bandage, Myrra imagined. She smiled, thinking about the scratch she’d given him with the broom handle. She’d found Charlotte. She’d made it out the back door. And that look on Bendel’s face—she’d seen him waver.

  She’d almost made it. Almost.

  “Sorry about the accommodations here,” the blond agent said, clicking the door behind him. “We’ll try and find you a cushion or something if we have to wait here much longer… Transportation schedules are still a little disorganized after the quake.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He bent down in front of her and placed the mug in her hands.

  “Have some water,” he said, putting on a kind face. She didn’t trust it, but she took the water, bending her head toward her cuffed hands and greedily downing the contents of the mug.

  “I’m Agent Simpson, by the way,” she heard, while her tongue lapped up the last drops of moisture. She didn’t know how long she’d been here, but it felt like years. She handed the mug back to Simpson. He stood and put it on a far shelf, out of reach.

  “Where’s Charlotte?” she asked.

  “Charlotte’s safe,” he replied. He almost smiled. Smug, she thought. She wanted to scream in his face, rattle the shelf till it fell over and smashed their heads in. But instead she kept quiet, almost submissive. Survive, she thought. Then she laughed at herself for thinking it, knowing what was coming.

  “What’s so funny?” Simpson asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, huh?” Simpson searched around and pulled out a folding chair that was wedged between a shelf and the wall. This must be some janitor’s private hideaway, Myrra thought. Simpson unfolded the chair and placed it in the center of the floor space. He sat, leaning forward so he could loom over her. Myrra sat up a little straighter.

  He looked like an aging movie star. She could tell that he had once been very fit, but in the intervening years he’d allowed his belly to grow a little slack, let the skin under his jaw sag. But he still had a perfect sweep of blond hair, still had some heft in his arms. He didn’t scare her. He seemed the definition of the once-successful middle-aged male.

  He didn’t speak for a moment. His blue eyes scanned her, sizing her up.

  “You didn’t kill the Carlyles,” he said.

  “What, you think I’m not strong enough to pull it off?” This response would not help her case, but Myrra didn’t like being underestimated. And what did it really matter in the long term?

  “No, I believe you could do it. I saw what you did to Bendel’s head. What you did to my shoulder. But Bendel said that you’d be too smart to snap and kill your employers. Now that I see you, I agree with him.” Simpson sat up and leaned back, stretching his arms up and interlacing his fingers at the back of his head. The picture of confidence.

  “I’d like to see Charlotte, please.” She stared into his smug face and focused all her anger on him like a laser. She tried her best not to blink.

  What time was it? Was Charlotte asleep? Had they been playing with her, feeding her at the right times? She hoped that someone had thought to hold her and soothe her, and simultaneously she hated the thought of either Tobias or Simpson bonding with her.

  “Charlotte’s OK, I promise you,” Simpson said. “I’ve got kids myself, I know how to take care of a baby.” He was throwing Myrra crumbs of information about himself, trying to gain her trust. He was still playing the good guy, but she knew: once they were in New London, he’d toss her in a dark cell, incinerate her, do whatever they did to contract workers who misbehaved, and Simpson would never look back.

  “How old are your kids?” Let’s play friendly. See where that goes. She imagined his kids had the same blond hair and blue eyes. She imagined he had a matching bl
onde wife.

  “Let’s see…” Simpson raised his eyes to the ceiling and let out a short whistle, thinking. “Brandon is six, and Julie is ten.”

  He pulled a tablet out of his bag, tapped and swiped the screen, and flipped it around to show Myrra a picture of his family. She’d had it wrong. His wife was shorter, with dark skin and a muscular build. Her black hair was cropped close to her head. The kids had their mother’s face, skin, and hair, maybe a little lighter, but definitely not blond. They both had blue eyes like their dad. All three of them were sitting on a bench in a garden—Myrra recognized it as Sakura Park.

  “They’re cute.”

  Simpson flipped the tablet back around and stared at the image on the screen. He smiled, and this time Myrra could tell it was genuine. “Yeah, they take after their mother, that’s why.”

  “I like that park,” Myrra offered. “I used to find excuses to walk that way every time the trees were in bloom. I used to take Charlotte there, when Imogene needed her out of the house.”

  “Yeah, I haven’t seen the cherry blossoms in a while. Always too much to do,” Simpson said. He pushed a button on the tablet and the screen went black. He stowed it back in his bag. “I haven’t seen my kids in a while either. And that’s because of you.”

  His face went stern. Now it was Simpson’s turn to stare daggers at her. He put his head in his hands for a moment and scrubbed his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration and absolute fatigue. When his head rose up again, he was wearing the good-guy mask again. He smiled at her. Not genuine.

  “How about this: you tell me what happened to Imogene and Marcus Carlyle, in your own words, and I’ll bring Charlotte in here so you can see her, make sure she’s OK.”

  Myrra wanted immediately to say yes. But he was a practiced agent—he’d know if she lied, but she also knew he wouldn’t believe the truth. And he wouldn’t let her see Charlotte; she could never take him at his word. That false kindness, the by-the-book ways he’d tried to connect.

  “I don’t think I can trust you on that,” Myrra said.

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t think you see me as anything but a report to file.”

  His expression faltered a little. “Listen, Myrra, I want to help you—”

  “I don’t blame you. These are stressful times. You want to get back to your kids,” she said. The mask dropped. Now she’d hit on something. “Have you even talked to them, since the earthquake?”

  Simpson didn’t say anything. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “I’m just the same as you. I’ve separated you from your kids. And you,” she said, “now you’re separating me from Charlotte.”

  Simpson looked angrier, trying to hold it together. “That’s fine,” he said, standing up and pushing the chair back. The chair’s metal feet scraped against the cement floor, a sudden unpleasant sound to end the standoff. “I thought we could take care of your statement now, to pass the time until we can get a train out of here, but if you don’t want to cooperate, we’ll just wait till we’re back in New London. At that point, Charlotte will be miles away, with her next of kin or placed in the system for adoption.”

  He folded up the chair and walked back to the door. Myrra felt a swell of panic. This was a misstep. She couldn’t go back to New London. Whatever was left of her life would be over if they managed to transport her back. She needed to stay here, where it was easier to escape, where Charlotte was still within arm’s reach. Charlotte couldn’t be more than a few rooms away. These guys didn’t have any backup. They were glorified bounty hunters.

  She needed to stay where she was until she could find her next escape route. A dropped key, an open door, maybe an ally. Tobias Bendel might take her seriously. She’d assaulted him, but she had also seen the worried look on his face. He was halfway to believing her. If she could convince him all the way, maybe he’d see how futile all this was. Maybe he’d let her go.

  Simpson was halfway out the door.

  “I’ll give a statement,” Myrra shouted after him. Simpson stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “But I’ll only give it to your partner. Agent Bendel.”

  She could tell from the look in Simpson’s eyes that this rankled him, but he nodded. She felt some pleasure in his annoyance. She’d seen enough on the ride from the hostel to understand the power dynamics at play between them. Simpson was the mentor, Tobias was the rookie. Maybe she could use that to her advantage as well.

  Simpson shut the door. She was alone again with her sore body, the cold empty shelves, and the buzzing of the light bulb. Myrra thought again of Charlotte, hoped she wasn’t too upset without her. She pictured Charlotte sleeping, the way her eyes darted under her eyelids when she dreamed. She focused on this thought and used it to try to keep calm. She waited.

  It might have been five minutes, it might have been an hour, but eventually the closet door opened again, and Tobias Bendel was on the other side. He unfolded the same folding chair and sat down in front of her, but much more simply than Simpson. No swagger, no intimidation. He sat up very straight in his chair.

  “Hi,” Tobias said. “Tobias” fit him. He didn’t seem like an Agent Bendel. He didn’t seem like a David. The left side of his forehead was swollen and mottled with purple and green. There was a scab peeking out from his hairline. He caught her looking at his forehead and, almost as if it were a reflex, he mussed his hair to hide the bruise.

  She’d really hit him hard. She was able to get a good look at him now, now that she wasn’t being pushed around in handcuffs, now that she wasn’t desperately trying to keep Charlotte in her sights. Charlotte was gone now. A wave of emotion burst forth at the thought, but she forced herself to suppress it. Stay in the moment, see what it can get you. There was always a way out. She would get Charlotte back.

  “Sorry again, about hitting you.” She jerked her hand to point at his bruise. There was a limited range of motion with these cuffs, but he seemed to understand. The bruise was so vivid and bright on his skin, it reminded her of Imogene’s watercolors. Myrra liked bruises. She’d had many in her life. She had a few now, on her arms, after her last encounter with Rachel. She suspected she’d end up with some on her wrists from these handcuffs. The way the colors shifted from yellow to green to purple to blue, markers of time and healing. Bruises were proof that the blood was still pumping. They were proof that she was still alive.

  “I don’t think we should talk about that,” Tobias said.

  “Are you afraid of me now?”

  “Not any more than I was before,” he said.

  “That’s an honest answer.”

  He was still sitting so straight in the chair, as though his spine were fused to a metal pole. He struck her as the type of person who didn’t often relax. That metal chair couldn’t be comfortable, she thought, but then again, it was better than a cement floor. She remembered the feeling she’d had with him when they first met, that understanding, the feeling that, in his own way, he’d also lived a hard life.

  “I think if I lied, you’d know it,” he said. She smiled at that. Here was a person who did not underestimate her.

  “I would,” she said. “I knew you were lying from the start.”

  “You did?” He seemed surprised and a little humbled.

  “I didn’t know you were an agent, but I knew your name wasn’t David.”

  “David’s my father’s name.” There was a way that he said that, a different tone when he said the word father. There was bad blood there.

  “Why did you choose it?” she asked.

  “You know, I don’t know. It was the first name to come into my head.”

  “Do you think you will know it if I lie?” she asked. He didn’t answer right away, just looked at her face and thought about it. He was much calmer than he had been the last time they’d met—maybe it was just the fact that she was handcuffed now, and he had the upper hand. But there was something else: this whole conversation felt surreal, more like old friends meeti
ng than an interrogation. She wondered if there had been some real damage done when she’d gone at him with that fire extinguisher.

  “I think I would,” he said finally. She thought so too.

  “Do you believe me, then, that the world is going to end?” She ventured to hope.

  “I believe that you believe it.” He was almost willfully stoic in his response. A willful denial. There was something behind it, feelings of confusion and fear, feelings he was tamping down.

  He stood up. “One minute—” he said. He stood on the chair and reached up to screw the light bulb a little tighter. The humming stopped. Myrra felt more at ease almost immediately.

  “That was driving me crazy,” he said. He sat back down, reached into his bag, and pulled out a tablet, let it rest on his thigh.

  “I thought maybe you guys did that as some sort of on-the-fly interrogation technique.”

  Tobias craned his neck up to consider the bulb. “That would have been clever, but no.”

  He relaxed a little in his chair, finally, leaning his elbows against his knees. He seemed to be focusing himself. He reached for the tablet in his lap and pressed a button on the screen that she couldn’t see.

  “Myrra Dal, you’ve agreed to give a statement concerning the deaths of Imogene Carlyle and Marcus Carlyle. Your statement will be recorded for legal purposes. Please speak loudly and clearly.” Suddenly his tone was all business. Myrra straightened herself involuntarily on her spot on the floor, in response to the shift in the conversation. She noticed he hadn’t recorded the start of their conversation. That, apparently, had been different.

  “Please begin by telling us, in your own words, what transpired on the night of July fifth…”

  Myrra did her best to leave nothing out. Not because she wanted to help Tobias in any way, but because she hoped that the more detail she gave, the more likely it was that Tobias would empathize with her and, most importantly, that he’d believe her. If he believed they were all going to die soon, there would be no reason to bring her in. There’d be no reward for him, no light at the end of the tunnel.