She sang me to sleep, I thought dully.
And then she was gone—not just gone from my memories, or gone from my life, but gone from this room. The woman in heels—Rena Malik, my mother—followed Paul Davis out of the room, leaving Skylar and me hidden behind the hard drives, neither one of us willing to say a word out loud.
Seconds crept into minutes, and finally, I let out a long and jagged breath.
“You okay?” Skylar asked quietly, and I realized I was still holding her hand, still squeezing it.
“Sorry,” I said, letting go.
“Sorry you’re not okay?” Skylar asked, eyeing me with concern.
“Sorry about your hand,” I corrected. She looked down, surprised, as if she’d forgotten she even had a hand. Then she smiled.
“Don’t worry,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “I have two.” To demonstrate, she held up her left hand, and I smiled—or at least, I tried to.
The simple motion—my lips curving upward—brought bile into my throat. How could I smile? How could I do anything except lie there and hurt?
“Kali?” Skylar’s voice was very small. “If this is about what I saw, when we were looking at those files—I won’t tell anyone. Ever. I mean, we all have our things, right? I talk too much, and I look like a third grader, and I’m only a little bit psychic.” She blew a wisp of white-blonde hair out of her face. “I don’t care if you’re a you-know-what.”
“A vampire?” I suggested. It was the first time I’d said the word out loud, but worrying about a thing like that seemed so stupid all of a sudden. It was just a word.
And that woman was just my mother.
“It’s not about that,” I told Skylar. “It’s …”
I couldn’t form the words, physically could not do it.
Skylar nodded. “It’s okay, Kali. I may not be significantly psychic, but I know that it’s going to be okay. Everything is going to work out, and you’re going to be okay. I’m going to make you okay. Okay?”
The repetition of the word made me want to smile. Smiling made me want to puke. This wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay.
Moving on autopilot, I dug something out of my pocket. The cell phone I’d stolen from Davis’s office was in even worse shape now than it had been when I’d snapped it in two. The plastic casing was pulverized, assorted keys hanging off it like a loose tooth dangling by a single thread of gum. It looked like it had been run over by a semi.
I ran my thumb over the broken, jagged surface.
This phone looked how I felt.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that isn’t your phone,” Skylar said, hooking her thumbs through the pocket of her jeans. “Am I right?”
I nodded, unable to take my eyes off the broken, mangled frame. “It used to be Bethany’s dad’s. Now, it’s nothing.”
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I used to have a memory of my mother—smiling, soft.
Now I had nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
“Reid could probably pull some data off the phone,” Skylar said, a look of comic concentration on her elfin features. “He’s got guys. Lots of guys. One of them could reassemble the memory card, and then pull the incoming calls.”
“There were some numbers on there,” I said, like that mattered. Like anything mattered anymore. “Incoming calls.”
Quick as a whip, Skylar slipped her own cell phone out of her pocket and hit the speed dial. “Hey, Gen? It’s Skylar. Quick question—if you have a cell phone number, can you track the location a call was placed from?” Skylar paused. “Not you specifically, but like, somebody-you? With the right equipment?” Skylar fell into silence again, twirling a stray piece of blonde hair around her index finger. “Okay, and say I wanted to keep tabs on the person who was running the number. And say that this person totally wouldn’t expect me to be doing that, because he still thinks I’m five years old. Do you think …”
Skylar trailed off again and then beamed. “Excellent! Tell John Michael he’s never allowed to make fun of you for watching police procedurals again. See you in five.”
Skylar hit the key to end the call with more flourish than was purely necessary. “That was Genevieve,” she said needlessly. “She says that Reid and company should be able to track the incoming calls on this phone back to the locations from which they were placed even if they’re not listed. Same goes for the calls made from this number, so if Bethany’s dad has ever been to the facility where they’re keeping Zev, or if he’s ever gotten a call from them, we should be able to track it. Or technically, Reid should be able to track it, but Gen said she could loan me a couple of bugs, so we should be able to keep tabs on Reid.”
I tried to process Skylar’s babbles and came to an utterly ridiculous conclusion. “Are you actually suggesting we bug the FBI?”
Skylar held up her right hand, holding her index finger a centimeter or so above her thumb. “Just a little.”
“This is never going to work.”
“Kali, if I want pessimism and brooding foreheads, I’ll talk to Elliot. At least try to think positively.”
“Sure,” I said, forcing my fingers to let loose of their grip on the cell phone. “I guess it’s worth a try.”
I wanted to laugh hysterically—or possibly throw up. Zev was a lab rat, my mother was evil, and Skylar and I were discussing bugging the FBI.
“Yeah,” Skylar said, and she had the decency to sound a little sheepish. “It’s crazy. But sometimes, crazy is all you’ve got.”
She reached out to take the phone, and the moment her fingers touched mine, an odd gleam came into her eyes, like a candle bringing light to a jack-o’-lantern’s. For a moment, there was an unnatural silence between us, and I wondered what she’d seen.
“It’s going to get better.” Skylar’s voice was very quiet, very small. “But first, it’s going to get worse.” She played with the end of her T-shirt, avoiding my gaze. “And when it gets worse … well, just remember that it’s going to get better, okay?” She brought her eyes up to mine, and I felt like she needed something from me—acceptance maybe, or absolution.
“Sometimes, there aren’t any good choices. Sometimes, making the right one is hard.” She blinked and then cleared her throat. “It’s funny,” she said, “but when you really think about it, we’re all broken. That’s just what life does. It knocks you down and it breaks you and you either get back up again, or you don’t. You either do things on your terms, or you don’t.” She grabbed my hand, and I was surprised at the strength of her grip. “You let the bad things win, or you don’t.”