‘Blake,’ she says. ‘You’re okay!’

  She sounds like she’s underwater. But my eyesight has recovered well enough to read her lips.

  ‘I knew you’d be back,’ I say. ‘You left my things behind.’

  ‘When I heard about what happened at the hospital, I was so worried …’ As she talks, she rummages through her handbag. She takes out her wallet, her keys, her phone—and something else that I don’t get a good look at before it disappears into the folds of her dress.

  Fine. She’s not the only one hiding a weapon.

  ‘Oh my God.’ She’s noticed the purple stain all over my body. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Wilcox said the CIA had accidentally recruited a serial killer,’ I say. ‘I was offended, because sure, I’ve killed people, but only in self-defence. But she wasn’t talking about me, was she?’

  Zara falls silent.

  ‘The stranglings corresponded with places I had been. But of course, they were places you had been, too. Once I realised that, I wondered if you were trying to frame me. But you weren’t, were you? It’s just something you need to do. You’ve always enjoyed risks. You like to go right up to the edge of the cliff, and imagine yourself stepping off. When that got boring, you started pushing other people over the edge.’

  ‘I’ve never pushed anyone off a cliff.’ Zara sounds both confused and wistful.

  ‘Your work sends you all over the world,’ I say. ‘It gives you access to petabytes of personal data. You use it to find people who are vulnerable. Women who won’t be able to overpower you, who live alone, who won’t be missed for a couple of days. People with cancer—you tell yourself they’re dying anyway. Then you go to their homes and strangle them. You like to watch the lights go out in their eyes. To imagine what it must be like for them, crossing that boundary.’

  Some people would find this hard to imagine. I don’t. I would have seen it far earlier, if not for the distraction of the mess at Space City.

  ‘Blake,’ she says warily. ‘I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but they’re lying.’

  ‘Imagine you’re a branch chief at the CIA,’ I say. ‘You realise one of your agents is murdering people—the wrong people. Unauthorised people. She’ll get caught sooner or later, and you can’t let her go to jail, because she has too much classified intel in her brain. So you send her on a recon mission to LA—and assign one of your other agents to poison her drink.’

  ‘It’s not what you think.’ She’s approaching me. Slowly.

  ‘But the plan went wrong,’ I say. ‘I saved your life at the last minute, so the branch chief put your assassination on the back burner. When a body showed up at Space City, one that seemed connected to China, he sent you, hoping that would help him identify your asset in Shanghai. He wanted to keep running that asset after you were dead.

  ‘Forget all that for a second, though. When we realised someone had stolen Laurie’s swipe card and used it to kill Rob Cho, I asked you which terminal they used. You checked it out, and discovered that it was the terminal in Anders’ office. We’d both seen the footage of him using the computer in there at the time of Cho’s death. So you passed that along to your superiors, who presumably started surveilling Anders to try to work out who his handler was. Case closed.

  ‘You didn’t need me to talk to Harmony Cho at all. You already knew Anders was the killer. But you told me there was no video of the terminal he’d used. You convinced me that you needed my help. You dumped me in that mental hospital to get me out of the way—because the branch chief had already ordered you to kill me, hadn’t he?’

  ‘Blake,’ Zara begins. ‘I—’

  ‘It makes sense,’ I say. ‘I knew too much, I was too unpredictable, and if the branch chief had their way, you weren’t going to be around for much longer to keep me on the leash. But you choked. You couldn’t bring yourself to kill me. Instead, you put me in a hospital, where the CIA would be unlikely to notice me. Where I could live out the rest of my days in peace, thinking I was on a top-secret mission.’

  ‘I did that because I—’

  ‘Because you love me.’

  Zara falls silent.

  ‘That’s why you’re here,’ I continue. ‘You’ve been visiting the safe house every day since I escaped, hoping I’d come back. You even left me a present—Laurie’s formula, which you should have handed over to the brass. You love me. And it’s driving you crazy, isn’t it? You hate loving me. It makes you feel powerless.’

  Zara’s eyes are glossed with tears. This whole time I thought she was acting, but I don’t think she is. She genuinely believes I’m a ‘like-minded individual’. Someone who can save her, the way Thistle saved me.

  ‘I didn’t want things to turn out like this,’ she says.

  ‘Which part?’ I ask. ‘All those murdered women? Ruciani? The CIA trying to kill us both?’

  ‘You and me.’ Her voice cracks. ‘I didn’t want to be separated from you. But it was the only way to keep you safe.’

  I think of the hospital. Diaz poisoning me with drugs. Eli trying to cut my eye out. Wilcox trying to shoot me.

  ‘Safe,’ I repeat.

  ‘But now you’re out,’ Zara says. ‘And I’m not with the Company anymore. I have passports and bank accounts they don’t know about. There’s a beautiful village called Gondal, forty miles out of Islamabad—just wait until you see the mountains. We can be together there.’

  ‘Until you get bored with me,’ I say.

  She smiles through the tears. ‘Don’t you get it? I’m never bored with you.’

  ‘Neither of us is going anywhere, Zara. I called 911 as soon as you walked in the door.’ I reach behind my back and take out Garcia’s phone. Hold it up so she can see that the call is still connected. The dispatcher is listening to all of this.

  I put the phone on the floor. ‘The Houston PD will be here any minute.’

  Zara’s smile slips, but only a little. She’s coming closer. ‘They’ll never catch us. Not if we leave now.’

  ‘I’m not coming with you.’ I reach behind my back again.

  ‘I wasn’t asking.’ She extends her left hand and strokes my cheek. Her fingers are soft, cool, kind. Her right hand dips into the folds of her dress.

  I twist my head aside. Her right hand comes out holding a taser, the needles already crackling. But her left has slipped off my cheek. As she braces herself against the wall, palm flat, I slam the nail gun against her hand and pull the trigger.

  Zara screeches as the steel spike pierces her hand and thunks deep into the wall. I drop the gun and scramble out of the way just in time to avoid a swing of the taser. She swipes at me again, but I’m beyond her reach.

  ‘Goddamn it,’ she snarls through gritted teeth. She gives her hand a tug, and then squeals—it’s firmly fixed. I watch her squirm for a moment, a pinned butterfly.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ she snaps. ‘We’re the same, you and me!’

  I look at her, half-crucified in the half-built living room.

  ‘We could be so happy together!’ she sobs.

  ‘Goodbye, Zara,’ I say.

  ‘Timothy! Wait!’

  I walk out the door. The sirens are coming from somewhere to my left, or maybe they just seem to be because that’s my good ear. I turn right, and slip away into the dark.

  CHAPTER 42

  Lay your fingers on me to make a word, a tune, or an entrance. What am I?

  The manager of the motel looks at my bruised skin and my missing arm, and says nothing for a minute. Maybe they have a policy against admitting one-armed purple people eaters.

  Finally she says something. With my busted ear, I can only make out the word ‘deposit’. I push all of Anders’ cash under the grimy glass panel, sign a form, and accept a lightweight key with a heavy fob.

  When I unlock room eleven, it’s not unlike the room Zara and I stayed in, back when the police were after us. After her, I now realise. Not me. Part of me had worried that I would miss her, but I don’t. At least, not yet.

  There are two single beds. I wouldn’t want to shine a blacklight on either one. I collapse onto the bed furthest from the door without even taking my shoes off.

  I sleep for ten hours, and wake up when someone knocks on the door. I croak, ‘Go away,’ and they do. Daylight streams through the cheap curtains. I ignore it. I drink some water, and use the bathroom. There’s blood in my urine. It’s possible that being trapped in a vacuum wasn’t great for my organs.

  I go back to bed, and sleep for another ten hours.

  It’s two days before I’m hungry enough to leave the motel room. There’s a diner on the corner. I buy a cheeseburger, and then look at it for a while. The pink-flecked grey patty looks like Anders’ brain. I eat the fries and the bun, leaving the meat untouched. When I get back to the motel, the pillow is encrusted with blood from my ear. I flip it and sleep some more.

  I dream that I’m conducting repairs on the lens of a camera on a secret space station. Then I lose my grip and fall down, down, down towards the Earth, trying and failing to swim upwards through the void.

  After a couple of days my ears start to itch, like termites are burrowing into them. I guess that means my eardrums are healing, but soon the itching is so bad that I can’t sleep. I switch on the TV instead, and see the president yelling with practised anger about the secret Chinese spy satellite. Apparently, it’s not so secret anymore. Everyone in the whole world is talking about it, except China’s own citizens, who are kept in the dark by the state-run media.

  Despite what Harmony believed, the satellite has no crew. It’s just a device the size of an oil drum floating over Ecuador, with cameras pointed at the USA. Wired is running pieces about how the satellite was engineered, and how it remained undetected for so long. Fox News is warning viewers to expect a Chinese invasion any day now. CNN is focused only on how the president’s response will play with voters. John Oliver says he should have known something was up—he points at the sky—when the Chinese companies in his spam folder started trying to sell him Rogaine. The studio audience guffaws.

  The Chinese president says there’s no satellite. The US president insists there is. After a bit of is-not, is-too, things appear to settle down. Apparently the threat of a war is great for getting re-elected, but an actual war is bad for business.

  I find a local channel, where ‘shocking details have emerged’ about the murders at Space City. The whole story seems to have come out—Rob Cho is dead, Franklin Anders killed him, Anders himself was then killed by the CIA. A woman named Huang Jie who appears to have been his MSS handler is holed up in the Chinese embassy. The media have been trying to interview Anders’ daughter, but the mom is sensibly keeping her hidden. Even the stuff about Laurie’s illegal animal testing has been made public, which is fuelling a debate entirely separate from the satellite stuff.

  I expected the CIA to sweep this whole thing under the rug. Soon I discover that they tried, but were prevented. Apparently an FBI investigation has exposed widespread corruption at the CIA, including the torture and murder of US citizens on US soil. It’s those last six words—of US citizens, on US soil—that seem to be upsetting people. The CIA director is in front of a congressional hearing, getting interrogated by smug assholes. He’s widely expected to lose his job, but probably nothing else will change.

  I’m just wondering who led this FBI investigation when Reese Thistle appears on the screen, bowing her head to accept a medal from the FBI director.

  Her uniform is pressed. Her hair is perfect under her cap. She’s not smiling. But I can tell she’s proud.

  The director says she went above and beyond what was expected of her, which is code for either She was generally ignored, or She was told to stop investigating and she didn’t. Knowing Thistle, probably both are true.

  I frantically stab the pause button on the remote, but apparently this isn’t the kind of TV that can pause a live feed. Soon Thistle is gone, to be replaced by stock prices.

  I lie back on the bed, thinking. There’s no reason for the CIA to come after me. Everything I know is now in the public domain, and now they’re under much more scrutiny. I’m probably not in any danger from the MSS, either. Their asset at the space centre is dead, and their satellite is exposed. I’m free.

  So, what am I going to do with that freedom?

  In the past, I’ve always gone looking for a new boss. Some bigger, scarier monster, who will feed me scraps under the table. It wouldn’t be hard to find someone like that in Texas.

  But maybe I don’t have to live that way. Diaz thought I didn’t. She thought I could simply choose to be a better man. It would be as easy, and as difficult, as that.

  Then again, I’m pretty sure she changed her mind. I think of the way Diaz looked at me, when she realised that I was really a cannibal. A purple people eater.

  I stare at the motionless ceiling fan for a while, thinking. Then I go into the bathroom and take a shower. I unwrap a disposable razor and shave—carefully, because the skin is tender. I wash the blood out of my clothes in the sink, then roll them up in a towel and stand on it to dry them out. When that doesn’t work, I use a hair dryer, and then press them on an ironing board I found in the closet. I put them back on and comb my hair.

  In the harsh glow from above the mirror, I still don’t look great. But I look like I’m trying.

  I turn out the light as I leave.

  CHAPTER 43

  In what kind of box would you keep a skull?

  Reese Thistle doesn’t answer her doorbell. I try knocking, and calling out, but there’s no response. I stand on the doorstep of her apartment for a while, holding a bunch of flowers that I stole from other people’s front yards and wrapped in foil. It’s not a big bunch, but I chose them carefully, only picking the ones with colours and smells I was certain she’d like.

  I probably look a bit pathetic. Maybe it’s for the best that she’s not here to see me. This might not even be her home. Just because she broke up with her husband, that doesn’t mean she went back to her old place.

  I decide to leave the flowers, and a note. I still have the permanent marker from Anders. I’m just looking for something to write on when a Toyota Corolla pulls into the driveway.

  The engine dies and the headlights click off. Thistle gets out of the car, carrying a grocery bag with one hand and her keys with the other. For once, I’m dressed better than her—she’s in sweatpants and a hoodie, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. She’s clearly thinking about other things, and doesn’t notice me until she’s walked halfway to the door.

  She freezes mid-step. But doesn’t reach for her gun, this time. Progress.

  I smile awkwardly. ‘Hero cops gotta buy their own groceries?’

  She looks at me for a long time, and then says, ‘We don’t even get a discount.’

  I’ve missed her voice. I find myself savouring every syllable, in case this is our last conversation. ‘Congratulations, by the way.’

  ‘I didn’t do much.’ She comes up onto the porch and puts her bags down. ‘Between your voicemail and what you told me at the hospital, you basically solved the case for me.’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s one thing to know what happened. Proving it is much harder. And proving it to the point where the CIA director is forced to explain himself to Congress—that’s amazing.’

  She looks down, taking in my pressed clothes, and the flowers.

  ‘I’m sorry I thought you were crazy,’ she says.

  ‘It’s okay.’ I smile awkwardly. ‘I think I was a bit crazy.’

  Thistle rests her butt against the rail surrounding the porch. ‘I’ve never seen a corpse with a missing brain before. Thanks for that.’

  ‘Sorry. It was mostly an accident.’

  ‘I noticed that none of his other body parts were missing.’

  ‘Didn’t even occur to me,’ I say, honestly. ‘Have you ever tried therapy? Turns out it’s pretty good.’

  ‘There was a bite on his forearm, though.’

  I’d forgotten that. ‘Self-defence. I didn’t swallow.’

  Thistle lets out a snort, and takes out her keys. She approaches the door, which brings her closer to me. I can smell her shampoo.

  She sticks her key into the lock, but doesn’t turn it. She just looks at me.

  I thought about not coming here. She’s better off without me. But spending the rest of my days longing for her, and never doing anything about it would feel like throwing my life away. And the last time I tried that, she got dragged into my world anyhow.

  So I’m trying something different. I hold out the flowers. She doesn’t take them.

  ‘You’re probably thinking you can do better,’ I say.

  Her smile is so slight I might be imagining it. ‘That might have occurred to me.’

  ‘Well, you’re right,’ I say. ‘You deserve the best, and I’ve got some pretty obvious drawbacks. One arm, four fingers and a criminal history.’

  Thistle squints at me. ‘You also seem to be purple.’

  ‘But I was hoping I could convince you to consider some of my strengths. The less obvious ones.’

  She looks amused. ‘Go on.’

  ‘One: you already know the worst thing about me. That means no nasty surprises, down the road.’

  ‘Feels like you’re just reframing another drawback.’

  ‘Two: I’ll never lie to you.’

  ‘Again.’

  ‘Again,’ I concede. ‘But I’ve admitted some things that other men would hide. You know about the C-word because I told you, remember.’

  Thistle doesn’t seem convinced. ‘There’s that same drawback again.’

  ‘Three: I’d die for you.’

  Her eyebrows go up. ‘That’s a bit dramatic.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It’s true, though.’

  In the past, I thought I was a danger to her. I thought I might lose control and hurt her. So I tried to stay away. And yet, in that chamber, I let Anders suffocate me, rather than risk him coming after Thistle. I’m not a threat to her. I would do anything to keep her safe.

 

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