Instinct told me to stay near the perimeter, away from all the people, their exposed arms and hands and faces. But I jammed my hands in my pockets and slipped between the crowds, edging my way to the front of the line. I would be first. I wouldn’t lose my seat. I wouldn’t change my mind this time.
A phone rang behind me, and continued to ring. A man tapped my sleeve. “Miss, I think that’s your phone.”
“Not mine,” I said. “I don’t have a phone.” I turned back toward the departure gate. The conductor was readying to board and I hefted my pack higher on my shoulder. The phone rang again. Closer this time.
Something shivered through the material, an insistent vibration inside my backpack. I lowered it to the floor, slowly unzipped it, and reached inside. The phone I’d locked in Reece’s apartment five days ago buzzed in my hand.
One new text message flashed across the screen.
Found a stray cat.
Think he belongs to you.
Tonight @9. The answer’s in the box.
I shut the phone slowly, watched the blue screen fade to black. Someone had access to Reece’s apartment and had taken the phone. They’d been close to me. Close enough to put it in my backpack. Close enough that I hadn’t even noticed it happening.
It lit up again, alive in my hand.
Gena’s name flashed. Shaking, I opened the phone and put it to my ear. Passengers converged toward the gate.
“Hello?” My eyes skimmed the swarm as it pressed in around me.
“Leigh.” Her voice was muffled and cut out in brief silences. “Leigh, it’s Gena . . .”
Someone knocked into my shoulder.
“. . . called to thank you. . . .”
“Thank me? For what?” I turned slowly, searching the overpasses and stairwells. I jammed my finger in my ear and listened hard.
“. . . for springing Reece . . . went to see him . . . duty officer said . . . bailed him out last night. . . .”
“Bailed him out?” A woman in front of me turned to stare.
“. . . trying to call him . . . all night . . . no answer . . . maybe he was with you. . . .” Boarding instructions echoed from the overhead speakers. Someone stepped into the back of my foot.
“. . . any idea where he is? . . .” Gena asked before our connection dropped.
“Gena? Gena?” The line was dead.
The crowd pressed in behind me, muttering as I stood there with the phone to my ear. I replayed the broken bits and pieces of conversation. Reece was out of jail. Someone bailed him out using my name. And now he was missing.
Found a stray cat. Think he belongs to you.
Reece. It had to be. He was the only student I had left.
My feet stuck to the floor when I remembered the ad in today’s paper. Some cats don’t dance. Dead or alive when you find him?
“Ticket, please.”
I looked up at the attendant, holding my ticket close to my body.
“Your ticket, miss?” he insisted with a hard smile.
I looked at the black-and-white ticket. It should have all been so clear. My freedom was on the other side of that door. But the only answer that made any sense—the only thing I really wanted—wasn’t.
I turned headlong into the crowd and bulldozed my way through. I had to solve the ad before nine o’clock.
A uniformed police officer shifted his weight, fingers resting on his sidearm as I emerged. A sweating mess of panic and frustration, I lowered my eyes and walked steadily through the terminal, pausing only to buy a Metro ticket home.
I fingered Lonny’s card in my pocket.
It all comes down to motive . . .
Reece’s voice buzzed in my ears.
Who has a reason to kill people you care about? To put you behind bars? Who would want to ruin your life, Leigh?
I’d never hurt anyone. Had never taken anything that belonged to anyone else. But my father had.
He couldn’t see the lives he was destroying.
Was it possible all this could have something to do with him? I clutched my bag tight, remembering what my mother had told me about my father. What he’d done. How he’d been caught. My father had lied and stolen and left his partner to take the fall. It was a crazy thought, but could I be paying for his crimes because he wasn’t here to suffer for them himself ?
And suddenly it all began to make a terrible kind of sense.
I knew whose life my father destroyed.
Dead or alive when you find him? It was as if we’d come full circle. Back to the beginning. It had all started with Schrödinger, the morning I’d found the first ad, and Rankin’s voice droning on about the damn cat. The cat was dead. It had to be. He’d said it himself. The cat couldn’t be both dead and alive at the same time. Dead, like the cat on my porch. Dead, like Kylie and the others. He was going to kill Reece.
I got off the city bus at West River and took the side streets at a sprint. Crouching in the bushes next to the high school, I watched as deejays carried amps and speakers, and student council members toted the last of the decorations and balloons to the gym. Some cats don’t dance. No, the killer wasn’t luring me to the prom. He was taking me back to the beginning. Back to the chemistry lab where we first learned about Schrödinger’s cat. Where he’d left the first message, Dead or Alive, on my desk.
An unmarked police car idled near the main entrance, so I slipped inside through a back door, sticking to the quiet, dark passages and emerging at the empty chem lab.
The lights were off and the room reeked of disinfectant. Muddy chalk swirls were drying on the blackboard. I rotated slowly, taking in every detail of the room. Late-evening sun streamed between the plastic slats and stretched over the neat rows. I grabbed my stool off the table and set it quietly on the floor. My desk was clean. Nothing. No clues, no notes.
The answer’s in the box.
I ran to the storage closet and flipped on the light, illuminating floor-to-ceiling gunmetal shelves stuffed with cardboard boxes, all of them sorted and labeled by my own hand. I moved to the far end of the closet where I’d organized the fourth semester lab materials. We’d covered Schrödinger six weeks ago. If there was a clue, it was . . .
Here.
A chill raced through me. The box was labeled Schrödinger’s Cat in indelible blue ink, fresh fumes still clinging to the air around it. It was long and wide, big enough to fill the space below the lowest shelf. Big enough for a body.
Respite in a box . . .