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I looked… well, I looked like absolute shit, that was my first thought as I stared at my reflection in the mirror above the faucet. The second was amazement that Bill the lorry driver had recognized me, because I barely recognized myself.
I had always been fairly slight, but now my skin looked stretched tight over my skull, flushed with fever over my cheekbones but greenish white everywhere else. There were blue-black shadows under my eye sockets, and my bleached hair looked like a dirty mop head. I hadn’t showered since the hostel, and as for when I had last eaten… was it today? Or was it the veggie deluxe I’d had yesterday outside Northampton? I couldn’t remember anymore. Well, the only thing Madrox hadn’t taken from me was the five quid in cash, so at least I could buy myself some fries.
First, though, I needed to wash the blood off my hands. The hot water was too hot, but in a way that felt strangely good, stinging the cuts and scrapes with a sensation that was almost cathartic. I splashed some on my face, wincing at the heat, and then moved across to the dryer.
As I rubbed my hands gently underneath the hot air, I looked down at my bruised, empty ring finger and felt that treacherous lump rise again in my throat, making it impossible to swallow.
I’m sorry, I thought. I’m so sorry, Gabe.
I knew what he would have said if he were here. Don’t give it a second thought. Who cares about a stupid fucking ring, babe? But I did care. It was the last tangible piece of him I’d had with me. And now that too had been ripped away, and all I had left to show for it was the bruise. Maybe this was how it was supposed to go, though. Not with the bang of a prison door but whimpering gasps, everything stripped away until I had nothing left to lose.
You got this, I heard in my ear, and the sob rose up inside me, choking me. I do not fucking have this, Gabe. I wanted to scream it, sob it, wail it—I can’t do this anymore, do you understand?
But I had to. I had to do this. Because there was no one else.
The dryer cut out, and I swallowed down the pain in my throat, shouldered the rucksack, and pulled up my hood. Then I made my way out of the bathroom and into the bright lights of the food court.
At McDonald’s, I ordered the cheapest, warmest combination I could think of—a large tea, fries, and ketchup—and then took my tray over to a booth in the far corner, where I sat, picking at the fries and trying not to drip rainwater onto my MacBook.
I had warmed up now, or should have, with the heat inside the building, the hot water, and the dryer, but I was still shivering, and my fingers felt stiff and stupid as I tried to input the password. After two botched tries I had to force myself to slow down, breathe, and make sure of every letter. A third failure would mean I was locked out until the counter reset, and I couldn’t afford that.
But the final attempt, I got it right, and the laptop fired up.
The service station Wi-Fi was, surprisingly, not too bad—and this time, as I navigated to Gabe’s backup cloud, I didn’t bother with the VPN. I had already blown my cover. Now, if something happened to me, I wanted the trail to be clear and visible—bread crumbs large enough for Malik to follow and figure out what I had been doing.
I typed in Gabe’s email and password, taking immense care over each letter, and the screen hung for a moment while the site considered—making me hold my breath with agony.
Then, Send verification code? asked the log-in screen.
I let out another shuddering breath, more carefully this time, not wanting a repeat of the screeching agony in the car park.
I clicked OK.
And then I waited.
And waited.
And… waited.
My remaining fries were going cold, but I suddenly felt too sick to eat them. Why wasn’t the code coming through? Had the police already noticed the loss of service on the phone sitting in their evidence locker and managed to block the swap? Or had Madrox and his “contact” double-crossed me after he left the car park and changed the number back? It was possible—though I couldn’t imagine what they would have got out of it.
I glanced up at the top right of the phone screen. I still had service—three bars of it, plus 4G. The SIM card was working fine.
And then a horrible thought occurred to me. The phone in Madrox’s hand had rung when I called Gabe. But I had never seen the screen. I had no way of knowing if it was my call that was making it vibrate, or if Madrox had sent a secret message to his contact to call him, in order to make me think the phone was now linked to Gabe’s number. Maybe his contact didn’t work in a phone store at all. Maybe he was just your garden-variety con artist. Fuck. Fuck. I had thought I was being so clever, calling the phone to check the swap had gone through. Why hadn’t I waited and made Madrox answer it, to check it really was Gabe’s number?
I was still staring in cold horror at the phone in my hand, trying to work out how I could figure out whether I’d been double-crossed, when I heard footsteps behind me and looked up to see a member of staff walking towards the quiet corner of the forecourt where I was sitting.
I looked down at the phone again, more to hide my face than because I really expected the code to have come through, but I could still hear the footsteps, clicking and purposeful, coming closer and closer, and to my shock, when I glanced furtively up for a second time, I saw that the staff member wasn’t walking past or heading to another area. She was coming straight to my table. To me.
Oh God. Oh God.
Had I been spotted? Was it worth making a run for it?
I looked down at the table, at the open laptop, at my bag, and then at the security guard standing by the big glass doors, boredom in every line of his stance. He looked tired, and not exactly athletic. On a good day, I might have risked it. But like this, with a pack that felt increasingly like a leaden weight, sweating and shaking with the wound in my side, I would never make it. Not even if I abandoned all my stuff—and I couldn’t do that, not now. Not the laptop, anyway. Not when I was so close.
My heart felt like it had stopped dead inside my chest. The woman was almost at my table.
I swallowed and pasted what I hoped was my friendliest smile on my face, though it felt like a grotesque, clammy attempt at the real thing. Then I looked up. “Everything okay?”
