I laugh. “I tried once to get her to send me to a public school. I thought I’d like to meet some kids who don’t have maids but whose moms are maids.”
“Poor little rich girl,” Solo says.
Maybe I should take offense. But the cool breeze kind of drains the nasty from me. “I miss regular life. Or my version of it, anyway. School.”
“But you can’t leave because of your leg.”
What an interesting way he has of saying it. It’s not a question. It’s not quite a statement. It’s almost a challenge.
“How much does it hurt?” Solo asks.
“It … it doesn’t,” I say. “But that’s because of the pain meds, of course.”
He looks down at his food and chews. He has something to say, but he’s considering it. “Have you seen it without the bandages? I mean, have you seen the actual leg?”
I shake my head. “Not … no.” I frown at him, and he studies the placid water. How does he know I haven’t seen the wound? “I asked. They said it was still too bad. They didn’t want to upset me.”
A knowing smirk comes and goes. “Yeah.”
I push the sandwich aside. “Who the hell are you?” I demand.
“Solo Plissken.”
“I didn’t ask your name,” I say. “Who are you? Why are you here? You’re not old enough to be doing a full-time job at a place like Spiker.”
“Does it always take you this long to start asking obvious questions?”
My face burns. “I’m asking now.”
“I’m your mother’s ward. When my parents died six years ago she sort of, well, inherited me.”
The math is simple. And yet I’m sitting here, astounded. “She’s been your guardian for six years? And she’s never mentioned it to me?”
He looks at me straight, eye to eye. “I wonder why that is?”
Suddenly I am very uncomfortable. He knows things I don’t. He knows things he hasn’t told me. Why the hell am I finding things out about my mother from this guy?
I take a breath, try to focus. “What happened to your parents?”
Again, that fleeting smirk. “The safe question. Or maybe you’re going to sneak up on the truth, little by little.”
“If you don’t want to answer—”
“Car accident. No big story there. No mystery. I was at my grandmother’s. They were on vacation. Without me.” He pauses, takes a swig from his water bottle. “Good thing I wasn’t with them. They went off the side of a road, down an embankment. Crash. Boom.”
I flash back to my dad’s death. The insistent knocking on the door, the grim-faced cops, my mother’s agonized scream.
Imagine losing both your parents in the blink of an eye.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “That must have been horrible for you.” I tear a strip from my napkin. “My dad … well, he died when I was young, too. Why didn’t you go live with your grandmother?”
“She’s eighty-seven. She thinks Roosevelt is president.”
“Why my mother, though? Because she’s so warm and nurturing?”
He laughs. And he has a nice laugh. Damn. I wish he didn’t have such a nice laugh. He’s a temporary blip in my life. He’s not my type. Except for the laugh. Maybe the eyes. Not the smirk, or the hair which needs cutting so badly my fingers are itching to grab the knife and do it myself.
“Your mother and my parents were business partners.”
“So … you own part of Spiker?”
Solo shakes his head. “No. My parents were screwed out of the business by your mother.”
This does not entirely surprise me. Still, for some reason, I feel vaguely guilty. Sins of the mother and all that.
“I guess your dad—he was still alive then—tried to make peace. But it wasn’t happening. Up until then they had all been best friends. My folks died before they could change the will that left me to your mother’s tender mercies.”
“You hate her,” I say.
Solo doesn’t react right away. He thinks. He cups his chin in his hand and carefully considers.
Finally he says, “I don’t do hate.” He grins ruefully. “However, I do resentment pretty well.”
I want to ask Solo more, much more, but my phone chimes. A text.
Need u now. Bad.
When I dial Aislin, the call doesn’t connect. I check my phone: one bar. Figures. Just enough for a text to get through.
“Damn,” I murmur. Aislin in trouble? Not a surprise. Aislin texting me for help? That is unusual. Generally, she just stumbles through her escapades, then regales me with the details later.
“Aislin?” Solo inquires.
Another text. Where r u? Guys after M at GGP. Going there 2 help.
“Damn,” I murmur. “Aislin’s idiot boyfriend’s in trouble. He’s at Golden Gate Park, and she thinks she’s going to save his butt.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“You mean felony or misdemeanor?” I rub my eyes. “You never know with Maddox.”
I text her back. WAIT. I’ll think of something.
“I don’t know what to do,” I tell Solo. “I can’t leave this place, not with … The Leg. Dr. Anderson told me not to put any pressure on it.”
“Dr. Anderson is a tool.”
I shift The Leg back and forth, a couple inches in each direction. No pain. Nothing.
Solo gives a small, approving nod.
I meet his eyes. “If I needed to, say, disappear from here for a couple of hours without being caught, could you help me do it?”
There’s an intriguing arrogance in his face. “Talk to me.”
– 15 –
I’m seeing an interesting side to Solo. He’s not the blushing boy in my hospital room, rendered speechless by Aislin’s antics. He’s totally in control, coolly pushing my wheelchair through maintenance areas and unused kitchen facilities and darkened labs.
As we move, he provides muted commentary. Things like, “This room hasn’t been used probably ever, so I turned off surveillance cameras.… The camera on this part of the stairwell is broken.… I can delete tape of this later—no one will notice.… The scientist who works in this space is a paranoid so no camera.… Infrared is off here so as long as we don’t turn on the light…”
What I’m coming to think of as “Escape from Spiker” involves about sixty different, distinct steps, all inside Solo’s head. The building is massive, but he has it memorized—every door, room, and camera angle.
We reach a set of steps. “How do we get down those?” I ask.
“I carry you. Then I come back up and get your wheelchair.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You want out or not?”
“You don’t look that strong.” I say it, but it’s a lie. He does look that strong.
Another text from Aislin. Maddox in trubble.
Spelling is not Aislin’s favorite thing.
“Lean forward,” Solo says.
I do, and his hand goes behind my back. I feel his arms slide over the clasp of my bra.
“I’m going to lift The Leg.”
“I’m afraid it will hurt.”
“It won’t,” he says, and I wonder what makes him so sure. His palm slides under my thighs and with barely a grunt he has me up and out of my chair. My face is close to his, close enough that his hair brushes my cheek and my nose and I have to fight an urge to sneeze.
I ask myself what I ate at lunch. I ask myself why I didn’t bother with deodorant this morning.
I ask myself whether that’s the smell of his shampoo or just the smell of him. Either way, I like it. In fact, whatever it is, and I’m not saying I know, I find it strangely fascinating.
He carries me down the stairs, kneels, places me on the next-to-bottom step, and runs back up to grab my wheelchair.
I don’t turn around to watch him climb away, because that would be me checking out his butt. Which is not something I would ever do.
But his jeans fit. No sagging for Solo.
/> I insist on climbing into my chair on my own. It’s easier than it should be. We’re back in gear, and a few minutes later, we arrive at an underground garage.
Solo touches my shoulder. “We have to be careful here,” he warns.
We wait just inside a recessed doorway in a corner of the garishly lit concrete-plus-more-concrete space.
“Do you have a car?” I ask.
“I have a dozen cars,” he replies. “Oddly enough, they’re all identical.”
He points to a sort of car corral where a dozen or so electric cars are parked. Each one has the Spiker logo on the side.
Solo checks the clock on his phone. He looks up and within a few seconds a guard comes walking by. We hear the footsteps. Coming, then going, fading altogether.
“Yep,” Solo says. He pushes me out into the garage. The cars aren’t locked. The “keys” rest on the dashboard.
Solo pushes the passenger seat back as far as it will go and I hoist myself in. He folds my chair and pops it into the trunk. The car starts without a sound.
“Do you know how to drive?” I ask.
“Do you have six dollars in cash?” Solo asks, ignoring my question.
“I don’t exactly have my purse with me.”
“Check the glove compartment. See if there’s a roll of quarters.”
I dig under some maps and find two rolls.
“Good. We have to use cash at the bridge.”
I point to the automatic toll-road transponder mounted on the windshield.
“Yeah,” he says. “Pull that down and put it in the glove compartment. We don’t want to be tracked. I don’t want to have to try to hack the toll system.”
“But you have no problem hacking into Spiker?” I ask.
An annoyed look, maybe even an angry one, clouds Solo’s eyes.
“Seat belt,” he says tersely.
I click my belt and we’re off across the garage with an almost silent whir of electric motors. The tires on the painted concrete floor make more noise.
“Lower the sun visor and put your head down,” he orders. “Cameras.”
There’s an automated checkout. Solo pulls a plastic ID card from his pocket. I can see the picture is not of him. The name on the ID is Wanda Chang.
“Funny, you don’t look Chinese,” I say.
He swipes the card past the reader. The gate goes up.
And for the first time in forever, I am outside.
“They’ll never know?” I ask, looking anxiously back at the receding outer gate of the campus.
He shrugs. “I can’t guarantee that. They know I escape from time to time.”
“Escape?” Even though I’ve been feeling the same way, it seems overly dramatic.
“What else is it when the monkey gets out of his cage?”
“You’re not a monkey,” I point out. “You’re strange, but you’re human.”
“Mostly,” he says with a slim smile.
“But you can leave, right?”
“Yeah. But where would I go, exactly? I don’t have wheels”—he takes a sharp right—“not unless I get them this way. And Spiker’s out in the middle of nowhere.”
It’s twenty minutes to the Golden Gate Bridge, which, as usual, is shrouded in fog. I call Aislin to tell her I’m on my way, but she doesn’t answer.
When we reach Aislin’s townhouse, I text her that I’m outside. She appears a moment later, running down the steps. She’s upset. Her nose is red and mascara rings her eyes. But she still has time to do a double take when she sees Solo behind the wheel.
“Sorry I couldn’t pick up when you called. I was talking to Maddox.” Aislin slides into the backseat. She sighs dramatically, but the effect is ruined by the fact that she’s really worried, not just playing at it.
“Thanks for coming.” She manages a smile for Solo. “And you brought me a toy to play with on the way. How thoughtful.”
“So what’s wrong?” I ask.
“Maddox. Of course,” she says. “He’s trapped.”
“Trapped where?”
“In the park.”
“And he’s trapped there why?” I ask.
“Some guys. They think he owes them money. He’s in the park and they’re after him.”
“Can’t he call the police?” Solo asks.
“That would be … embarrassing.” Aislin digs through her purse and retrieves some lip gloss. She slides it on expertly, no mirror required. “They might decide to search him.”
“Ah,” Solo says. “He’s carrying…?”
“Some weed. He has to sell it to get the money he needs to pay off the dudes chasing him.”
Solo stares at me, expressionless. I smile feebly. Shrug.
He’s going to turn the car around and take us straight back to Spiker, and I don’t blame him.
Solo pulls into traffic. “I can’t believe your mom thinks Aislin’s a bad influence,” he says. “I think she’s kind of fun.”
– 16 –
There aren’t a lot of roads inside Golden Gate Park. The park is huge, bigger than Central Park in New York. It’s a long rectangle with one end up against Haight Street—hippie town—and the other end right up against the Pacific Ocean. From weed to waves, you might say.
“Where is he in the park?” Solo asks as he takes a tight turn, narrowly missing an old woman on a wobbly bike.
“He’s in a lake,” Aislin says.
“Of course he is,” I say under my breath.
“In a lake?” Solo repeats. “In the water?”
“On an island.”
I pull out my phone. “I’ll Google a map of the park.” When the map glows on screen, I groan. “There are a lot of lakes. Like twenty or more.”
Solo streaks through a yellow light. “Any with islands?” he asks.
We’ve reached the edge of the park. “Is it a big island or a small island?” I ask Aislin. “A lot of them have islands.”
She fires off a text as Solo pulls onto John. F. Kennedy Drive, the road that runs the length of the north side of the park. Traffic is light. The sun is dropping from view and shadows are lengthening beneath the trees.
“He says how big is big?” Aislin reads from her phone.
“That’s an excellent philosophical question,” I say. “Ask him how long it would take for him to walk across it.”
It takes several minutes of texting—Maddox is not, shall we say, academically gifted—before we decide he’s on an island in something called Mallard Lake.
I set the GPS on the dashboard.
“Make a U-turn,” a female voice instructs, in a tone that suggests we’ve already disappointed her.
Solo brakes. “I don’t think it’s legal to.”
“Now make a U-turn,” the voice commands.
Solo pulls the car into a tight U-turn.
“Turn right in a hundred yards,” says the voice.
“What do we do when we get there?” I ask Aislin. “These guys, the guys after Maddox—”
“Now turn right.”
“—they’re not like people who would have guns, right?”
“Turn right in one-half mile.”
“Guns?” Aislin echoes. Like she’s never heard the word before. “They might, but—”
“Whoa,” I say.
“—what are they going to do, shoot us?” She attempts a laugh. It fails.
Aislin reaches up from the backseat and switches on the radio. It’s Rancid, singing about another East Bay night. One of my favorites, despite the fact that it’s partly about earthquakes and watching the freeways fall. (Before my time, that quake.)
Even though I like the song, I reach to switch it off. Solo stops me, snatching my wrist in midair. He’s as quick as a snake. “It’s good cover. Makes us seem like regular kids.”
He rolls down the windows. The air is damp and smells of pine.
“Now turn right,” says the voice.
The lake is close by, but you can’t see it from the road. We see it on the
GPS map. It’s an isosceles triangle with a circular island in the fat end. The park isn’t busy and there are only a few cars parked here and there. But at the point where the road is closest to the lake, there are three cars, obviously hastily parked.
“That’s Maddox’s stepfather’s brother’s wife’s Ford!” Aislin cries.
The Ford, a dented tan Fusion, is boxed in by the other two cars, a tricked-out Miata and a Civic with spinners and a spoiler.
The Miata’s driver’s-side door is open. No one is inside.
Solo slows down and pulls off onto the shoulder. We are surrounded by way too many trees and way too many bushes. It’s surprisingly jungle-esque for something in the middle of San Francisco.
Our radio plays on after Solo turns off the engine. “Text your boyfriend that we’re here,” he instructs.
“He says he can’t move,” Aislin reports back.
Solo cranks the music higher. “Ask him if he hears the music.”
Maddox hears the music.
“If he hears it so do … Okay, here they come,” Solo says. There’s a look of satisfaction on his face. “Seat belts tight?”
“Why?” I ask.
Two guys, both Asian, thin, smoking cigarettes, emerge from the tangle of bushes, fallen trees, and wet grass. One is well-muscled and wearing a green leather jacket. The other, smaller, is wearing a black T-shirt. They give us a hard look. A tough-guy look. The muscular one reaches into his jacket. It’s a move intended to tell us that he’s got something in there.
Solo presses his foot on the accelerator. The car—our car, the one I’m sitting in—smashes straight into the Miata. Right into its driver’s-side door panel.
The impact jolts me hard against my shoulder belt. But it’s not enough to pop the airbag.
“Hey!” I yell. Because what else is there to yell when someone deliberately crashes a car?
Both guys stare, jaws open. A cigarette falls.
“Whoa! Sorry!” Solo says, and it’s a very convincing apology.
“What the—” Leather Jacket yells and stabs the air with his cigarette.
“Sorry, man, sorry!” Solo yells. He whips out his phone and starts dialing. “I’m all over 911. My bad. Totally my bad. But we need the cops to come so I can report it.”
“No cops,” Leather Jacket says. He shakes a no-no finger at Solo.