A Girl Named Digit (10 page)

“Like the diaper bag.”

“But where in Grand Central could she leave a bag unattended? The only other things she says are, ‘I just really need to release the past and find a future with you.’ And . . .” I thumbed through to find it. “Here. ‘You have to listen. I am lost without you; we have to find more time together. Do you hear me?’”

The answer came to me so fast and in such a satisfying way that I threw my arms around John and shouted, “Got it!” a little too loudly in his ear.

He pried my hands from around his neck but kept them in his. He asked, “What now?”

“She’s lost without him and wants to find a future with him. Get it? Lost and Found. She left the bag either on a train so it would be put in the Lost and Found, or she put it there herself. Call Helen. See how long stuff is kept in the Lost and Found in Grand Central.”

John seemed surprised to realize he was still holding my hands. He muttered, “Sorry,” and got up and called Helen and then Steven. I lay back on my mattress, supremely pleased with myself. When he hung up he said, “I’ve been sprung. Looks like I’m going to New York in the morning.”

“You? What do you mean
you?
” It took me a few seconds to really hear what he’d said.

“I’ve got clearance to leave. I’m getting out of here. Hot shower and a flight to New York to see if I can grab that bag.” He was up now, walking around, throwing things in his duffle bag.

My throat closed. I wrapped my arms around myself, still in the spot where John and I had been working for days and even holding hands for ten seconds.

He stopped his packing and sat back down next to me. “Hey. I’m not going to leave you alone here. They’ll send someone else to stay with you.” A little nudge with his shoulder. “No one as cool as me. But they’ll send someone.”

It had taken a lot for me to feel comfortable here with John. Now I was going to start over again with who—the wise-cracking security guard? Super-stiff Hannah Devine? The truth was it didn’t matter who they replaced him with—I really didn’t want John to leave. I tried a withholding strategy: “If you go without me, I won’t help you anymore. You’ll get whatever’s in that diaper bag, and you’re on your own.”

John smiled. “Farrah, I’ve got the whole FBI behind me. I’ll be okay.”

He had a point there. New strategy, a threat: “You’d better hope nothing happens to me. Protecting me was your first field assignment. What if I start screaming from the balcony and get found?”

“You wouldn’t do that.” Again, a good point.

I lowered myself to guilt: “And you’d really leave me here with just anyone? My parents trusted me with you, not Bruno from Sector Six.” A little pause, I was getting somewhere.

He was quiet, his hands clasped in front of him as if praying for an answer. The answer came and he shook his head. “Anyone can keep you safe in here, Farrah. I have to go to New York. I’ll come back with whatever that evidence is and get you out of here. Two days, tops.”

I’m a little ashamed to admit what happened next, but I was out of ideas. I’d played to his sympathies, I’d played to his overly developed sense of duty, and I had one card left. It was a cheap shot, a sucker punch if you will. I knew very little about John (besides the exact outline of his jaw and the way it framed his mouth like rigid parentheses around a soft word that is too delicious to be spoken aloud—I’d noticed that). But I knew that he was not exactly comfortable swimming in even the shallow end of human emotions. So I started to cry.

My success in this area was unprecedented. I wondered, as he put his arm around me and reached for another clean hankie, if this mastery of the tear duct could take me to the White House. Or the altar. Must remember to use my powers for good, not evil. “Shhh,” he was saying to me. “It’s okay. Please stop. Shhh.” He got up and, sadly, took his arm with him. He was pacing with his hands folded and under his chin, nodding to himself as he walked. I whimpered a little so as not to release him from my control.

“Seriously, Farrah. Please. Stop. I’m going to call Steven. Just let me think.” Job done, I stopped. John had him on the phone immediately. “Listen, I think I need to take Farrah with me. I know. It is. But there is evidence in that bag, and the operative who left it there thought that her partner would not be able to decode it. I can go alone and bring it back to our guys or to Farrah, but it would be faster if she came with me. We could have it decoded tomorrow. I really think we . . . really? Yes, I agree. Okay. In the morning. Okay, bye.”

He smiled at me. “Happy? Steven thinks you need to go with me too. He’ll let your parents know, and we fly out in the morning.” He sat down on his air mattress.

“Thanks. I swear I’m going to help.” I wiped the last of my tears away and hoped it hadn’t made me look all blotchy.

“No more crying?”

“No more making me cry?”

“Promise.”

I
NY

I slept for about two hours before John woke me up. “Coffee’s here, and security is coming for us in twenty minutes.” “Then let me sleep for eighteen minutes. It’s not like I’m not already fully dressed.” I turned over and pulled the sleeping bag over my head. John left me alone.

When the security guy got there, I was dead asleep again. His voice woke me up to the realization that we were actually getting out of there. I sprung up, brushed my teeth, grabbed my bag, and got in the elevator in a matter of two minutes. After retracing our steps through three elevators, we were back in Steven’s office, where nothing seemed to have changed. Including our clothes.

“You two are going to have to see what you can find in New York and report directly to me. Don’t deal with any local authority, call me.” Uh, control freak?

Helen walked in and escorted us into the hallway. “If you are going to get to New York under everyone’s radar, you’re going to have to change your clothes. And, well, maybe, shower?”

“Thank God.” I followed her to what amounted to the FBI’s version of a high school locker room. Helen left me a brand-new bar of soap, a tiny bottle of shampoo, and a bag of clothes to change into.

The shower was a little bit of a disappointment, as the water never creeped above warm and automatically shut off every two minutes. But the soap and shampoo were nice. I dried off and looked in the mystery costume bag. Not bad. My disguise was as a businesswoman, with John as my colleague. I wore a black wool-blend suit, more blend than wool but nice. It was tailored to snip in at all the right places to ensure a promotion. The heels were higher than I would have picked, but I was going with it. How far could I possibly have to walk in New York City?

Fully dressed, I snuck into a bathroom stall and turned on my phone.

Olive Grossman Text (2):

1. At beach for sunset with Danny, he’s still says you’re totally kidnapped but laughs like it’s funny. I’m not buying it. Just reply with one word to tell me I’m right.

2. P.S. I never knew Danny was so funny!

It took all of my mental strength not to write back and demand to know why she’s watching the sunset with my little brother. I turned off my phone and tucked it in my suit jacket pocket. It only had 20 percent battery power left.

John was waiting for me in his office, shaved and decked out in a second expensive suit (definitely not FBI issue), flipping through mail and stuff that had accumulated over the past few days. He looked up when I came in. “Wow. You’re supposed to be my business partner? How’s anyone at the office supposed to concentrate?”

Sweet. “Yeah it was easier for me to focus when you stunk too.” Bold, right? I think my GCS success was going to my head. And I have to admit his light little flirtations were doing me a world of good, even if he meant them in a grandfatherly isn’t-she-purdy sort of way.

My carry-on luggage was waiting for me, a discreet black gym bag with my jeans, favorite T-shirt, socks, and boots shoved in a stinky mess. Who says the government’s inefficient? A black sedan with tinted windows dropped us at the JetBlue terminal, and we were in the air by eleven a.m.

We were seated in the last row of the coach cabin. Our seats didn’t recline, but they were very convenient to the bathrooms. Gee, thanks. I fell into a fitful sleep almost as soon as the plane took off. When I woke up, John was on hour three of the National Geographic Channel. Shamelessly nerdy.

“Hungry?” John was watching me wake up and orient myself.

“Sure.” He pulled out a couple of roast beef sandwiches from his carry-on and pulled my tray table down.

We ate in a comfortable silence for a while before he busted out with, “Do you have a boyfriend at home?”

I nearly spit out my last bite of roast beef. “What? No! I mean . . . no. Why are you asking that?”

“I was just thinking about it while I was watching you sleep. Your parents know where you are, and your friends seem a little too dumb to care. But I was wondering if there was some guy who is in love with you and wondering if you’re okay. It just seems kind of cruel if there is.”

This all seemed highly personal. “No boyfriend. I’ve never had a boyfriend. Or anything.” I wondered if he fully understood how anything really meant
anything,
with the exception of the ill-fated pesto kiss. “I’ve never really been able to relate to a guy in that way, and you can imagine they’d probably think I was a little off if they got to know me.”

He laughed. “A little off? Try way off the deep end.” I gave him a punch in the arm, and he pretended it hurt. It was the best way I could think of to change the subject. Besides this:

“So do you have a girlfriend who’s wondering where you are?”

“That’s probably exactly why I don’t have a girlfriend. I can never really tell anyone what I’m doing. I’ve gotten so good at keeping secrets that apparently I’m emotionally closed off. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Repeatedly.”

“Wow. I can totally see that. You’ve got some serious robot tendencies. I’ve just spent 168 hours with you straight, I’ve spilled all my deepest, darkest secrets, and I don’t even know where you grew up. Weird.”

“Those were your deepest, darkest secrets?” He was laughing at me again.

“Yeah, like my SAT scores? Those are in a sealed file at my school.”

“Oh, okay.” Then he said something that sounded like “
Kzhet jed swarky; shebedokrt shee,
” and laughed. “It’s Ukrainian: ‘My hut is on the edge of the village; I know nothing.’ Like ‘I’m not in the inner circle; your secret is safe with me.’ Don’t worry, I’ve got nothing that compares to perfect scores, but I’ve got my own stuff. I’m just used to keeping myself to myself. Why are we talking about this?”

“You brought it up. You were wondering about my heartbroken boyfriend and ended up ’fessing up to some serious intimacy issues.”

He gave me a raised eyebrow. I had to defend myself. “I watch
Oprah,
I know.”

We circled for thirty minutes before we could land at JFK. Apparently with all the added security and Terminal 8 being out of commission, the airport was a mess.

The elderly couple across the aisle from us was quickly losing patience. “Ridiculous. We’ll never make our connection. This is the last time I make this trip.” They tossed complaints back and forth between each other until they cycled on to repeats. “Ridiculous.” They lobbed a few at John. “Can you believe this? We were supposed to land at seven. By the time they find us a gate, it’ll be eight thirty.”

“Yes, sir. I imagine the whole airport has slowed down.” John seemed very young to me, politely addressing this old guy.

The wife leaned over her husband to address me. “I tell you, this is a total disaster. It will be months before this airport is functioning right.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I meant it.

The wife laughed. “I can’t imagine how it’s your fault, dear, but thank you.” They both fell silent, content that at least they’d gotten an apology.