Chapter Three
Three
“You’re making a massive mistake,” Eric tells Dane, spittle flying from his mouth. A vein throbs in his forehead, and I am relieved we haven’t been intimate in months.
“Am I?” Dane asks. I might be imagining that he takes a step toward me. “I rarely make mistakes. As you know.”
Eric might explode. His fists clench, and his eyes bug alarmingly as he looks at Dane. “How do you know each other?” There is a disbelieving element to his tone. It’s the same tone he uses when mansplaining to me about my work. It’s a you don’t belong in this space unless I allow it note.
“We had an eventful meeting this morning,” I say.
Eric looks at Dane. “Is that so.” The way he looks at Dane rather than me when he speaks makes my blood boil. Pissing him off is starting to feel good.
Dane doesn’t bat an eye. “We did meet this morning, and I can confirm it was eventful.”
Eric’s face goes blotchy with color. “Zoe. You have no idea what you’re doing. Let’s go. We’re going to be late.”
I close my eyes briefly and inhale. “I told you, I’m not going.
” He wasn’t always this awful, but the past six months have seen a nosedive into ugly behavior on his part.
I dithered about breaking up with him for months, and now I can’t recall a single reason for waiting.
Relief wars with rising adrenaline at this public skirmish.
I’m pretty sure Eric knows how much I hate confrontation. Might be trying to exploit it, in fact.
Eric looks at me for a long moment and then hisses in a tone I’ve never heard him use—one filled with fury and maybe a little panic: “They’re expecting us. We need to go now. And we can talk about us on the way.” There’s a conciliatory note to his words, as though I might regret ending things.
“We’re over, Eric,” I remind him firmly. “There’s nothing more to discuss.”
His mouth is a thin line. “As your boss, I’m telling you we need to go or we’ll be late.”
“Who’s the meeting with?” Dane asks, and while his tone is easy, there’s an undercurrent of sharpness to the question that makes me take note. Why is he asking? What does he know? Eric shoots him a look of such venom that I’m almost surprised Dane doesn’t dissolve on the spot.
“Zoe,” Eric says, jerking his head to the stairs behind him, indicating that we go.
I shake my head at his delusion. “Dr. Howland, I work under your grant, but I owe you nothing. Certainly not a meeting where I sit and take notes while you talk to random people I have no interest in meeting.”
Eric’s face twitches, and I know it was calling him Dr. Howland that did it.
“Zoe,” he says, and both his face and voice are pointed. Sharp. “Stop fucking around. Let’s go.”
I hate this little scene, hate that a man walking behind Eric obviously picked up on the drama and stopped to look at us.
I want to snap something back at Eric, to use the perfect words to say both no and how offensive he is, but all I can do is shake my head.
The adrenaline that swept through me is starting to make me tremble, and I hate the physical manifestation of that too.
Eric must take my silence for weakness because he sighs and says, “You’re always like this.
Uncommitted. Inconsistent. It shows in your work.
Remember that time you withdrew your paper from that historical journal because you weren’t sure if it was the right place for you?
” He makes a disgusted pfft. “And they went on to publish that Dartmouth guy’s work instead, and he got all the credit when you’d done the research. ”
All I can do is breathe in my anger. My withdrawal of that paper presses on a tender spot. The guy from Dartmouth got tenure based on that paper. But my conclusions weren’t ready then.
“Dr. Wilder,” Dane says in an incongruously cheerful tone. “We should probably get going if we’re going to work the challenge.” It’s the perfect out and I appreciate it.
But the whole scene is too much. Too overwhelming.
I mumble, “I need a moment,” and make my way through the throngs of attendees heading into conference rooms, down the stairs.
I weave through people, through the exhibition hall, toward the exit.
The warmth of the sunshine and the fresh air immediately help.
I’m down the broad steps in front of the doors and on the sidewalk when I hear “Zoe. Wait.”
Dane is behind me. He easily catches up with me on the sidewalk. Before he can say anything, I shake my head. “Listen, thanks for making that situation with Eric less awful than it could have been—”
“Any time I can embarrass Eric Howland is a pleasure.” He isn’t smiling.
“But I’m not partnering with you,” I say, just to make it clear.
He gazes at me for a long moment, and there’s a dizzying array of expressions that cross his face. Amusement. A wince, maybe. I can’t parse them. “You entered this game. Do you know how dangerous it is? Do you know how it works? I’m worried you don’t.”
His words are too close to the condescension I just heard from Eric. “I think I know how to solve a puzzle. I don’t need a man to tell me how.” I am still holding the Celia’s guidebook, and I wave it between us. “And as for danger—”
Someone pushes into Dane, and he goes flying sideways. A shrill yell of surprise comes from people as they leap out of the way.
Dane is on his feet in an instant, pushing his attacker back.
Arms snake around me and grab at the guidebook in my hands.
I keep a firm grip, refusing to relinquish it on instinct, and Dane ignores the guy on him to lunge forward and shove the person away from me.
I dart up a few of the steps for the height advantage, but the two assailants break away and run up the street like common pickpockets who know when to cut their losses.
For a moment Dane seems poised to chase them, but he looks back at me.
“Are you all right?” His eyes are wide.
“Yeah.” I lick my lips, pulse pounding. With the two attackers gone, people go back to what they were doing around us, coming and going into the conference. “What was that about?”
He looks grim. “The guidebook. The challenge.”
I don’t want to admit it, but okay, maybe this is slightly dangerous. A bolt of apprehension goes through me at the thought.
“Put that book away,” he says in a low voice.
I don’t love being told, but I recognize the wisdom of keeping it out of sight now. I stuff it into my backpack. If Eric were out here, would he have pushed back the guy trying to get my guidebook, opening himself to attack? I already know the answer.
Dane straightens his shirtsleeve, which was rumpled in the tussle, and scans the street around us. He looks back up at me where I stand two steps above him. “We should get moving.”
“We?” I eye him skeptically.
“I meant what I told Howland. Partner with me for the Enigma Challenge.” He accompanies this demanding request with another one of those disarming smiles, damn him.
And it makes me hesitate. I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into, with or without Dane. “Tell me what the five puzzles are.”
“Partner with me, and I’ll tell you what they are.”
I look beyond him, scanning the street for more ambushes, and notice he’s doing the same. I feel like a target standing here on the street, but I need to decide—quickly—what to do about the Enigma Challenge, and whether to work with Dane or if I can go it alone.
I think about what Eric said, about how I’m uncommitted and inconsistent.
I think about how Christine never dithers on things.
When I was sixteen and she was nineteen, after our parents died, Christine took legal guardianship of me.
People would say to us “I don’t know how you girls do it!
” and “I hope being on your own works out,” as though we could find new parents if we failed.
There was no choice but to survive. Christine, who has always been fiery, would say “We don’t hope we can do this.
We make this shit happen.” I’ve always loved that as a mantra and wanted it to be mine too. Wanted it to work for me.
I decide I’m going to make this shit happen now. I’m playing this game.
“I agree we need to go somewhere else,” I say. “But you will not be commanding me. Now or in the future.”
An expression that looks like relief floods Dane’s face before he schools it. “I’m sorry I came off that way.”
I study him a moment more to make sure he seems truly contrite. His expression is steady. “All right,” I breathe.
He waits for me to take the steps to the sidewalk, and then he’s off, walking quickly up the street.
I follow, but he is simply too fast with long legs that I don’t possess, and I stumble as I chase him.
I run to keep up as he traverses the busy street, struggling to make the crosswalk light with him.
“Can you stop sprinting like a racehorse?” I pant.
He takes my arm and speeds up the sidewalk along the Ronda de Atocha, past the Reina Sofia, which I eye longingly; I wanted to visit and see Guernica, along with the Prado to see iconic Goya horrorscapes and emotional Velázquez portraits.
We cross more gigantic streets. Madrid is enormous, an impression heightened by tall buildings painted in sunrise colors of salmon pink or mustard yellow, each with rows of windows accentuated by colorful flower boxes.
We pass adorable coffee and pastry shops located every few feet, alternating, it seems, with shops selling giant legs of jamón hanging in the windows, and cross yet another street to a roundabout.
I am sweating now and questioning the wisdom of this deal.
He stops and waits for me to catch up before jerking a thumb toward a beautiful bow-shaped, rust-colored building. “There.”