Page 49 of Breaking the Dark

WHEN JESSICA GETS back to her room later than night, it’s nearly nine o’clock, so four p.m. in New York and the perfect time to speak to Malcolm, who should be fresh out of school and sitting in her office. She loads up Google Earth while she waits for Malcolm to pick up her call. It rings and rings and just as she thinks it’s going to go to voicemail, he answers.

“Hi, Jessica.”

His voice is quiet, so quiet.

“Malcolm. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He’s whispering.

“Why are you whispering? Where are you?”

“I’m on Old Broadway. Back at the Upside Down.”

“The what?”

“The bar. You know. The one Fox brought me to last night.”

“But how’d you get in? Shit, Malcolm. I promised your mom you wouldn’t be doing anything dangerous!”

“I’m not doing anything dangerous. I literally just got in through a back window. I unlocked it last night when Fox wasn’t looking.”

“Well, illegal, then. If you get caught that’ll be Harvard off the list.”

“Well, I’m flattered, obviously, but Harvard isn’t really—”

“That’ll be all the colleges off the list, Malcolm! Get out of there, now!”

“Yeah yeah yeah, I am, just give me a minute. I just want to find this basement….”

Malcolm switches to video, and Jessica lowers her phone so that she can see the screen. It’s the interior of a shabby, disused bar, dusty shelves attached to the wall, tables and chairs pushed up around the edges of the room, a huge window overlooking a scruffy backyard, old posters peeling from the walls.

“I mean, I’ve even been pushing, you know, on this solid wall, thinking maybe it was a secret door. But nothing doing.”

“Look. Whatever. Get out of there now, for the love of God. Get back on the street.” Jessica’s heart is racing.

“Okay. Okay. I just want to take some photos. I’ll call you right back.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

She ends the call and sighs heavily, questioning her choices yet again. Mental footage of Malcolm being hauled out of the empty bar by a pair of cops and thrown into the back of a car, Malcolm’s tiny bespectacled mother signing in at the front desk of a Harlem precinct, her stricken face as she sees her perfect boy in cuffs, his future in tatters—it all runs through her head in a sickening rush.

“Come on, come on,” she mutters under her breath. And then finally, her phone buzzes and Malcolm’s name appears on the screen.

“You out?” she barks.

“Yeah. I’m out.”

“Good, now listen.” She pauses to calm herself. “Earlier on, when you were telling me about Fox, you said he mentioned a woman’s name when he was staring up into the sky. Tell me again what it was?”

“It was Miranda.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. Miranda. It’s the same name that was written on a drawing I found in Fox’s bedroom here in the UK. And I just replayed the audio from my surveillance of Fox at the restaurant last week, and that was definitely what he was saying: Miranda.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Seriously. And I spent this evening with the twins’ dad. He said he never met Belle because she was—get this—agoraphobic.”

“Ha,” says Malcolm. “Convenient.”

---