Page 64 of The Last Flight

Two Days before the Crash

Dex was Fish.

Fish was Dex.

Eva felt her reality shift, pieces sliding into place in a different order, a different picture, as panic and confusion pounded through her. What had she missed?

“Didn’t you wonder why you’d never met Fish, why Dex was your only contact?” Castro asked.

“I was told that’s how it worked. I didn’t question it.” Eva shook her head. “But why would Dex lie?” she whispered.

“By allowing the people who worked for him to believe he was just carrying out orders from above, it gave him a measure of deniability. It allowed you to trust him in a way you wouldn’t have if you’d known he was the guy at the top.”

“Is this common?” she asked. “Don’t people work really hard to earn that spot? Don’t they want everyone to know what kind of power they have?”

Agent Castro shrugged. “Sometimes,” he said. “But to be honest, those types of dealers are pretty easy to catch. They’re in it for their ego. They want everyone to know how important they are, and to be afraid of them. But Fish”—Castro tipped his head toward her—“or rather, Dex, is what we call a long-term operator. Someone who cares more about longevity than anything else. More than power, more than fear. They’re smarter and harder to pin down.” Castro took a sip of his coffee and continued. “I’ve only seen this once before. A woman up in El Cerrito who pretended she had a husband who was calling the shots. She had her finger in a lot of things, mostly because people trusted her to keep them safe from a man who never even existed.”

Eva thought about how Dex had put himself between her and Fish. How he protected her and warned her. Led her to believe he was on her side, that they were working together. She thought back to how rattled he was at the football game last fall. How scared he’d been of angering Fish. All of it an elaborate act.

And then her mind flew back to that early morning when he’d shown her the body, and events rearranged in her imagination as she saw Dex executing the man and then calmly walking to Eva’s door, knocking, and leading her back again, to show her what he’d done.

She felt sick at how naive she’d been.

“So now what?” she asked.

“It’s time for you to get an attorney and make a deal. We’ll put a wire on you and see what we can get.”

Eva thought of all she’d gathered and tucked that knowledge close, her final card to play. There was no way she was going to wear a wire. “And what do I get in exchange?” she asked. “Since witness protection is not an option.”

“You get to not go to jail when this is all over.”

On the table, Eva’s phone buzzed with a text, and her gaze flew to Castro’s phone, wondering whether it, too, would light up. But it remained dark.

“You’d better answer that,” he said.

It was from Dex.

Are we set for six? Where do you want to meet?

She showed it to Agent Castro. “Stick to public places where my people can blend in,” he advised. “From now on, I don’t want you to be alone with him, or anywhere we can’t get to you quickly. No more sports arenas, no more deserted parks. My team will stay on you until we can get the wire set up. One, two days, tops.”

Eva took her phone back and, with trembling fingers, typed:O’Brien’s? I’m starving.

She imagined driving back to Berkeley and sitting across the table from Dex, forcing herself to act normal while she waited for Castro to line up his fucking wire guy.

Castro must have sensed her rising panic because he said, “You’re going to be okay. Just stick to your routine and do everything you normally would. Make the drugs, meet with Dex. Don’t give him any reason to be alarmed.”

Through the window, Eva could see fog rolling in, the bright orange of the bridge fading before her eyes, and she worried that would happen to her. She’d grow so faint, she would disappear from the page and no one would know she’d been there at all.

The restaurant hummed with conversation, the sound of cutlery against dishes filling her ears, the whole world moving around her while she stood still. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

Castro’s eyes softened with sympathy. “You really don’t.”

* * *

Eva was halfway across the Bay Bridge when she began to hyperventilate, cars on all sides, inching forward, funneling her toward an inevitable outcome. No fucking way could she do this.

She imagined herself driving north—passing the off-ramp to Berkeley, past Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle. She looked in her rearview mirror and studied the people in the cars behind her. Which ones were Castro’s? Whoever was keeping an eye on her would never let her get that far.

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