Swallowing around my suddenly dry tongue, I turned it over. A small dark object slid out and fell to my feet, hitting the tiled floor with the flat slap of plastic.
He had left something for me. Somehow. It was like a plot twist out of a movie, which, now that I knew Malcolm, was completely predictable. Replacing the vase on the shelf, I knelt down and retrieved the object that had been hidden in it.
It was a thumb drive.
My heart started to beat faster.
Calm down, I told myself. Don't freak out yet. Anything could be on this drive. Anything at all. It could be the photos of me, it could be old love letters, anything. Getting my hopes up would be stupid.
Clutching the drive so tightly in my hand that the sharp plastic edges bit into the bones of my fingers, I sprinted out of the bathroom, wove my way through the maze of the third floor, and pounded up the stairs, hoping Malcolm had left his bedroom intact.
He had. The computer still sat at the far wall, the screen dark but the lights still on. I prayed he hadn't left it password protected as I hurried over to it, uncapping the drive before I reached out and wiggled the mouse. To my immense relief the monitor flared to life, showing his desktop. The picture on it was one of the pictures of me that he had managed to capture—a beautiful still image of my mouth and chin, the curve of my throat, the swell of my shoulder—but I forced myself to ignore it. My fingers shook as I found a USB slot on the tower and shoved the drive in.
I waited, hopping from foot to foot until the computer dinged, recognizing the drive, and I clicked on it, opening up the directory.
A password dialog popped up.
I nearly shrieked with frustration, but I took a deep breath and tried to think like a dumb motherfucker.
If I were a dumb motherfucker, I postulated, who thought life should be like a movie and this was a great romantic plot twist, what password would I put on the critical information that would keep me out of prison?
I leaned forward and typed in “Sadie.”
The dialog box disappeared and the directory filled out.
Of course.
I began to click around.
With each file opened, I felt my mouth drop wider and wider. It was all here: offshore bank accounts, spreadsheets with discrepancies highlighted, huge documents detailing the history of this or that chunk of money and Don's exact role in making it disappear... Malcolm hadn't been kidding when he'd said he had proof. He not only had proof, but he had built a whole case, as though he were an expert in corporate law. Actually, he probably thought he was, given his self-assessment of all his other talents. But mostly I was just shocked that Felicia's farfetched theory had been right. He'd left the evidence of his innocence for me in the vase, and now I held his future in my hands.
Huh, I thought. Somehow, I wasn't shocked that her thoughts and Malcolm's had lined up so neatly. They both liked life to be like a movie, chasing that Oscar-winning scene. They both had artistic souls.
...Still, the question remained: how had he done it? I'd broken the vase on a Friday night, and we had left on a Monday. There was no way the vase could have been repaired before we departed New York...
Then I remembered. Malcolm on the phone in the cafe in Dubrovnik, speaking in Japanese. The note left in French for the man whose life he had changed, along with a wad of bills as thick as my wrist.
He had arranged it. I wasn't quite sure how he'd arranged it, or what the exact arrangements had been, but he'd planned it all out. Before he even knew if he was going to die or not. He'd decided to put the pieces in place just in case. Just in case he decided to live and needed to something dramatic as hell to keep my life interesting.
It was such a Malcolm thing to do that I had to laugh. He was such a dumb motherfucker, and I loved it.
The realization brought me up short, but then I nodded.
Yeah, I thought to myself. That's right. I love it.
Suddenly able to breathe easily, I popped the thumb drive out of the computer and capped it, shut down all the programs, then unceremoniously pulled the plug. I hadn't brought my purse with me, the pockets of my jeans had holes in them, and the pouch of my hoodie was far too unsecured. I wavered with indecision, and then with a huff of exasperation I stuffed the drive down my underwear, where it nestled in Malcolm's favorite place. Fitting, in more ways than one, though admittedly not the most sanitary spot. But when you are as flat-chested as I am, hiding things in your cleavage is not an option.
I had to get this to his lawyers.
Head whirling with thoughts of the future, of the possibility that there might be a future, one in which he was alive and free, I jogged back to the stairs and took them two at a time down to the third floor. I paused on the landing, and then decided that if Malcolm wanted me to have the vase, then I should probably take the vase, too. I slipped into the hallway and started for the master bedroom.