The phone’s not new. Same vintage as Zack’s, a couple years old. So for its contents to be so thin, it seems to Zack that, once some jobs are done, the guy must delete the relevant texts and photos. Very orderly. Very neat and businesslike. No fooling around. No evidence of a life beyond his business. A business phone. In the worst possible sense. For the worst possible business.

But it probably means that anything that’s still on the phone is active, current, important. Too important to delete.

Zack checks the list of recent calls.

He notices immediately. There are several recent calls to the same number.

Obviously a currently important number.

Okay, he could call that number. That’s not adding anything personal to the phone. That number is already on it.

And maybe he can call that number and tell whoever answers it, Hey, I found this phone, and found your number on it, and whoever answers it can be an intermediary and get the phone back to the businessman, which would be a gesture of good faith, right? Hey, I don’t want your phone. I don’t want anything to do with it. You can have it back, here you go. And my own phone? Hey, toss it. I’m fine with that…

He’s got nothing to lose calling this number.

He takes a breath. He calls.

“Hello?” It’s the first surprise. A woman’s voice. He’d expected it to be a male, based on the dark world he’d been imagining. A woman’s voice. A little tentative-sounding. A little nervous. “Joey?”

So the guy’s name is Joey. And yes, she’s a little afraid-sounding. Maybe someone as afraid of the guy as Zack is. Maybe someone to bond with.

And then: “Everything go okay?” the woman asks. “It’s all done?”

Suddenly Zack has a sinking, sickening sense of where the “businessman” was for those twenty minutes he had asked Zack to wait at the GreenGirl for him. “No. Stay there. I can be back in…twenty minutes.” Zack realizes what business might have been transacted in those twenty minutes.

He is suddenly speechless. Doesn’t know what to do or say. He does all he can think to do. He hangs up.

Stares at the diePhone.

Which seems, at the moment, very much alive.

6.

6.

Emily jumps out of the shower, getting ready for work, and dresses, feeling lively, chipper, cheerful.

She hates her job. So why is she suddenly looking forward to the day? Why is she so suddenly upbeat?

She smiles to herself. She knows why. It’s this guy she just met. Zack Yellin.

She knows it’s ridiculous to feel so upbeat. To feel so good. She knows the odds are it’s not going anywhere.