Marwan could lie. He could tell the police that someone walking past got the plate of the car and then give the police the plate the device had given them already. It would mean there were two strikes against Christos and his brother. But why wouldn’t Puglio have mentioned the tip? Maybe you weren’t supposed to until you followed up and made an arrest?

He texted Eden. You hanging in?

She didn’t need to know about this. She’d only worry, and that was not what he wanted her thinking about when she thought about him. If she was even thinking about him at all, which she probably wasn’t because they had bigger problems, but that hadn’t stopped him thinking about her.

Yes, she wrote back. You?

“Marwan,” his father said. “We need you.”

“Of course,” Marwan said.

He texted her—Mostly—then searched for an emoji face that would help him express what he was feeling, but it didn’t seem right to send a heart and a skull and crossbones or a gravestone. He went and got the broom and dustpan from the closet and felt the gritty sting of glass dust in his thumb. He should take a minute to find gloves, except what was the point of anything?

Eden

EDEN

Eden’s mother had the local news on while she cooked dinner, and none of it was good. A fire in the Bronx. A fatal car accident on Long Island. A toddler shot by a stray bullet in Newark. The last segment was about the flyers.

On the heels of an attack on a Muslim-owned restaurant Thursday night, white supremacist graffiti appeared on Friday. Then today, on a quiet Sunday afternoon when families were out enjoying the beautiful weather—anti-immigrant flyers appeared on lampposts around the neighborhood … Residents here are shocked that this is happening in their backyard.

Why were things getting worse before getting better?

They had to get better.

Maybe Marwan should have sought some kind of revenge. Doing the right thing wasn’t working.

She wanted to tell him about Julian and what the device had done—how it was basically blackmailing her now—but she felt so foolish about it all.

She texted Julian now: That pic wasn’t meant for you. Please delete.

Tomorrow, no matter what, they had to get rid of the device. And definitely not by giving it to the principal. Because then they’d have to explain everything they’d done. They’d have to explain about Svetlana. If, as it claimed, it couldn’t be destroyed, it needed to be abandoned—far enough away that it couldn’t mess with them, remote enough that no one would ever find it.