“I’m here to inquire about foreign banking accounts.”

“You wish to open an international bank account, sir?”

“Not exactly. The thing is, when my aunt died she left me some numbers to an account, but they weren’t complete. She lived all over the world. Can you tell me anything about these numbers?” I pass the note window to her with the twelve numbers.

She looks at it and shakes her head. “It appears you have only the last twelve numbers, and the IBAN identifiers for country and branch are within the first twelve numbers. Without the first half of your IBAN, it’s impossible to trace the account.”

“So this is the last half of the numbers?”

“Yes. Do you know which countries she resided in?”

I shake my head, explaining she lived just about everywhere.

“Well, you may want to search her belongings for the other half. It’s not unusual to see foreign account numbers split up this way. The objective of most of them is secrecy for one reason or another. I’ve heard of customers finding account numbers in the most unlikely and unsecured places—slid between the pages of a treasured family book, tucked in socks, even engraved on the inside of wedding bands.”

I know for a fact that Miesha doesn’t wear a wedding band, and their belongings were destroyed in the fire, including Karden’s socks. Besides, if the Secretary had found anything among the belongings before he burned the place down, we wouldn’t be in this race right now.

But at least I know I have the second half of the account number. “Do you have a list of the country codes?” I ask.

She brings up a list and flicks me a note window containing 179 countries and their respective four-digit identifiers. “But without the missing numbers, this won’t do you any good. Searching through her personal belongings is your best bet. If it’s a significant amount of money, you can be sure she left more information somewhere.”

I glance at the ridiculously long list of countries and their codes—countries I didn’t even know existed—and I slip the note window into my pack. I thank her, saying I’ll search through my aunt’s socks. She disappears and the private walls of the kiosk vanish.

Socks, wedding bands, books. Or maybe a time-sensitive biochip hiding somewhere inside Raine waiting to be procured as LeGru suggests. The thought makes my pulse race, but I move on to my next task. Staying the course as Xavier would say, but this is my course.

I head for the PAT.

“Need a lift?”

I look at the CabBot who has offered the ride. As convenient as a cab would be, I need the rest of the money on my card for my next stop. I wave him on. “No thanks.”

“No charge,” he says. “For you.”

He’s not a CabBot I recognize. He seems to notice my hesitation. “I hear you can tell a good story,” he adds.

So word has gotten around. Dot has friends who are passing along her story. And they’re obviously pointing me out.

I accept his offer and he takes me to a market where I buy as many groceries as my card allows. Fresh oranges, strawberries, chocolate peaches, fresh kale and squash, bags of nuts and beans, slabs of brisket, and on a last impulse, four dozen animal cookies, the kind that make animal noises. I carry the groceries to the waiting cab and give him directions to Xavier’s neighborhood.

* * *

“I don’t understand,” Xavier’s wife says as I unload bag after bag of groceries and set them on a table in the center of the courtyard.

“Where I came from, people reciprocated,” I say. “I’m afraid I’m never going to get the chance to cook for everyone here—which is probably lucky for you—but this is something my parents drilled into me. You’re never too young or too old to reciprocate. They liked that word a lot.”

Children flood out of the surrounding buildings. I pull the box of cookies from the cab. “May I?”

She nods, and I pass out the cookies. The courtyard becomes a barnyard of noise and squeals. I leave a few cookies in the box and point to the rest of the groceries. “Will you see that some of this goes to Livvy’s family?”

“Of course, but—” She pushes back a strand of hair from her forehead and frowns. “You act like we might not see you again.”

After today, it’s quite possible that they won’t. “I just wanted to take care of something while I still have the chance.” Before I run out of chances.

Some lessons I learn later rather than sooner.

Unmasked

I sit in my apartment waiting for darkness, wishing I could fast- forward the clock, anger simmering in me as the time gets closer, good fuel to sharpen my focus. I empty my pack out onto the kitchen table. I’ll have to travel light—only the essential things I’ll need—and I sort through the contents. I rewind the rope so it will unfurl with a single throw and place it back in the pack. Karden’s knife could be useful and I put it back in too. I look over the note window the clerk gave me, skimming over the countries and four-digit codes again. I look at them again and again, trying to memorize them in case I come across any similar numbers, and then set it in the pile with the other things that will be staying behind.

I shuffle through the other contents and pick up the eye of Liberty. Let’s find the other eye of Liberty together.…

I squeeze the green sea glass in my fist. So much can change in just a few days. She wants nothing to do with me now but I throw it into my pack anyway. I slide the note window that Carver gave me to the no-go pile but then stop to look at it. I already looked at it several times today when I was showing it to the clerk, but something about it stops me this time. I examine the numbers again, hastily handwritten the first night I met him, but they still mean nothing to me. I’ve looked at too many numbers today. I shove it back into the no-go pile. I won’t need it for where I’m going. Now there isn’t anything left to do but wait.