Sleep is a luxury for those who don't have blood on their balance sheets. I spent the night in the corner of the living room, the .38 a cold anchor in my palm. Every time the house groaned under the weight of the cooling air, I saw the black sedan sinking again. Every time the wind brushed the glass, I saw the formula etched in the mist.
By 6:00 AM, the sun was a pale, sickly yellow. I didn't feel like a teacher. I felt like a ghost haunting its own life. I showered, dressed in a fresh suit—navy this time, the color of deep water—and meticulously wiped the chalk circle from my floor. I didn't touch the briefcase. I left it there, an open wound in the center of the room.
I drove to school with the windows down, letting the freezing air sharpen my nerves. I needed to be precise. I needed to be the man who could factor a polynomial in his sleep.
The school day passed in a blur of gray faces and meaningless numbers. I taught three sections of Algebra II, my voice a hollow recording of itself. I watched the door. I watched the clock. I waited for the outlier.
Leo Miller didn't show up for class.
His empty seat in the back corner felt heavier than if he had been sitting in it. It was a vacuum, pulling the oxygen out of the room. I found myself staring at the "dead zone," my chalk hovering over the board, until the students started whispering.
When the final bell rang, I didn't leave. I sat at my desk and opened my grade book. I stared at Leo's name. A string of zeros and incompletes. A deliberate mask of failure.
"You're looking at the wrong data set, Mr. Kwame."
The voice came from the doorway. I didn't jump; I had been expecting the intrusion. Leo was leaning against the frame, his hoodie pulled up, his hands buried in his pockets. He looked exhausted, his eyes rimmed with red, but his gaze was steady.
"You broke into my house, Leo," I said, my voice as flat as a horizon line. "In most jurisdictions, that's a invitation for a bullet."
"In most jurisdictions, driving a car into a lake with your partner inside is an invitation for a needle," he countered. He walked into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. The lock clicked. "But we aren't in a courtroom. We're in a classroom. Let's keep it academic."
I stood up, my hand drifting toward the drawer where I'd stashed the .38. "What do you want? Money? My silence? You've made your point. You know who I was."
"I don't care about the money," Leo said, stopping at the front row of desks. He sat on top of one, swinging his legs like a child, though his expression was anything but youthful. "And I don't want you to go to jail. That's too simple. The math is too easy. A life for a life? That's basic addition. I'm interested in the variables that don't make sense."
I narrowed my eyes. "Speak plainly."
"My father didn't die in an 'industrial accident,' Elias. He was hunted. He spent three years obsessed with that lake because he knew the police report was a lie. He knew the weight of the car didn't match the displacement of the water. He was a man of details, just like you."
Leo leaned forward, his face inches from the lamplight on my desk.
"He found something before they killed him. Not a body. Not a motive. He found a third name. A name that wasn't in the car, but was on the payroll. A name that connects the man you used to be to the people who are currently looking for both of us."
The air in the room seemed to crystallize. This wasn't a shakedown. It was a recruitment.
"Who?" I whispered.
"That's the thing," Leo said, a flicker of genuine frustration crossing his face. "He encrypted the file. He used a key based on a specific algorithm—something he said only a 'true master of the craft' would understand. He left me the data, but I can't read the map. I can find the house, I can find the man, but I can't find the 'why'."
I looked at him—really looked at him. He wasn't just a predator. He was a son trying to finish a dead man's work. And he was terrified. He was just better at hiding it than I was.
"You want me to crack it," I realized.
"I want a truce," Leo corrected. "You keep your gun in your pocket. I keep your secret in mine. You help me solve the equation my father died for, and when it's done, we both disappear. Truly disappear. No more remedial math in shithole towns. No more looking over our shoulders."
I looked at the chalkboard, still smeared with the ghost-white remnants of yesterday's lessons. I thought about the men who had killed Arthur Miller. I thought about the weight in my pocket.
If I refused, he'd burn me. If I agreed, I was stepping back into the water. But the water was already rising; I could feel it in my lungs.
"Show me the encryption," I said.
Leo reached into his bag and pulled out a battered tablet. He swiped the screen and turned it toward me. It was a wall of hexadecimal code, but buried within the strings were familiar constants. My constants. Formulas I had developed for the firm before the "accident."
"It's a rolling cipher," I muttered, my fingers instinctively reaching for a piece of chalk. "Based on the Prime Number Theorem. It changes every twenty-four hours."
"Can you do it?"
I looked at the code, then at the boy who held my life in his hands. We were no longer teacher and student. We were two points on a line, heading toward a collision we couldn't avoid.
"I can do it," I said. "But Leo? If we find out what's behind that door, there's no going back to the way things were. The remainder will be zero."
Leo stood up and extended a hand—not for a shake, but to take the chalk from me. He wrote a single character on the board.
"Things were never equal, Mr. Kwame," he said. "Let's just see if they can be settled."
I looked at the 'not equal' sign. The truce was signed in dust.