Turned to Stone by Jorge Magano

don’t we sit down and you can tell me all about it?”
    “I don’t have anything to tell you!”
    Jaime noticed that his vision was starting to blur. He hadn’t had a great day, either, and he needed to get some sleep before he did irreparable damage to himself.
    “Suit yourself. But if you want to talk, call me.”
     
    As the door closed behind Jaime, Paloma ran to her bedroom and opened her desk drawer. Her data CDs were gone.
    Preston. That son of a bitch Preston.
    Her heart accelerating, she ran to the shelves where she kept her music CDs and took down Handel’s Water Music . Back at her desk she pressed a button on the old computer that had belonged to her father and still worked as if it were brand-new.
    It didn’t turn on.
    The apprehension Paloma had been feeling since she got home multiplied a hundredfold. She pressed the button several times, but the damn computer didn’t respond. Crouching down, she realized that the cable was unplugged. With a trembling hand, she reconnected it, and the speaker beeped. Feeling calmer, she sat down and fiddled with the keyboard and mouse as a succession of messages informed her that the system was cranking up. When the computer was ready, Paloma inserted the Handel CD and clicked on the icon for drive D. Within a few seconds another menu appeared. Paloma clicked on an unnamed document and opened it.
    She was relieved to find everything in its place, and at last breathed more freely. But this lasted only for a moment, and then she burst into tears, overwhelmed with anxiety.
     
    A young brunette holding a bag and a man with his nose in a plaster cast watched from farther down the street as Jaime Azcárate exited the building. “That was a close call,” she said.
    “This guy is everywhere,” the man grumbled. “We should’ve waited for him in the apartment and cut his balls off.”
    His companion gave him a look of disgust. “You’ll get your revenge, Clark.”
    “What’s the problem, cousin? You hot for this guy?”
    “Don’t talk crap. You’re on your own for now. Leonardo wants me to get the disks back to the Phoenix . You stay here and wait for instructions.”
    The man was about to complain, but the woman silenced him with a wad of hundred-euro notes.
    “For the inconvenience. I don’t want to know what you do with it.”
    And then she disappeared into the crowds walking toward Calle Atocha, while her cousin stared shamelessly at her backside.

10

    After sleeping through the remainder of Saturday and much of Sunday, Jaime left his attic apartment on Calle Jesús del Valle, deep in the Malasaña neighborhood. After taking the metro to the CHR building, in the heart of Madrid’s university district, he took the elevator up to see Laura. Based on what Roberto had told him, he guessed that his imminent meeting was meant to serve some convoluted purpose—a feeling that was confirmed when he looked into the great lagoons of concern that were Laura’s green eyes. “Good God, Jaime. You look like you’ve been dragged backward through a bush.”
    “Yeah, and a particularly thorny one.”
    Laura didn’t smile. For as long as Jaime had known her, she’d possessed a restless, productive personality, one that had fueled her promotion from president of the society to editor of its magazine. Many of her contributors had known her since her previous job, so her old job title had stuck as a nickname; it wasn’t unusual for her close friends, including Jaime Azcárate, to address her as “La Presidenta.”
    “Are you going to tell me what all this is about or do I have to guess?” Jaime asked.
    “Let’s head to the lecture hall. Isidro Requena’s waiting for us.”
    Jaime looked at Laura in surprise. Although Arcadia operated under the auspices of the Center for Historical Research, CHR director Requena rarely meddled in the magazine’s affairs. “This sounds important.”
    “It is. Jaime, you should know before we go in there that they’re going to