Free The Doomsday Equation by Matt Richtel Page A

way? Jeremy can’t pinpoint what nags him.
    Outside the bus, he walks against the foot traffic to his apartment complex cum condo, all steel and sharp corners, modernity that is San Francisco’s version of urban renewal. The high-rises near the ballpark are beautiful. What twenty-something could resist? Perfect for the Trustafarians and stock option babies able to throw down 20 percent of $1.2 million for nine hundred square feet that serves as nest and résumé. The elevator ride is a networking opportunity and a speed date.
    He takes the elevator to the eleventh floor. Feels a sense of relief as he reaches his floor, maybe a chance for a catnap. He slips his key into 1117 and opens the door.
    He sees the innards of the couch. They’re strewn all over the living room. Someone has gutted his sofa.
    He peers to his right. Papers tossed on the counter that separates the kitchen from the living area. A stainless-steel spatula, an egg beater, lying beside their ceramic container, upside down on the counter.
    Magazines on the floor.
    Someone has overturned his apartment.
    Someone still inside?
    Jeremy backs out and shuts the door. He catches the eye of a young woman coming out of the apartment next door. He hates this woman, a bubbly, friendly, sycophantic thing, working at a startup in South Park. Actually, he once made an overture. When she first moved in. She rejected him in such an indirect but insurmountable way that it infuriated Jeremy. He has slipped several notes under her door asking her to turn down her music and, one night when particularly piqued at the sounds of sex coming from next door, anonymously warning her that it will set a bad precedent in her relationship if she fakes orgasms. Lies beget lies, he warned her. The building manager got involved but nothing could be proved, quiet warnings issued; the thing blew over.
    “Excuse me, Tara.” He sees that her umbrella, while it isn’t unfurled, has Mickey Mouse prints.
    “Hey.”
    “Strange question. Have you seen anyone coming into my apartment? Anyone not me?”
    Her mousy face, beneath a bob haircut, registers a genuine concern.
    “Did someone take something?”
    He shakes his head. “I’m not sure. I might have had an unwanted visitor. Did you see anyone? Last night?”
    “Did you tell Aaron?” The building manager.
    He’s starting to get irritated. Just answer the question, pixie. She must sense it.
    “No,” she says. “I went to bed after Idol . It was quiet last night.”
    He looks at the lock. No signs of forced entry. He opens the door.

C HAPTER 11
    H E SLIPS INSIDE the doorway. He inhales, smells something, an alien presence. Wonders if it’s gas but only momentarily. A perfume of some kind, heavy, no, a cologne. Like inhaling the Polo counter at Macy’s.
    He can hear Emily’s voice inside his head and, for a second, he can clearly see the difference between the forest and the trees or, rather, tree. The tree is his desire to kill whoever was in his place, who overturned it. The forest is his safety. Call the cops, Jeremy, or the building manager. Get out of here.
    He takes a few steps inside.
    “I’ve called the police!” he yells. He paws his phone. He listens. Nothing, no sound. False bravery, he’s realizing; of course no one is waiting for him. It would be a tactical error of the utmost stupidity, ransacking his apartment and then waiting around to get caught.
    How did someone know he wasn’t home last night?
    What could someone want from him?
    He feels the weight of his iPad on his back.
    He takes in the condo, an open kitchen and living area with a fifty-inch Internet-connected TV hanging on the far wall. Amassive window that would look onto the drizzle-shrouded bay if the curtains weren’t pulled shut. Jeremy knows that’s not his doing; he rarely remembers to shut the blinds; if people can see inside and don’t like what he’s doing, that’s their problem.
    The condo is mostly empty of furniture, edging on desolate.