Layers Off (22 page)

My focus turned to my father. His eyes held that determination and resilience I loved. It was where I’d found my strength to stand up for myself. He bought me my first rifle and taught me how to be responsible with the weapons. I was ten – always checking the safety locks and letting my father store them in our basement safe. This was a new memory too.

Tears streaked down my mother’s face, but she didn’t say a word and she didn’t move. I imagined she couldn’t, because I too seemed to be stuck as if cemented to the spot, yet my knees knocked against each other. Were we in the middle of an earthquake? It felt as if the walls around me would soon collapse and the floor would swallow me whole. My throat tightened further and I found it difficult to breathe. The short breaths into my lungs felt like little wheezes. I knew the room would spin soon. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my brain.

The door shut behind me, and my airways opened up for a longer suck of air. Some whispers resonated from the end of the room, where the rest of the party was already sitting on a couch.

Someone handed me a bottle of water. The liquid passed through my throat like a river through a desert.

“Is this a joke?” I asked no one in particular. What else was I supposed to say? These people in front of me had to be impersonators, didn’t they? To test whether I could deal with stress, right? Why else would they have been hired? Although these questions coursed through me as I searched for answers, I already knew the truth. I think I’d always known. I mourned them after the train accident, but it had never really soaked through me that they were gone. I blamed it on the fact that it was a closed casket ceremony and I couldn’t see the bodies – or whatever remains were found after the accident, which I was sure at the time couldn’t have been a lot. There weren’t a lot of people there, which made sense since I was supposed to disappear as well.

“Katherine, it’s us.” My mother spoke first.

“Kendra. My name is Kendra.”

“Kendra, I know you have a lot of questions,” she continued.

Not really a lot; I only had one: “Why?”

My mother paced toward me with caution, visibly shaking. I was sure she’d taken Valium or Xanax. There was no other way she’d be able to stand right now. Part of me wished for drugs at this moment. Something to numb me. A drink, at least – tequila straight up always helped.

Oh God!
I realized I hadn’t recovered as much as I thought I had. Maybe I couldn’t go back to Kissed yet. A chair had been left behind me, but I didn’t think my knees could bend to sit. I still seemed to be locked in that one spot, where I wasn’t sure what was real.

And then she took me into her arms, the way she had when I was a little girl. She held me against her body, squeezing me as if she hadn’t seen me for a century, not a decade. Although it did feel like a century. Her motherly warmth oozed from her soul into my body, and I collapsed into her arms, closing my fists around the back of her shirt and sobbing. So much had happened and so much had changed. I had changed. I’d been a girl the last time I saw them. Now I was a woman who’d visited hell more than once. But her comfort that I’d been denied slowly spread through me. The guiding touch I’d missed mellowed the stone walls of my heart. I held on tight, afraid if I let go I’d wake up and she’d be gone in a puff of smoke. No, this couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let go, I couldn’t lose them again.

Like a professional mother, she eased her arms from around me, saying, “We missed you and thought about you every day.”

I finally sat down on the chair behind me, watching my father drift closer like a ghost. He’d aged beyond his external appearance, and so had my mother. The deepened wrinkles under their eyes represented much more than time. My dad’s sparse gray hair had turned to a full head of silver. My mother’s appeared dried and not as clean-cut as she’d always worn it. Had they been to hell as well?

The door opened behind me, but I had no strength to turn around.

“We had no choice, Ka... ...Kendra,” he said. “We did this for you.”

“I think she needs a while longer,” Julian said. “Kendra, we can wait until we get home. Are you all right?”

“You knew. This whole time you knew they were alive,” I said to him, but didn’t really need an answer.

“It wasn’t only Julian, K. I and our father knew as well. We were under a contract. Your life was at stake, and so we couldn’t take the chance of its terms being broken,” Tristan said from the corner of the room, slowly stepping closer.

I was a contract?

“Why? Somebody please explain why?” My gaze darted from my parents to Tristan, Gabe, and Julian. Then back to my parents again.

“We had no choice, darling. Our only choice was to disappear.”

“Five minutes,” someone called from near the window. I noticed Gabe was looking through a pair of binoculars. Was he in on this too? He was my best friend’s husband, an ex-partner in Kissed, and someone so level-headed I’d always trusted him beyond reasonable doubt.

No, Gabe couldn’t have known about this.

I thought back to my father’s career, about his rooted connections in Congress, and wondered what could have happened to force him to leave it all behind. What did he do or overhear that would condemn them to a future of constant hiding? Which was what I assumed they had done over the past decade.

My second long thoughts felt like minutes. So much was running through my mind I found it difficult to concentrate on the facts. The air tightened in my lungs and I realized I was holding my breath. If I couldn’t focus, I’d be in trouble. I’d return to my old ways. Why the fuck would they spring this on me now? When I just thought I’d recovered, this could put me so far back, I wasn’t sure I’d want to return. Not this time.

“Without me? You disappeared without me.”

“You were so young, K.” My mother’s eyes glistened.

“You had a whole future ahead of you. We didn’t want to take that away from you.”

“That’s why I had the new identity?”

The Cross family assured me that, going into witness protection. They would clean up the paper trail and keep me hidden from my parent’s enemies. I’d always thought it was someone in Congress who had it bad for my dad. Was it Donato’s father, the owner of this casino they’d mentioned?

“Yes,” they replied at the same time.

“It was the only way to guarantee you a fresh start,” Julian added.

“You could have taken me with you,” I said to my parents.

My mother crouched in front of my chair. Her wrinkled hands had new age spots I’d missed watching appear. She brought them to my knees, and I was surprised by how good they felt there.

“No, baby. We couldn’t. We’ve been completely off the grid until now.”

“And what changed?”

“We received information threatening your future. You hold devastating secrets, K.”

“Three minutes,” Gabe said in a lower whisper.

My friends huddled in a corner conducted a quiet conversation. Were they being filled in on my past? Were they wondering what would happen next? Whether someone would barge into this room and cuff us all? Maybe throw us into a dungeon? The thought cut through me like fresh razor blades.

My head ached. I wasn’t sure whether I could hear my parents’ explanations, let alone comprehend their reasoning for walking out on me. That was basically what had happened, wasn’t it? I couldn’t imagine there ever being a reason big enough for a parent to leave a child, not willingly. But after so many years, here they were, alive. The man whom I loved and trusted had been lying to me since the day I met him. And Donato’s son was accusing me of a murder I didn’t commit – or at least didn’t remember committing.

“The train accident – was that a setup?”

“Yes,” my father said.

I turned to Julian. “You knew this was going to happen to me that day, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but we were hoping for a quicker resolution. It was supposed to be a couple of months. We prayed it wouldn’t take this long to sort everything, but it did.”

“Years,” I said in a monotone. Despite another gulp of water, I still couldn’t get much through my throat.

“One minute,” Gabe declared. The sound of bodies shuffling around livened the room as everyone seemed to be making their way toward the door.

“We couldn’t take you because we didn’t want you to live in constant fear, not like that. You were so young. Ka... Kendra, it was either disappear and give you a chance at a normal life, or watch you go to prison.”

Yet I never remembered a threat of prison time when my parents were alive. My childhood had always been comfortable – one filled with a ton of security guards, but nonetheless comfortable. My father’s last comment struck me deep, quite a few seconds later than it should have.

“Why would I go to prison?”

“Because you killed Mr. Donato, your high school teacher.”

C
HAPTER
21

“It’s time.” Gabe led the way to the front door, opening it without a hesitation.

I followed Julian’s guiding arm toward the elevators. There were lots of whispers behind me, including:
this is our only chance, rooftop, Donato, hiding.

The words sort of blended into a conversation I’d made up in my mind all by myself. I drew on the most important points. At that last one, I said, “No, no one’s going into hiding.” I wasn’t too sure who I was talking to, but I knew that whatever would happen from this point on, I wanted the truth, and I wanted to face the consequences. If I had murdered Donato, I had to pay for it. Still, I didn’t remember when or how I killed him. I’d had nightmares of shooting someone, but they were never clear.

“I don’t remember. How do I not remember killing someone?”

But no one answered. The elevator dinged, opened, and soon gravity pulled me to the floor. The small compartment full of people I had trusted, who had lied to me for so many years, ascended. Okay, maybe ‘lie’ was too strong a word. No, no it wasn’t. As much as I wanted to convince myself they’d kept the truth hidden for my own good, it was a lie. My life had been a big, fat lie. Was that why I’d been so screwed up all the time? Why I made the wrong choices in life and turned to drugs and alcohol? Because I was surrounded by professional liars?

No, I can’t blame them for my mistakes.

“We know you don’t remember what happened. You’ve been hypnotized not to,” my mother confirmed.

“K, if you had gone with your parents and kept Katherine’s life, you’d most likely have ended up in prison. Your parents wanted you to have a chance at life. Witness protection is different from being on the run. Your father was well known; chances were he’d be found if they didn’t go off the grid. And it’d be difficult to do so with a teenage daughter who’d be robbed of education and... well, life. Donato’s father was and still is in Congress. He’s been looking for the kil... for evidence to find you. That’s why you got a new identity.”

Julian wanted to say
killer
. Was that what he thought of me? I didn’t know who to listen to or who to trust. My stomach twisted into knots. Where were we going?

“And I’m guessing he found me now?”

“Yes. We failed to derail him,” Tristan said.

“The hotel’s security is looking for you. Donato’s son, Peter, has built connections. The only way to get out of here now is through the rooftop.”

I felt light-headed. The elevator finally stopped and the door opened. Much-needed fresh air slammed into me as we stepped onto the rooftop. Colorful lights illuminated the strip below. Honking cars and music blended together somewhere in the distance. The night air was dry and hot, and for the first time I noticed it was already dark. I realized back in the room that it was night already. But then again, once we entered the room, Gabe had kept the curtains shut, only opening them slightly to peek through his binoculars. Now, sweat collected at my lower back and on the nape of my neck. A distant hum of swirling air got louder.

“Why now? What’s changed?”

“Your father’s been supplying us with information we could use to change Washington’s laws on sex trafficking and money laundering. Donato Senior, the Congressman, got a whiff of it, and our cover was blown. He started looking for you the moment he realized his son’s kil... the person who shot his son could still be alive.”

Meaning me.
Julian had almost said “killer” again. The word coursed through me like acid. Was that who I was?

“I’m sorry we failed you,” he added.

Why did he blame himself for this? Wasn’t I supposed to be the one who had pulled the trigger?

The wind blew, flopping my hair in all directions. The sound of an approaching helicopter engine alarmed me. Had they found us? It didn’t occur to me that the chopper was for us, our escape.

By this point it was too loud to ask any more questions. And for the life of me, I was too tired to ask. The information from the last hour was beginning to blend too much. As I looked down on the distancing rooftop, the elevator doors we’d used flew open and Peter Donato rushed onto the middle of the tarmac.

His twisted face of hate would give me nightmares for almost a week.

C
HAPTER
22

The first morning I woke up, back in Julian’s home, it took me a few minutes to get my bearings. Lying on my back, with my eyes half open, I pieced together the events of the night before and why I wasn’t waking up in a hotel room this morning watching Laura cure a hangover. The puzzle began to fill with every passing second. The casino, Donato, handcuffs, my parents... I shot up in bed, sucking in a long breath of air, gripping the sheets as if they were my only anchor right now.

“Are you all right?” Julian sat on a chair right beside my bed. His worry-filled voice startled me. I hadn’t expected him to be there, sitting so far away. I needed him beside me. I yearned for him to be my anchor, not the sheets.

“They’re alive,” I said cautiously.

“Yes, they’re alive. Downstairs.”