Liars, Inc. (8 page)

I PULLED MY HAND FREE
from Parvati's and gave it a fierce wipe against the safe darkness of my pants. My fingers came away clean. “Blood? How could you possibly know that?”

“I tasted it,” she replied. “Salty. Metallic.”

“Gross,” I said. “And not exactly scientific.” My voice was sharp with doubt, but there was a part of me that believed her. She was usually right about weird things. Hell, she was usually right about everything.

Without warning, Alexis Destroyer started singing again, the tinny ringtone surprising me so much that I dropped Preston's phone. Parvati and I both watched as it landed facedown in the trunk next to a larger smear of brown on the upholstery.

More blood.

She wrapped her hand in her sleeve and reached out for the phone.

“Wait,” I said. “It's mine this time.” I fished around in my pocket, but the caller had hung up. The icon for a new voicemail message appeared. It was from Special Agent McGhee. He and Gonzo were on their way over to my house. One of my teachers had probably told them I skipped school. “The feds are looking for me. I have to get home.”

“No,” Parvati said. “You can't go home.” She headed back toward the passenger seat.

“What? Why not?” The world blurred in front of my eyes. My brain felt like it was barely functioning, like someone had put me on frame-by-frame advance while Parvati was operating on fast-forward.

“Because they
have
something on you, or they wouldn't be so hell-bent on questioning you again. Maybe they GPS'd this phone while your car was parked at home.”

“Yeah, but I didn't put it in my trunk,” I protested.

“I know,” Parvati said. “But what makes you think the feds will believe you?”

“You're being paranoid. They've been waiting for me to call them all day. Maybe they just have new information,” I said. “Or someone at school blabbed about Liars, Inc. and they figured out what happened. Anyway, I should fess up about
Pres going to Vegas to meet Violet, just in case she's some crazy stalker who has him chained up in her basement.” It had been stupid not to tell them earlier, but they had treated me like a criminal from the second they saw me—especially Gonzalez—and I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of admitting any wrongdoing. Plus, back then I still thought Preston was going to show up any second and have a good laugh at my expense.

But what about now?

The phone. The blood. Parvati could be wrong—it didn't have to be blood. The trail leading down to the beach had clay mixed in the dirt. It could be that. Or it could be rust from my camp stove. Or maybe it
was
blood but Preston just had chapped lips or a cut on his hand. It wasn't a big pool of red, after all. Just a couple of brownish smudges. Somehow Pres's phone had gotten mixed up with the camp stuff he brought for me, and that's how it got in my trunk. He was probably fine, just sleeping off a sex-and-alcohol hangover.

Still, it would be shitty of me to let his parents worry. I could tell the FBI about the alibi without mentioning Parvati or Liars, Inc. That way they could make some calls, check out Violet, and see if Preston's car broke down or he got arrested for underage gambling.

“Don't worry, I won't bring up your name.” I headed back to the driver's seat.

“I'm not worried about me,” she said. “If you're going home, I'm coming with you. I want to hear what they say.”

“We're supposed to be broken up, P. They could tell your dad—”

“They don't have to know I'm there. I'll hide in the kitchen or a closet or whatever.”

“What about the Grape?”

“My car's still at school. I walked to your house.”

I knew her well enough to know that when she got an idea like this into her head I wasn't going to be able to change her mind. “Fine,” I said. “We'd better get going or they're going to beat us there.”

Parvati slipped her tiny frame into our overstuffed living room coat closet, adeptly straddling a bouncy seat and other assorted baby stuff. The feds showed up a few minutes later. Gonzalez let the door slam shut behind him, and I twitched at the sharp noise.

“What's the matter, kid?” Gonzalez asked. “Awfully jumpy.”

“I guess I've been a little on edge since my friend disappeared, jackass.”

“Watch your mouth,” Gonzalez barked.

I rolled my eyes at him. I was pretty sure calling an FBI
agent a jackass wasn't against the law. Especially since it was true.

McGhee eyed the seating options and selected the overstuffed armchair. That left the sofa and the rocking chair. Gonzalez sat on the side of the sofa nearest to McGhee, and I plunked down in the rocker.

No one said anything for a moment. I swore I could hear Parvati's breathing, slow and steady, from the closet. Then McGhee flipped open his notebook and pulled a nubby pencil from the pocket of his shirt. My heart started pounding, getting bigger with each beat, crowding out my lungs so it was hard to breathe. What the hell was going on?

McGhee cleared his throat. “I just have a couple follow-up questions for you, Max.”

“Yeah?” My voice actually squeaked. I wanted to kick myself. Or better yet, kick Gonzalez. I could see him fighting a smile. I raked a hand forward and then backward through my hair, leaving one of my eyes obscured by bangs.

“Did you and Preston argue the night of your camping trip?”

This again? I shook my head. “The answer is still no. Why?”

Gonzalez started to say something, but McGhee cut him off. “We received a call from someone who says they saw two
boys arguing at the top of Ravens' Cliff Saturday night.”

“Bullshit. We were walking along the cliff and Preston got too close to the edge for me. I told him to stop freaking me out. I wouldn't call that arguing.”

“So there was no physical struggle? No pushing and shoving?”

“Preston outweighs me by at least sixty pounds. If there had been pushing or shoving, my broken ass would be floating out to sea right now.”

McGhee abruptly changed the subject. “Did Preston take your ex-girlfriend to homecoming?”

I almost blurted out that Parvati and I were still together. “Yeah. So what? They went as friends. We're all friends.”

“So Ms. Amos isn't dating Preston?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said. “They've never dated.”

McGhee nodded. “And Preston's car. You said he parked it next to you in the overlook parking lot?”

“Yeah.”

“That's a problem, Max,” McGhee said. “We have multiple witnesses that swear Preston's car wasn't at the beach parking lot on Sunday morning.”

“Well, yeah, not after he went home.”

McGhee flipped back in his notebook. “According to you, Preston left about nineish.”

“Uh—” A wave was brewing inside my stomach. McGhee
had set me up when I was leaving the station with Darla and Ben. He waited until my guard was down to ask about the parking. “I might have been a little off.”

“According to multiple eyewitnesses, Preston's car wasn't there at six, when the sun came up.” Gonzalez leaned forward for emphasis.

Fucking Jacobsen brothers. It had to be. No one else was there. I bet one of them was the mysterious eyewitness who saw Pres and me “arguing” too.

“Can you explain how Preston's car was parked at the overlook parking lot Sunday morning and also
not
parked there?” McGhee asked.

“Isn't eyewitness testimony wrong a lot?” I asked. “My little sister is always watching detective shows, and it seems like I've heard that over and over.”

“Sometimes.” McGhee chewed on the end of his pencil. He sighed. “Look, I want to believe you, Max, but I know you're not being straight with me. I can help you if you tell me the truth.”

“Or,” Gonzalez said, “we can arrest you for obstruction of a criminal investigation if you keep lying to us.”

I looked back and forth from McGhee to Gonzalez and didn't say anything for a few seconds. Then I blurted out, “Here's the deal. The camping trip was just a cover.”

Gonzalez's eyebrows shot up, but he kept quiet for once.

“What do you mean?” McGhee had a knack for keeping his face perfectly expressionless. It was a little creepy.

I told him how Preston had asked me to cover for him so that he could go to Vegas to meet a girl. As I talked, McGhee made notes and Gonzalez made faces. Snarls and sneers, the kinds of looks you give to someone you think is totally full of shit.

I finished my story and McGhee sat in silence for a moment, looking at me, but not really. More like looking through me at the living room wall. He nodded to himself. “Got a last name for this Violet?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

Gonzalez laughed. A brittle sound, like breaking glass.

“Something funny?” I asked him.

“What's funny is how often the stories start to change once we catch someone in a lie.” He reached up to scratch the side of his neck. “Although you think quick on your feet, I'll give you that, kid.”

“It's the truth,” I said.

“Why wasn't it the truth yesterday?” McGhee asked, nibbling on his pencil again.

I shrugged. I still didn't want to tell them about Liars, Inc. It wasn't like any of our classmates had kidnapped Preston. “I thought everything was fine. I told him I would cover for him, so I didn't want to screw it up and get him in trouble.”

McGhee nodded. “I see. He hasn't called you, has he?”

“No.”

“But he should have his phone with him, wherever he is, right?” McGhee asked. “Preston's mom said he was always glued to his cell.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. My stomach lurched as I thought about Preston's phone still hanging out in my trunk.

“You don't mind if we take a look around, do you?” McGhee said. “It's not like you have anything to hide, right?”

I froze. “I, uh, I think my parents would want to be here for that.”

“We promise not to disturb anything. We won't even go in their room,” he said.

I could feel the blood draining from my face. My phone buzzed sharply. Gonzalez watched as I accessed the text message. It was from Parvati. One word:
warrant
.

I tucked the phone into the pocket of my hoodie. “Look. I have to go pick up my sister from school in a little bit. Now's not a good time for you guys to start looking around.” Then, almost as if it were an afterthought, I added, “Anyway, don't you need a warrant to search somewhere?”

“We only need a warrant if you don't give us permission,” McGhee said.

“I think my parents would want a warrant.”

Gonzalez narrowed his eyes. “Just remember, Max. If you
make things hard on us we might feel inclined to make them hard on you.”

“Well, it's all been easy and fun so far.” I made a big show of pulling my car keys out of my pocket and glancing toward the door. “Talk to you guys soon, I'm sure.”

“I guess we'll get out of your hair,” McGhee said. The two agents exchanged a long look. I didn't know what it meant, but I didn't like it.

They got up and headed for the door. “Hey, Max,” Gonzo called back over his shoulder. “You just turned eighteen, right?”

Just my luck that all of this was going down the exact day I legally became an adult. Happy birthday to me. “Why?” I asked. “Did you buy me something nice?”

He smirked. “Let us know if you're going to leave town, okay?”

PARVATI AND I FISHED THE
phone out of my trunk the second McGhee and Gonzalez left. Of course the battery had died. I started scrubbing it down with a baby wipe. No more blood. No more fingerprints.

A giant clap of thunder came out of nowhere, shaking the windowpanes. Raindrops began to plink against the glass.

“Nice call on the warrant,” I said.

“Yeah,” Parvati replied, without looking at me. She was staring at the phone. “If they find that, they're going to arrest you.”

“So let's just get rid of it.” Even as I said the words, I knew we couldn't. We might need it to find Preston's mysterious
girlfriend. There could be other clues on it too. I finished with the baby wipe and then set the phone on the coffee table.

Parvati reached for it. Using the sleeve of her shirt, she pressed the power button. The screen stayed dark. “At least if the battery is dead they won't be able to track it anymore.” She sighed deeply. “But we can't just baby-wipe away the smears of blood in your trunk.”

“You really think some random smudges that may or may not be blood are enough to prove I committed a crime?”

“No, but add the smudges to the fact that you had the phone and got rid of it, and that they have an eyewitness that says you and Pres were arguing. All that is more than enough to convince them to test your trunk for blood and go digging for other stuff.”

“Other stuff they won't find.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

I shook my head. “I'm not sure about anything,” I said. “Preston wouldn't make it an hour without his phone. If he thought he lost it he would have pulled over and gone through his whole car to find it. And then he would have realized he forgot it and turned around. How could it end up in my trunk?”
With blood on it.
“And who the hell told the cops Pres and I were arguing?”

Parvati rested her forehead against her hands. “It's almost like you're being—”

“Set up.” Like I was a suspect in one of Amanda's detective shows instead of a high school kid. Like I had fallen into someone else's life. One that might look fun if I was watching it on TV, but sure as hell didn't
feel
fun.

I thought about the Jacobsens, the only other people at the beach. They had to be the ones who told the FBI about Preston's car not being parked at the overlook. But were they the ones who lied about seeing Pres and me fighting? If so, why? The surfing brothers had nothing against me.

At least, I didn't think so.

Too much had happened too quickly. I was still waiting for Preston to roll up in his car and tell me a big funny story about his adventures in Vegas. I hadn't completely wrapped my brain around the possibility that something bad had happened to him, let alone the possibility that someone else had hurt him and was setting me up to take the fall.

But then I remembered how weird Pres had been acting at the overlook. He was upset about something going on with his family. Bad thoughts started to creep in. “What if someone hired Violet to get close to Preston online? People are speculating about his dad getting tapped as Secretary
of Labor. Maybe the FBI is right and some political nutjobs snatched him.”

Parvati went quiet for a second as she mulled the possibility over in her head. “Did Pres have any enemies of his own that you know of?”

“He told me he owed Jonas Jacobsen money, but according to Jared that was a lie.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Everyone else worships Preston, don't they?”

“Pretty much,” she agreed. “If someone took him, his parents will get a ransom request.” She paused. “But the FBI guys are still going to pounce on you once they find the blood in your trunk. I'll charge the phone and then drive somewhere and turn it on just long enough to look at the recent calls and texts. But you need to get rid of your car, or find someplace to hide out until we can figure out what really happened.”

I couldn't just get rid of my car. Was I supposed to tell my parents that someone
stole
that twenty-year-old rust bucket? Even if I wrecked it or ran it off a cliff, the agents would still find it unless I set it on fire or something.

The idea of skipping town until all of this blew over was majorly appealing, but if the feds pulled Preston's body out of a back alley or some crazy bitch's apartment in Vegas, I was going to blame myself. “Screw that. I haven't done anything
wrong. If I split I'll look totally guilty.”

“And if you stay you'll look guilty,
and
you'll go to jail. I've heard my mom talk about stuff like this. Your parents won't be able to make bail on kidnapping, Max. Or worse. We're talking six figures, minimum.”

Worse. Like murder. The agents had decided I was guilty of something from the moment someone had lied about Preston and me arguing, if not earlier. They'd see my trunk, test the blood, and arrest me. I'd never figure out what happened to Preston from inside a jail cell, and they might not waste time looking for other suspects once they had me.

“Plus they probably know about your assault charge,” she added. “I'm sure that's not helping matters.”

“The lawyer told me that couldn't be used against me,” I protested.

“Probably not in court, but that doesn't mean those guys won't judge you because of it.”

My assault charge. Technically assault and battery, but what a bunch of bullshit. It happened a couple years ago. Amanda was playing outside after school and I was supposed to be looking after her, but I was inside watching TV instead. I remember I had just found out I had to retake American History in summer school, so I was really pissed off. I peeked out at my sister during a commercial and saw
these two boys out in the street hollering at her—calling her a freak. Just as I opened the door to get her safely inside, one of the boys picked up a crushed aluminum can and threw it at her. What kind of epic douchebag throws stuff at a little girl with a disability?

Props to my sister, though, because instead of running away to safety, she picked up the crushed can and threw it back. Then she screamed a word that Darla would definitely not approve of and grabbed a loose clod of dirt and threw that too. I was beside her in an instant, chucking the first thing my hands closed around, which unfortunately was a rock.

My aim was a little better than Amanda's.

Ben and Darla were furious when the cops came around to arrest me. Turned out my aim was so good that one of the little thugs had to get five stitches. I thought my parents were going to leave me locked up until my trial date. But once they shut up and let Amanda tell them what had
really
happened, they got me out the same day. I still got a lecture about violence, but Ben couldn't keep from smiling throughout the whole thing. He might as well have high-fived me and taken me out to dinner.

After that day I was Amanda's freaking idol. She was kind of my idol, too. The only thing that sucked was that the public defender said I might get tried as an adult, since I was
sixteen and obviously knew what I was doing. (It probably didn't help that the kid I hit was eleven.) She said if I pled guilty I'd just get community service and probation since it was my first offense. If I pled not guilty I might end up going to jail.

So of course I pled guilty, and now a couple of asshole FBI agents probably thought I was the kind of loser that got my jollies beating up little kids. They'd use that info to paint me as some unstable whack job who jacked his rich, popular friend. Who cares if they didn't have a motive? Crazy kids committed random acts of violence all the time, didn't they? My brain was finally catching up to Parvati's. If I let them take me in, I was done for.

I started flipping through the possibilities of where I could go and what I could tell Ben and Darla so they wouldn't worry. Unfortunately, I wasn't coming up with much.

“Maybe I'll head to Vegas,” I said. “See if I can locate this Violet chick. If you find her number on Pres's phone you can text it to me.” I glanced down at my own phone. “I have to pick up my sister in twenty minutes.”

“I'll get Amanda,” Parvati said. “The teachers have seen us pick her up together plenty of times. I'll just tell her your parents needed extra help at The Triple S.” She hopped off the couch. “Going to Vegas is a good idea if we can figure out for sure where Pres went. Otherwise it's just a waste of an
entire day. Give me a few hours and I bet I can con my way into Preston's room. I'm sure the FBI took his laptop, but he keeps an external hard drive hidden away. There might be information on it.”

“What am I supposed to do for a few hours?” My heart started banging out a drum solo in my chest. I didn't know how long it took to get a warrant, but I had a feeling I'd be seeing McGhee and Gonzalez again soon. Maybe I could clean my trunk. Can you even clean blood off fabric? You can't, can you? It's one of those things that shows up under those cool purple lights you see on TV. And trying to clean it would only make me look more guilty. Maybe I could just rip the upholstery out of the trunk. Maybe I could set the car on fire.

“Hide somewhere,” Parvati said. “I'll grab the hard drive, meet up with you, and we can check out his files together. If Preston is in Vegas we can head there tomorrow after my parents go to work.”

She made it sound so easy, like there wasn't anything to think about. Hide. Then find Preston. Get back to a normal life by the weekend. “I guess I could go camping again. Maybe a little ways up the coast, catch a few waves.” I frowned. “Darla's going to get all freaked out, though. We were supposed to go out to dinner for my birthday.”

On cue, a bolt of lightning cut the sky outside into two
pieces. The rain came down in sheets, blotting out my front yard and the houses across the street.

“Stupid weather.” Parvati swore under her breath. “You can't camp in this. What about my dad's cabin?”

“Isn't it still full of his military pals?” I envisioned a few Navy SEALs launching themselves through the plate-glass front window in gas masks and full riot gear.

“I saw Dad detail-cleaning his rifles last week, so hunting must be done for this year. You should be okay.”

Being inside was definitely preferable to riding out the storm in a tent. Plus, the cabin was isolated, and McGhee and Gonzalez had no reason to know about it. They didn't know Parvati and I were still together, so they'd have no reason to suspect she was helping me. Not yet, anyway. By the time they figured out we were still a couple and thought to question her, we'd be on the way to Vegas.

“I'll go back to Pres's house and talk Esmeralda into letting me in his bedroom,” she continued. “Then I'll meet you at the cabin. We'll look at anything I manage to find and go from there.”

“How are you going to get away with cutting class?”

She grinned. “The same way I'm getting away with it right now. ‘I'm afraid Parvati's condition has not improved. It might be the influenza,'” she said in an exact imitation of her mother's lilting Indian accent. “Duh. Liars, Inc.
Self-alibis are free, right?”

I shook my head. “You're a piece of work, you know it?”

“A national treasure,” she said, still speaking in her mom's accent.

“It's kind of hot when you talk like that.” For a second, I almost forgot I was preparing to run away to avoid being arrested for a crime against my friend.

“It's hot no matter how I talk.” Parvati leaned in and gave me a quick kiss on the lips.

Both of us smiled, and I realized how glad I was to have her on my side, how everything seemed a little less scary with her around.