Lies I Told (25 page)

“Where are you going? We have to go back for Parker!”

My dad was making his way down the peninsula, careful to keep the truck under the speed limit on the winding roads.

“We can't do that,” he said. “Not right now. We have no idea where he is, and he ditched his cell phone. We need to get off the peninsula. Then we'll figure out what to do about Parker. We'll keep our cell phones for a few more hours. See if he makes contact from a landline.”

Panic welled up inside me until I was afraid I wouldn't be able to contain it. Afraid it would escape in a scream that might never stop.

“We can't just leave him!”

My mom pulled off her mask and turned to me. “Keep it together, Grace. What do you expect us to do? Wander
around Playa Hermosa with a truck full of gold looking for Parker? The police may already have him in custody. If they do, we need to get somewhere safe so we can find a way to help him. If they don't, we have to wait until we know where to find him.”

I clutched at the armrest, scrambling for a response that would allow us to go back for Parker now. But she was right. I don't know what I expected. Back at the Fairchild estate, all I'd been able to think about was loading the gold so we could get to Parker. I hadn't had time to think through the how of it.

I stared out the window, watching the ocean turn silver as the sunlight threw diamonds across its surface. Parker was farther away then ever, as unreachable to me as Logan and Selena and the sham of a life I'd built in Playa Hermosa.

“See anything?” my dad asked softly as we approached the turnoff for the road that would take us off the peninsula.

“Nothing,” my mom said.

She was right. There were no cops. No checkpoints.

“They must not have him.” I heard the note of hope in my own voice. “He's probably hiding out somewhere, waiting until it's safe to contact us.”

My mom grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Maybe.”

I had no idea where we were going as we wound our way through a series of backstreets to the freeway. Now it was all about following the plan for our escape, carefully laid out in advance by my mom and dad. It was a system that had served us well, and I sat back, trying to make my breathing
even and calm, telling myself that we'd get Parker back, that everything would be okay.

We took the freeway into downtown Los Angeles and spent ten minutes navigating a clutch of one-way streets until my dad finally pulled next to the curb in front of a parking garage. He turned to my mom.

“You all set?”

She nodded. “I'll see you at the safe house. You and Grace get out of town if I'm not there by four. I'll contact you through the online portal if I get sidelined.”

He touched his lips to hers in a quick kiss. “Take every precaution.”

“Will do.” She slid over to the driver's seat as my dad climbed out of the truck.

“Let's go, Gracie,” he said.

I reached over and gave my mom a hug. “Be careful, Mom.”

She hugged me tight, held on a little longer than usual. Then she pulled back, smoothing my hair, looking at me with tenderness. “I love you, Grace. You know that, don't you?”

I nodded. “I love you, too.”

She smiled. “Go with your dad. I'll see you soon.”

Cormac got out of the truck and zipped up his jacket to hide the blood on his shirt. I followed him into the parking garage as my mom pulled away from the curb.

We walked up to the window and he reached into his pocket, withdrawing a ticket. He slid it through a hole in the
glass to the mustached man behind on the other side.

“One moment, sir.”

He removed a set of keys from one of the hooks on the wall inside his little cubicle and stepped outside, disappearing into the shadows of the garage.

My dad put an arm around me, squeezed my shoulders. “You okay?”

I wasn't, but I knew he wasn't really asking. I nodded.

A couple of minutes later the attendant pulled up in a nondescript Ford Taurus. My dad tipped him and climbed into the driver's seat while I got in the other side.

It was Saturday morning, and traffic was light as we headed back to the freeway. A few minutes later we were heading north, leaving the skyscrapers and grit of the city behind, putting more miles between us and Parker. Between me and Logan.

“Where to now?” I asked, trying to distract myself.

Cormac didn't take his eyes off the road. “The Valley,” he said, referring to the San Fernando Valley. “We have another switch to make.”

I wasn't surprised. We usually only switched cars once when we needed to get out clean, but this wasn't just any job. With luck, the Fairchilds wouldn't know what had happened for a while. Logan would wake up wondering why he'd passed out. He'd try to call me, assuming I got a ride home from Parker. It would be hours before anyone knew something was wrong, before they realized we were gone or that the gold was missing.

If Parker hadn't been caught. If.

But once the loop was discovered on the Fairchild monitors at Allied, the police would lower the boom. They would ask Warren if he'd experienced any kind of intrusion or theft. Warren would check his stash, just to be sure. Everything would happen quickly after that. We needed to be as hard to find as possible—and as far away.

I lost track of time as we sped north. By the time we exited the freeway, I was starting to feel drowsy, lulled to sleep by the rhythm of the car, the heat blasting through the vents, the loss of adrenaline now that we were out of immediate danger. I sat up straighter, trying to pay attention. It was too soon to be tired. We weren't out of the woods yet, and Parker was still in danger.

We dropped the car at a seedy outdoor lot, and I followed my dad through the rows of parked cars to a gray Honda Civic. It was older, but clean, and we headed out of the Valley, back to the freeway.

We merged into traffic and headed south on the freeway. I looked at Cormac with surprise when we made the turnoff for Long Beach.

“Isn't that a little close to home?” I asked. Long Beach was only forty-five minutes from Playa Hermosa. We'd just spend two hours driving north to pick up the dummy car only to double back to within an hour of where we started.

“It is,” he admitted. “But we've taken every precaution, and Long Beach has both an airport and a seaport.”

I nodded, understanding. If we couldn't get out by air, we
had other options by sea, especially if there were cargo ships and cruise lines.

Almost three hours after we left Playa Hermosa we pulled into a derelict parking lot, a sign reading SEA VI_W MOTEL blinking forlornly over a faded one-story structure. Weeds pushed their way through cracks in the asphalt, and a swimming pool filled with a few feet of dirty sludge stood beyond a rusting chain-link fence.

Cormac stopped the car in front of an Office sign. “Be right back.”

I listened to the soft tick of the engine, wondering how long it would be before we could sleep. More than the rest, I needed the darkness, the blankness that would come with it. My head was too full of worry—about Parker and my mom and Logan. I was approaching shutdown.

The driver's side door opened. “The exchange must have been easy,” my dad said, starting up the car. “Your mom's already picked up her key.”

I exhaled a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

We parked in front of room 213. There were only two other cars in the parking lot, a beat-up old Impala and a Town Car that looked too nice for the Sea Vi_w Motel.

Cormac used the key to unlock the door, and we stepped inside. It smelled like every other motel room I'd ever been in—like moldy carpet and pine-scented cleaning product with an undercurrent of cigarette smoke. An AC unit rasped noisily in the window.

A light was on in the bathroom. My dad headed for it.
“Renee? That was quick,” he said, moving through the room.

I looked around, taking in the full-size beds covered in tacky polyester bedspreads, the generic artwork on the walls, the old-model TV. My eye caught something on the table near the window, and I walked over to it and set down my bag. For a minute all I could do was stare, my mind drawing a blank, unwilling to comprehend what I was seeing.

A single gold bar sat on the table. Next to it was a key attached to a plastic tag marked 213. Against the bar of gold was a handwritten note.

I'm sorry.

“This can't be right. There must be some kind of explanation.”

I was sitting on the bed, still in shock. Cormac's face was white as he paced the room, muttering to himself and running his hands through his hair. He'd greeted the sight of the gold bar as I had—with shock that had quickly turned to denial. Now he doubled back toward the table, sweeping its contents onto the floor with a roar of anger.

I jumped as the gold bar fell onto the carpet with a thud. My bag landed between the table and the bed. “Dad . . .”

He stood up, straightening his jacket like that would somehow put things right. When he looked at me, his eyes were clear for the first time since we'd found my mom's note.

“It's exactly what it looks like, Grace,” he said. “She's gone.”

“She wouldn't . . . she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't leave us. Wouldn't leave me.”

His laugh was bitter. “And yet that's precisely what she's done, isn't it?”

I stood, wanting to reason with him, to stem the tide of words eating away at the life I'd known—the life I'd sacrificed for—like waves eroding sand on a beach.

“She'll be back,” I said. “I know she will. We just have to wait.”

“Stop being so fucking naive!” Cormac shouted, his face red. “This isn't something you do at the last minute. She planned this all along.” He sighed, trying to compose himself. “She's gone, Grace. And we can't sit around here waiting. We have to go.”

I shook my head. “We can't leave. Parker—”

“Parker's fucking gone, too.” He threw his phone onto the bed. “I got the local news alert on my phone twenty minutes ago.”

I picked up his phone and clicked on the alert, still open on his screen.

LOCAL BOY ARRESTED IN POSSIBLE PLAYA HERMOSA ROBBERY

An eighteen-year-old boy was arrested Friday night after vandalizing a local security company in the affluent community of Playa Hermosa. A spokesperson from Allied Security alleges the boy has engaged in a months-long campaign of vandalism against the company. A source inside the local
police department told WBHC News that the FBI had been dispatched to investigate the possibility that the vandalism was a cover for a robbery that occurred last night on the peninsula. Stay tuned for updates as they become available.

I put the phone down and stared at the carpet. So they knew. Logan and his family knew they'd been robbed, and they knew we'd been responsible for it.

“We have to go.” Cormac picked up my bag, gathering the other stuff in the room, including the gold bar.

“We can't leave Parker. Not now! He needs us!”

“What do you propose we do, Grace? Walk into the Playa Hermosa police department, past the FBI, and tell them it was all a misunderstanding?”

I scrambled to come up with an answer. “We can hire a lawyer, post bail . . .”

“He hasn't even been arraigned yet,” Cormac said. “And it's not as easy as you make it sound. They know something happened at the Fairchild estate. Which means they probably know we were part of it. We can't do anything until we get out of here. Find some cover. Then we can hire an attorney to help Parker.”

He was still moving around the room, wiping doorknobs and light switches, erasing his prints from anything he might have touched to give us a little more time if someone were to trace our steps.

My mind clamored for some kind of answer, something that would refute what he'd said, that would give us a way to
help Parker without leaving him behind. But I had nothing. I was hollowed out, empty of all my usual reason.

I was only delaying the inevitable, avoiding the moment when I'd have to admit that he was right: We were no help to Parker if we were picked up, too. To help him, we had to escape and regroup.

“Where will we go?” I asked. Obviously our plan to flee the country was out. If the FBI was involved, we couldn't risk it. Our window of escape had closed faster than we'd expected because of Parker's arrest.

Cormac walked to the door, put his hand on the knob. “North, probably. I'm not sure. We just need to get in the car, keep moving.”

“And we'll come back for Parker?” I asked.

“We'll help him however we can once we're safe.”

“Promise?” The question sounded childish even to me. What good were promises when you couldn't count on the only woman who'd ever been a mother to you?

He sighed. “I promise. Now can we go? Before the police show up and we're thrown in jail?”

Resignation settled over me like a shroud as I stood and walked to the door. “Thank you,” I said, taking my bag from Cormac's outstretched hand.

He nodded, holding open the door. A shaft of sunlight eclipsed him, and for a moment it was like he'd disappeared, like he'd never been there at all. Then, all at once, he was back, his face grim.

We hurried to the car, and Cormac backed up, heading out into traffic. I looked out the window, tears stinging my
eyes. I couldn't even begin to process my mother's abandonment, but the loss of Parker thrummed through me like an instrument out of tune. I heard his voice in that final, frantic phone call.

It's you and me. No matter what.

Parker wouldn't leave me. I knew he wouldn't. But here I was, speeding away from Los Angeles like the coward I was. Would he forgive me when I came back for him? Would he understand? And what would I say to justify my defection? What could I say?

I saw him as he had looked that day in the early-morning fog, the day we'd stared out over the water, trying to find a way back to each other even as our loyalties in Playa Hermosa had ripped us apart. He'd been so sure we were someone else. Sure that we weren't liars and thieves and cowards. That we'd only become those things because of the way we were raised.

And even though I'd tried to deny it, there had been a tiny part of me that hoped he was right. That might have believed.

But I had been wrong, and so had Parker.

As Cormac got back on the freeway, I finally accepted the truth: it was too late for me. I was done looking for a better part of myself that didn't exist. Parker and I were family, partners. I would go back for him, but there would be no more delusions about who and what I was.

I leaned my forehead against the window, my breath fogging up the glass as the city passed by on the other side. It wasn't complicated. I was a thief. I was a con artist. I was a coward.

Believing anything else was just another lie.