The Safest Lies (32 page)

Samuel turned the knife in his hand, the blade catching the light in the corner.

“My entire basement is combustible.”

I thought of Ryan, slowly backing away. The fire extinguishers throughout the house. As if all of it was waiting for a spark.

There were the stairs behind me, and the hole in the floor in the room to my right—and then there was this.

I held Eli’s metal Zippo lighter in my hand, flicked it once, watched as the flame danced over the metal. “Nobody moves,” I said.

Martin had his gun aimed at me, but Samuel raised his hand. “You want to play, kid? Let’s play.”

He took the gun from Martin’s hand and pointed it at my mother.

“What will you do, I wonder,” Samuel said. His head was faintly cocked to the side, as if he really was that curious. Curious to see what I was made of. And I was scared to find out. Fear reveals things, but so does what we do with it. So does this.

What was I afraid of?

That I would not be forgiven.

That I might make the wrong choice.

That I had taken too great a risk.

That nobody would truly love me, once they knew me.

That I might be made of too much darkness.

“Kelsey,” my mother gasped in warning. But wasn’t this what she had prepared me for? Not just to run, but to stand my ground? She taught me, above all, to survive. She taught me to weigh risks, and dangers—to see them everywhere. To act.

And I was doing it.

Eli’s head twisted toward the stairs first. Then Martin’s. And then I heard it, too. Sirens, faintly calling. Getting closer. But I didn’t feel any relief. Instead, the tension grew, the room practically tingling with a new blind rush of terror.

They had no reason to hand us over. They were violent, the police had said. It was the reason my mother left them in the first place—because they had blood on their hands, and now so did she.

This was about to become a hostage situation. And they had no remorse, nothing worth bargaining for. They had a gun, a knife, two hostages, and walls closing in on them.

All I had was the lighter and some hope.

“How did you get out of here the last time?” Samuel asked. He seemed too calm, like the fear could not touch him—and that made
me
suddenly more afraid. As if he was missing some basic human emotion, and its lack had turned him cold and remorseless.

“Drop the gun and I’ll show you,” I said.

He smiled. “You know I’m not going to do that.”

I looked from him to my mother to the stairs. I could not go with him. I could not. If we went with him, we were dead, or we were taken. Either way, we were gone. This I was sure of.

Everything my mother had taught me, all the things she’d fought to keep hidden, all of it was leading to this. Right now.

“Mom,” I said in warning.

Martin still had ahold of her.

My mother closed her eyes.

I had become the thing we always feared. The danger in the world. The unknown, existing out in the vastness. An unforeseen turn of events.

A shadow in the corner of your eye—blink and you might miss me.

The flame still flickered in my hand. And then I dropped it.

I
n the event of a fire. Stay low to the ground. Know the exits. Crawl toward safety. Know the way by heart, by feel.

But nobody prepared me for the thickness of smoke, how it suffocates even as you escape.

Nobody prepared me for the heat.

Nobody prepared me for the sound. A crackling. A whoosh. The screaming.

Nobody prepared me for the thousand doubts that piled one on top of the other in the moment that followed, insisting I had made the wrong choice. The fear that threatened to paralyze me once more.

There was a series of explosions as one box ignited, and then another, and another—chemicals bursting as the fire spread throughout the room.

I heard footsteps on the stairs, and I called for my mother. Her name scratching against my throat. The smoke choking me as I sucked in air to call for her again.

I sank lower, my face pressed to the concrete, and I wondered what I had traded my shot at safety for. What we all had traded.

Somewhere, a fire alarm blared. Somewhere, sirens approached. Footsteps fled. The heat radiated all around me.

Move, Kelsey.

I started crawling in the opposite direction from the footsteps—to the closest exit. I felt for the sides of the open safe room along the floor, the metal hot to the touch, and scrambled for the compartment in the floor.
Shut the door against the fire. Shut the door against the smoke. It’s the safest choice.

I couldn’t do it. “Mom!” I called again, but the fire was too loud—I was shrinking into myself, my world growing smaller—

I couldn’t see anything, just felt for the compartment—my hands connecting with warm flesh, jerking back.

“Kelsey?” A low voice, a cough.

“Mom?”

The safe room door slammed shut, the noise trapped behind it, though the smoke and heat lingered. I couldn’t see her in the dark, with the smoke billowing all around us.

Her hands brushed mine on the floor, and she said, “You found it.” She coughed again in the thick smoke, even though the door was closed.

“Kelsey, listen,” she said. But then there was yet another explosion from just outside the door. The entire foundation shook, rattling my bones.

“We have to move,” I said.

—

I made my mother go first, because I remembered the feeling I had, sitting on the ledge. Debating whether to go. I didn’t want to give her the choice. I didn’t want to know which one she’d pick.

I slid down after her, breathing in the smoke-free air. Her hand connected with the side of my face first, then gripped my shoulder. “There’s a tunnel,” she whispered, leading me in the darkness.

“I know.”

She paused, the muscles in her arm stiffening. “When Samuel asked how you got out, was he talking about this?”

My eyes watered, tears rolling down my cheeks—from the smoke, or something more. “They got in,” I said, and the words pushed their way out with a sob. I hiccupped, trying to force it back, but even my breath rattled. “Ryan, Cole, Annika, and I were trapped in the safe room, and they were right outside the door.”

“But you found it,” she said, sounding breathless. “You got out.”

I pulled away from her, started crawling through the tunnel, hearing the crackle of foundation somewhere above. “Cole was
shot.
And you were
gone,
” I said. “You just
left
me there, and I didn’t know what to do.” My hand over my mouth, my head shaking back and forth. I was glad for the darkness, for the noises above. I sat back on my heels, feeling her somewhere nearby.

“No,” she said. Her hand was around my elbow, and she was holding on tighter. “
No.
I ran, Kelsey. Because it was the only thing I could think to do. It was my biggest fear, Samuel coming back. Samuel coming back for
you.
I ran to draw them away from the house. So they wouldn’t find you as you tried to come back inside.”

I didn’t move. Didn’t know what to believe after all the lies, all the stories. The version from the police, from Jan, and now the one from her.

“Kelsey, we’re running out of time.”

I pressed my face closer, made my voice lower. “They’re going to arrest you, Mom. The money…they know.”

“It’s okay, Kelsey.”

“No, it’s definitely not okay!” If I had no father, and no mother, and nowhere else to go—how was that possibly okay?

She nudged me on the shoulder, a little rougher than I expected. “
Move,
Kelsey.” Her words rang in my ear, as they had earlier. Instinct. Muscle memory. We had no light, and the tunnel was endless. I started moving faster, more frantically, thinking the tunnel was longer than I remembered—wondering if there was a fork I didn’t know about, if I was heading in the wrong direction.

And I was overwhelmed by the feeling we were not alone in this tunnel. It was the noise that echoed, the
feel
—like the opposite of when I arrived home to my empty house.

Maybe it was just the fear. My imagination, running away with me. But I kept feeling something more. A shadow in the darkness, that you could feel but never see. A breath at the back of your neck—look over your shoulder, but nothing’s there.

But then I heard a shuffling in the tunnel somewhere
ahead,
and I froze. My mother collided into my back, and she let out a grunt—and the noise stopped. I started pushing her the other way before realizing there was nowhere else to go. I groped for anything I might use. But it was just me. Me and her.

I slowed my breath, and I waited.

A bright beam of light shone from the corner ahead, and I tried to make myself smaller. Make myself
ready.
My mother started moving backward. We were trapped. The fire behind, the light ahead…

I heard the crackle of a radio. “Baker,” it said, and his name echoed off the walls of the pipe, straight to my gut. “Come in. Where the
hell
are you?”

“Ryan?” I called.

“Kelsey?” His voice echoed around the corner, and then the light hit me full on, so my eyes squeezed close on impulse. But then his hands were on my shoulders, and I moved by feel, by instinct. My arms circling around his shoulders as his arms pulled me closer. He took in a shuddering breath. “Holy shit. I’ve got you,” he said.

And then he shined the light past me, at my mother. He fumbled for his radio. “I’ve got them,” he said.

And then, to me, “I told them,” he said. “I told them there was another way in.”

—

We stood huddled beside Ryan’s Jeep, waiting for the team to meet us there. He’d left his car just off the road, across the street from the sewer, in a small clearing surrounded by trees and fog. My mother had her eyes closed—as she had since we emerged from the tunnel—and I could see her mouth moving, as if she was listing off the things that might still keep us safe. She slumped to the ground with her back to Ryan’s car, her head between her knees—and I went with her. The ground was cold and damp, and I held her hand as Ryan paced in front of the open sewer grate we’d emerged from, still holding his flashlight.

Ryan was speaking into his radio, directing them, repeating what he’d said before. He had us both.
Both,
and we were safe.

I could see the smoke now over the trees.

But there were still secrets to learn, and to keep.

When they arrived, my mother would be gone. Even now, even free, there were so many ways I could lose her.

I pressed my shoulder up against hers. “Mom? I need to know what to say. What to tell them.” I knew we would need to be
careful.
And I would do it still, for her.

She raised her face to mine. “No more,” she said. As if she knew that this was the end. That something was shifting, for her, and for me. The vastness, and all its possibility, stretching before the both of us.

“You never told me,” I said. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me.” The truth was, I was angry. But under that, I was hurt. It stung to realize the secrets that had been kept, the lies that had been told.

“I was going to tell you,” she said. “At fifteen, I decided. Then sixteen. And then at seventeen. But I didn’t know what it would do to you. I didn’t know what good it would do, as long as I was there to protect you. I thought it was the safest thing, to keep it from you.”

My throat tightened. “Then tell me
now
where you’ve been. The police think you went with them on purpose. Tell me the truth. All of it.”

She looked at me like surely I must know this. “He rang the doorbell. Just rang it, and waited. I saw his face on the video screen, and I couldn’t find you. I tried to call you, but the line had been cut. And you’d left your phone. I knew it was too late for anything else. All I could do was run. So I ran, and I kept running.”

She left on her own, like they told me. Even though I thought she wasn’t capable. These men had been her nightmare. The scars on her back, a year of horror and guilt and fear—but she still took the risk and drew them away from me.

“They caught me, deep in the woods behind the house. Got that kid Eli to take me back to wherever they were staying, tied up underground. They kept showing me
pictures
of you to get me to behave. To talk.”

“They hurt you?” I asked, remembering the bruises, the blood under her nails. Her history repeating itself.

She shook her head, like I didn’t understand. “My worst fear was coming true,” she said, and my heart dropped.

“That they would find you again?” I asked.

“No.
No.
That they would find
you.
I didn’t know what else to do. It was the
only
thing I could do. So I did it.”

Everything I’ve done,
she’d said on Jan’s tape.

“But when that didn’t work, when they threatened to hurt you even after they had me, I told them the money was still at the house. If I was at the house, I thought I could figure something out. I thought I’d have a chance….” She lowered her voice. “Don’t you understand? I took you from him.” She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “You can’t take something from a man like Samuel and get away with it. So I made a choice, and I hoped it would save you.”