“We just have to think of a way to let him know that no one else will understand.” I searched my memory for the jobs we’d done together, the lies we’d told. “I know—tell him you ran into Bailey, from DC.”
“Bailey?”
I nodded. “She was one of Parker’s marks in Baltimore. Her parents joked that she and I looked so much alike that we could have been sisters.”
“And he’ll know what I mean?” Selena asked.
“I think so.”
“Okay, then what?”
“Tell him . . .” I paused, trying to think of a way to let Parker know that I was nearby, that I was going to get him out, without giving myself—or Selena—away. “Tell him you ran into Bailey from DC and she said she can’t wait to see you, and she hopes it’ll be soon.”
“Bailey from DC,” Selena muttered. “She can’t wait to see you, hopes it’ll be soon.” She looked at me. “I can do that.”
“Great. Thank you so much, Selena. Really.”
“It’s no big deal. To be honest, I feel kind of bad that I haven’t thought to visit him before.”
“You feel bad?”
“I know,” she said, “it sounds crazy. But I never really thought about why you and Parker might have done it. I mean, I thought about it. But it never occurred to me that maybe you didn’t want to, that maybe you were being used by Cormac and Renee.” She held up a hand to stop me when I started to say something. “And I know you say it was your choice, and that you have to take responsibility for your part of it. I even agree with those things. But I don’t know.” She sighed. “I guess I can see where you might have gotten . . . confused about what to do and how to handle things.”
“Well, just so you know, I’m not nearly as forgiving of myself as you’re being,” I said. “And for the record, Parker wanted me to run with him before we took Warren’s gold.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I feel stupid saying it now, but Cormac and Renee were my mom and dad, the only family I’d known. I guess Parker just saw things more clearly.”
“That’s why he’s the big brother,” she said.
I laughed a little.
Selena rubbed her arms. “We should go. It’s getting dark.”
I looked at the horizon, the sun long gone, leaving a gray-violet haze over the water. “I guess so.”
We started walking back toward the road.
“Do you need a ride somewhere?” she asked when we reached her car.
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Are you sure? Where are you staying?” I bit my lip, and she laughed. “Got it. Can you at least tell me if you’re okay? If you have everything that you need?”
“I do,” I said, surprised to find that for the first time in a long time, I meant it.
Now I just needed to get Parker.
Twenty-Nine
I was sitting on a stool in the kitchen a couple of days later, Scotty knuckle deep in the foam on my head, when Marcus emerged from his office.
“Jesus!” he said, pretending I’d scared him. “What happened to your hair?”
“Ha-ha. Very funny,” I said. “My roots were showing. Scotty’s helping me touch up the color.”
Marcus nodded, pouring himself a glass of wine. “What color is it? When you’re not incognito, that is?”
It had been so long since I’d worn my natural color that I had to think about it. “Dirty-blondish, I guess? Like, dark blond?”
Marcus squinted a little as he studied my face, like he was trying to imagine the hair color on me. “You know what, kid? I think you’d look just as good with any color hair. Not that I know hair. Or teenage girls.”
His voice had gone a little gruff, and I smiled at the roundabout compliment. When I looked up at Scotty, his hands coated with foam, he was smiling, too.
“Anyway,” Marcus said, clearing his throat. “I have a job for you.”
“For me?”
He nodded. “If you’re feeling up to it.”
Scotty took his hands off my head. “Let it sit for a bit and then we’ll rinse.”
“Thanks, Scotty.” I turned my attention back to Marcus. “I’m up to it. Is it about Cormac?”
He slid onto one of the stools. “Yep.”
“Did you find a lead?”
“I’m still working on something solid,” he said. “But I used some of the information you gave me about Seattle to narrow the field. Cormac can’t use the most reputable fences and ID brokers. They won’t touch someone who’s as hot as he is right now.” I was still getting my head around the fact that there was such a thing as reputable fences and ID brokers when he continued. “That means he’ll have to use the people on the bottom rung. Most of them aren’t nice people, but he doesn’t have a choice.”
“And that helped you track him?” I asked.
“It helped me narrow the field, assuming he’s still in the Seattle area. And I think he is. Moving would be too expensive.”
I grabbed a peach from the basket on the island and bit into it. “What can I do to help?”
“If Cormac is still in Seattle, I think he’s most likely to be in a couple of places: neighborhoods with public transportation, cheap hotels, and close proximity to the bottom rung. Lucky for us, Scotty still has connections with the Seattle PD.”
I stopped chewing. “Did someone spot him?”
“Not yet,” Marcus said. “But I’m hoping you will.”
“I’m confused,” I admitted.
“I called in favors with some of the people I know on the force up north,” Scotty said. “We got some security footage in the areas Marcus is talking about. It’s nothing comprehensive. In fact, it’s kind of hit and miss—not every store has video surveillance, and not every street has traffic cameras. But it’s something, and it’s all we’ve got.”
“You want me to go through the tapes?” I asked. “See if I can spot him?”
“Basically,” Marcus said.
“And they’re not all tapes,” Scotty said. “Some of it’s digital footage that I can send to your laptop.”
I nodded. “I can do that, but you know Cormac has probably changed his appearance, dyed his hair or something.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Marcus said, “although I’m willing to bet the bastard still looks like himself. Vanity is a killer in this business.”
“And anyway,” Scotty broke in, “you’re still the best person to spot him. Marcus hasn’t seen him up close in years.”
“That makes sense,” I said. After nearly two weeks sleeping, reading, and stuffing my face with Scotty’s cooking, I was suddenly excited to have a job. “When do I start?”
“As soon as you get that stuff out of your hair,” Marcus said. “I’ll set everything up in the living room.”
Thirty
I was sitting on the sofa in the living room Saturday afternoon when my cell phone buzzed. I jumped, digging through the sofa cushions to find it, relieved to see it was a text from Selena.
Done. Want to meet?
I typed back. When/where?
I can pick you up in half an hour?
I was 99 percent sure I could trust Selena with my address, but that 1 percent was still an unacceptable risk where Marcus and Scotty were concerned.
I’ll meet you somewhere.
K, bus stop at the TC in half an hour?
I’ll be there.
I pressed Pause on the remote, and the grainy black-and-white footage froze on the big-screen TV. There was an old woman at the counter, paying for what looked like a carton of cigarettes and a gallon of milk. It had come from a convenience store in a sketchy part of Seattle, but it could have been from any of the locations I’d viewed over the past two days. Liquor stores, minimarts, even a porn store, much to my horror. Scotty had offered to take that one, but I’d kept a straight face and said I’d do it, mostly because imagining Scotty watching footage from a porn store, even to try to find Cormac, was worse than doing it myself.
> So far I’d found nothing. There had been one false alarm. A man wearing a too-big suit, his hair receding (could have been prosthetic), large glasses perched on his nose. He looked nothing like Cormac, but there had been something about the way he walked down the aisle of the used-car lot, the arrogant way he held himself, that made me think of the man who had called himself my father. I’d gotten Marcus and Scotty, but after twenty minutes of debate, we’d decided it wasn’t Cormac. We’d filed the location away for future reference in case we decided it was worth a second look, and I’d moved onto the next tape.
“Taking a break?” Scotty asked, dropping onto the couch next to me. “We could watch the next episode of Alias.” We’d been working our way through the old show while Marcus had been holed up in his office.
“Will the offer be open in a couple of hours?” I asked. “Selena texted. She’s back from seeing Parker. We’re going to meet.”
“Of course,” he said. “Where are you meeting Selena?”
“At the bus stop in front of the Town Center in about twenty-five minutes,” I said. “But I can walk. It’s not that far.”
Scotty stood. “Not with Fletcher out there. I’ll drive you. I have to grab some wine for dinner anyway.”
There was enough wine in the kitchen to get us through every dinner for the next ten years, but I didn’t say anything. Then I realized that I’d thought about my time with Scotty and Marcus like it would go on forever. Like I would still be here for dinner in ten years, when this was just another temporary rest stop. I stifled the loss that rolled over me like a giant wave. It was too easy to get stuck underneath, to run out of air. I had to keep moving.
I changed out of my yoga pants and met Scotty in the foyer. We took the SUV to the Town Center. Scotty parked, waiting for me to get out.
I turned to him as I reached for the door. “Aren’t you going to get the wine?”
He looked a little flustered. “Definitely.” He made a show of pulling out his cell phone and looking at the screen. “I just have to text Marcus first.”
I tried to hide my smile. “Okay, I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
“Text me when you need a ride home,” he called as I got out of the car.
When I got to the bus stop, I looked back and spotted Scotty still watching me through the windshield. He hurriedly bent back to his phone.
Fletcher was still out there somewhere, and I stood back in the bus shelter, pretending to look at my phone while I scanned my surroundings through the shaded lenses of my sunglasses. I’d only been there for a couple of minutes when Selena rolled up in her dad’s Cadillac.
I hurried around to the passenger side and got in.
“Hey,” she said, pulling back onto the road.
“Hey.” I studied her reflection, wondering if it was my imagination that she looked a little pale. “You okay?”
She nodded. “It was just . . . harder than I expected it to be.”
I hesitated. The thought that Selena’s car might be bugged was paranoid, even for me, but being careful was practically coded in my DNA. I didn’t know how to act any other way. “I want to hear all about it,” I finally said, “but we shouldn’t talk here.”
She glanced over, her expression confused. A second later, understanding washed over her features. “Got it.” She refocused on the road. “Where we should go?”
“Somewhere outside would be nice,” I said.
She seemed afraid to say anything after that, and we drove in silence toward Redondo. She turned into the parking lot that stood over the beach and pier. “Is this good?”
“Perfect.”
We got out and headed down the stairs to the strand, then followed it onto the pier. “I’m starving,” Selena said. “I was too nervous to eat earlier. Want to grab something?”
“Sounds good,” I said.
We walked up to one of the counters serving food and ordered two cups of clam chowder and two Cokes, then carried everything to a table near one of the pier’s railings. The tide was receding, increasing the square footage of the beach every time it rolled back out to sea. There were only a handful of surfers in the water, plus a few people walking along the sand, getting their feet wet as the water rushed onto the beach.
I took a bite of the clam chowder. It was hot, and I had to take a drink of Coke to cool down my mouth before asking Selena the question that had been beating in my mind like a drum since the minute I’d gotten into the car with her.
“How is he?”
She chewed slowly, and I wondered if she was doing it on purpose, if she was trying to find a way to tell me about Parker without freaking me out. A knot started to form in my stomach.
“He’s okay, I think.” She put her spoon down and sighed. “Honestly? It was kind of hard to tell.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that he looks like Parker—except for the short hair—but there’s something different about him, too. He seemed nervous when we first started talking, like he didn’t know why I was there.”
“He probably thought you’d come to chew him a new one,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“How was he different?” At first I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know, but a second later I knew that I did. That I needed to know. It was the only way I could share this with him. The only way we could really be in it together, like we’d been in everything since the day Cormac and Renee had adopted him.
She seemed to think about it as she took a drink of her soda. “He seems older. More careful.”
“Parker’s always been careful,” I said, remembering his serious eyes, the way he moved, slowly, like he expected life to throw something unexpected at him.
“That’s true,” she agreed. “But this felt different. Like he was afraid to make any sudden movements, afraid to speak in case he said the wrong thing.”
I thought about prison, about what it must be like for Parker there. It hurt so much that my lungs seemed to close. But I made myself imagine it, made myself see it.
“He’s in jail,” I said softly. “He’s probably afraid of all those things and more.”
She nodded sadly. “He doesn’t belong there, Grace. Even I could see that.”
I swallowed against the tears that stung my eyes. “Did he look . . . hurt?”
“He didn’t have any bruises or cuts. Nothing like that.”
“Well, that’s good at least.” I put my spoon down, my appetite gone even though I’d only eaten a couple of bites. “What did you guys talk about?”
“Not much. I told him I wanted to see him, to make sure he was okay. He said he appreciated it, but he was fine. I asked him if there was anything he needed. He said no. That kind of thing.”
“Did he . . . did he ask about me?”
She shook her head, and I knew it had been a stupid question. Parker wouldn’t ask about me. He wouldn’t ask Selena if she’d heard from me because he wouldn’t want to hear the answer, to risk that she might give something away.
“Did you tell him?” I asked. “What we talked about?”
“Yep. I said it just like you told me: I ran into Bailey from DC the other day. She said to tell you hello, that she hopes to see you soon.”
“And?”
She hesitated, like she was remembering. “I think he got it. For a second he looked confused, but then his eyes seemed . . . clearer.”
“What did he do?” I was starved for details about him.
“He just kind of nodded, like he understood. And he made eye contact with me. He hadn’t up until then.”
I exhaled. “Good. Thank you, Selena.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I should have visited him before now. It . . .” She looked down at her hands.
“I didn’t expect that of you. No one did. We’re not your responsibility.”
“I know, but I’m glad I went. I hope you feel better. I do,” she admitted.
I smiled a little. “Me too.”
It wasn’t en
tirely true. I was glad Parker knew that I was nearby, that I was trying to help him. But now I could see him in my mind, clad in an orange jumpsuit, moving carefully, not talking for fear of saying the wrong thing, being scared and not having anyone to say that to. That was the worst: having to keep everything inside. Sometimes you just needed to say it, to name your fear, in order to take away some of its power.
“I’m glad,” she said. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“No, but thank you.”
“Have you made any progress on Cormac and his sources?” she asked.
“Not really.” I thought about the security footage. “I have a line on something, but I don’t know yet if it’ll lead to anything real.”
“Will you keep in touch?” she asked. “Let me know if I can help?”
I smiled a little. “Of course.”
She looked at her phone. “I should get back. I’m not sure how long I can stretch this volleyball sectionals thing, especially since I have my dad’s car.”
We talked about Nicaragua on the ride home. Selena was leaving right after school got out and was both nervous and excited. I was flush with happiness for her, and also a little envious. I could see her, out in the jungle somewhere, working on a school or building an orphanage, helping people and growing up and figuring out who she would be in the world.
It was after six o’ clock when she dropped me at the bus stop in front of the Town Center. I started walking toward Colina Verde, glad the sun had slipped behind the houses on the peninsula, leaving the sidewalks in perpetual shade. I knew Scotty would come get me if I called, but I needed the time to think about Selena’s visit with Parker, to process her observations and put them together with what I knew about him to get a real picture of his state of mind.
I was working my way up the last hill before the turn onto Colina Verde when my eye was drawn to a piece of paper stapled to one of the light posts. I stepped closer, my breath getting more shallow as the photographs on the flyer came into view.
They were pictures of me.
The first one, taken from my Chandler High School ID, showed me smiling, blond, and tan. The second one was a digital rendering, the kind police have to do when they’re guessing how someone might look. It showed me with pale skin and dark hair, and I felt suddenly exposed, like every person in every house on the street could tell it was me.