She looked away. “I don’t know.” We sat like that for what seemed like forever. Finally she turned to look at me. “What do you want, Grace?”
I bit my lip, tried to remember the words I’d rehearsed at the hotel. But they were gone, a yawning blankness in their place. “I’m trying to help him,” I started. “Parker, that is. But I don’t have very much money for a hotel, and I was hoping—”
“Wait a minute. . . . You want to stay here?” She said it like I’d asked her to help me rob a bank.
“I . . . Well, I was thinking maybe the pool house . . . just while I figure things out . . . how to make some things right. . . .” The idea suddenly seemed stupid and naive. What had I been thinking?
Her laughter was short and dry, caked with bitterness. “Grace, no. I couldn’t help you, even if I wanted to.” She met my eyes. “And I don’t.”
I didn’t know what to do with this colder, harder version of Selena. But it had been my doing. It was only right that she would refuse to help me.
I stood. “I understand. And I don’t blame you. I . . .” I looked down at the tile floor. “I’m sorry I asked, and I’m sorry for . . . for everything.” I forced myself to look into her eyes. If I didn’t look too hard, I could almost believe they were the same. Almost. “You were good to me. Better than I deserved. Whatever happens, I’ll never forget that.”
I made my way out of the kitchen and down the hall. I didn’t know what I would do next, and the truth is, I didn’t even care. Nothing hurt more than knowing I’d hurt Selena. And I had. I saw it in her eyes, however much she tried to cover it with anger. Even worse, I’d changed her, made her hard and cynical like me. Another thing I would never forgive myself for.
I opened the door and stepped out onto the pathway, hurrying for the sidewalk as I tried to hold back my tears. Coming here had been just another selfish thing in a long line of selfish things. I didn’t need to add guilt to the mix. I was halfway to the corner when I heard her voice behind me.
“Grace, wait.”
I turned to face her, surprised to see tears coursing down her face. “I thought you were my friend!” she shouted.
I swallowed hard. “I was. Just not the one you deserved.”
“How could you?” she asked, a sob catching in her throat. “How could you do that to Logan? To me?”
“I don’t know.” Looking at her face, at the pain in her eyes, was too hard. I looked down at my shoes instead. “I can’t . . . I can’t think straight right now. I’m alone and I’m desperate to help Parker. I’m just . . . taking it a day at a time.”
It wasn’t smart to stand outside, visible to anyone who might drive by or look out their window, but the weight of Selena’s gaze pinned me in place, like a long-dead butterfly mounted for examination.
“Where are you staying?” she finally asked.
I wanted to tell her everything, but I knew it would be stupid. I heard Detective Castillo’s voice: He’s been all over the case files, reinterviewing people, rescouting the scene of the crime.
“I’m fine. I have a place for now.”
She crossed her arms. “I can’t believe you’re putting me in this position.”
“I know,” I said. “I suck.” I met her gaze and shrugged. “I just didn’t have anywhere else to go. I’m sorry.”
She bit her lip, fighting some kind of internal struggle in the moment before she spoke again. “If I let you stay, it’s only to help the police get Cormac and Renee. I know you’re worried about Parker, but Logan and his family deserve justice too.”
I nodded, hardly daring to believe that she might help me. “I understand.”
She sighed. “Okay. You can stay. But not for long.”
Thirteen
I checked out of the hotel and returned to Selena’s the next afternoon. I was nervous as I approached her house, half expecting the police to jump out of the bushes and arrest me on the spot. But the street looked like it had the last two times I’d been there, empty except for the blue SUV and a fuel-efficient hybrid that was totally out of the question as an undercover car for the police.
Selena opened the door before I had a chance to knock, like she’d been waiting for me. “Come on,” she said. “You need to get settled before my dad comes home.”
She led me down the hall, through the French doors off the kitchen and across the brick patio. The yard wasn’t large, and the pool occupied most of the space between the house and the fence at the back of the property. The water looked cold under the shade of the cypress trees, and I had a flash of Selena, Harper, and Olivia floating in the pool on Camino Jardin while Rachel and I lounged on the patio.
We continued past the pool to a small bungalow sheltered by the trees at the rear of the property.
“The pool guys come every Wednesday,” Selena said, “but the supplies are kept in the shed, so you should be okay as long as you stay hidden when they’re here.”
I set down my bag and looked around. It was one big room, with a small kitchenette on one wall and French doors that opened onto the pool area. The décor was what Renee would have called uninspired: an overstuffed sofa flanked by end tables, a coffee table, and an armoire against one wall. I liked it. It felt a little like my hotel room. Comfortable and featureless, with nothing to mark my identity, no reminders of the past, nothing to make me wish for a future I’d probably never have.
“What about your dad?” I asked.
“He never comes back here,” Selena said. “It was built before we bought the house, but we don’t really use it. Just be careful between seven and eight in the morning and six and seven at night. That’s usually when he’s going to work and coming home. And don’t turn on the lights at night.”
I nodded. “And the bathroom?”
She crossed the room and opened a door next to the kitchen. “It’s small, but it’ll do the job. Just don’t turn on the water when my dad or the pool guys might hear it running.” She walked to the kitchen and opened the small refrigerator that stood against the wall. “I put some food in here for you. The sofa pulls out. There are blankets in the cabinet. Let me know if you need anything else.”
She was trying to be conversational, but there was a cold undercurrent to her voice that made her sound almost like a stranger. I didn’t expect anything more. I was lucky she’d let me stay at all, and I knew it.
“Thank you,” I said. “Really. I don’t know what I would do without your help.”
Her throat rippled as she swallowed, and she looked at the floor. “Do you know how long you’ll need to stay? I . . . I don’t want to get my dad in trouble.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can. I just need time to track some of Cormac and Renee’s sources. Detective Castillo—”
“Detective Castillo?”
“Do you know him?” I asked her.
“He interviewed us,” she said. “My dad and me.”
“Well, I called him,” I explained. “To see if there was some way to trade information for Parker’s release. But he said I didn’t have enough. I need to have details: people Renee and Cormac used to help them set up their cons.”
“And you don’t have any of that?” Selena asked.
“It’s stupid, but I never . . . well, I never asked. Actually, I never insisted. I did ask questions in the beginning”—I was just now remembering it—“but they made it clear that Parker and I were on a need-to-know basis.”
“Yeah, their need,” she said.
I nodded. “Exactly. So I have to try and remember some things, details about what they did and how they did it. Otherwise Parker’s going to go to jail for the crime all of us committed.”
“What if you turned yourself in?” she asked.
“I’ve thought about it. But how would that help Parker? We’d both be in jail, and Cormac and Renee would be out there, lying and stealing, hurting other people.” I shook my head. “I’ll take my share of the blame when the time comes, but to help Parker, I need to get everything I can f
irst.”
She seemed to consider my words as she looked around the room. “I better get back to the house. Do you have a cell phone?”
“I bought a new one when I got here,” I said. “A cheap one with no plan.”
“I’ll give you my number. If you need anything, you can text me. I can always make an excuse to come outside or sneak out after my dad’s asleep.”
We exchanged numbers and she headed for the door.
“Selena?”
She turned around. “Yeah?”
“I know don’t have a right to ask, but how is Logan?” The words threatened to stick in my throat. “How is his family?”
A shadow seemed to pass over her face. “Logan’s dad has been in Shady Acres since a few days after they found out what happened. His mom is . . . Well, you know Leslie; she’s strong.”
I nodded, ignoring the vise around my heart when I thought of the woman who’d been so nice to me while I was using her son. Shady Acres was just a pretty name for one of the only places that could deal with Warren’s brand of paranoid psychosis. He had been there before, and I’d helped send him back. Now Leslie and Logan were alone.
“And Logan?” I braced myself for the answer. I wanted him to be okay, to have moved on. It would hurt, but he deserved that.
“He’s not good, Grace.” My face must have shown my dismay, because she kept going. “What did you expect? He’s hurt about what you did to his family, to him, and he’s mad at himself for being so stupid, for not seeing what none of us but Rachel saw. But I don’t think any of that is what really kills him.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but not asking the question would make me an even bigger coward than I already was. “What does?”
“He loved you, Grace,” she said softly. “How is he supposed to live with that?”
Fourteen
I spent the first day at Selena’s holed up in the bungalow, hyperaware of every noise outside. I was careful to be quiet, to only run the shower when I was sure Selena’s dad was at work, but a constant cloud of anxiety still followed me as I slept, ate, and showered.
There was no TV in the armoire, but there were a few old books, and I chose an old copy of The Awakening to pass the time. Selena never made an appearance, and I wondered if that was how it would be for the duration of my stay: Selena keeping her distance while I lived in the bungalow, invisible to the outside world. It was what I’d wanted, but it still felt strange to be hidden away.
By the second day, I felt a little bit more relaxed. I texted Selena for the password to the house’s Wi-Fi and opened my laptop. Then I opened up the file with my list of clues.
Raymundo (Phoenix)
Geneva (Chicago—IDs?)
Morenovich (sp?)
Jeffries (money?)
Royal (DC/Baltimore)
They didn’t mean any more to me now than they had when I’d first made the list. Cormac had mentioned someone named Raymundo—or maybe Raymond?—when we were in Phoenix. I thought it had something to do with cars, but I couldn’t remember if he’d been talking about a repair to the cars we were driving then or the purchase of new vehicles for the Fairchild con.
The other stuff was no better. A conversation between Cormac and Renee about visiting someone named Geneva when we were in Chicago. A sarcastic comment about consistently slow information coming from Morenovich. Cormac, complaining about intel in New York from a person or company that went by the name Jeffries (first or last name? The name of a company? I didn’t know). And last, Renee running out late one night in Baltimore, telling Cormac she’d make the pickup at Royal.
None of it meant a thing to me.
Frustrated, I closed my laptop. I wanted to see the trees and hear the ocean crashing against the cliffs of the peninsula. To walk and walk as I worked through the names and places on my list. But there were only the four beige walls of the bungalow, the soft hum of the fridge, the distant whir of the pool’s filter outside.
I looked at the time on my phone. 11:47. Selena wouldn’t be home for a while, not that it mattered. I hadn’t seen her since she’d brought me back to the bungalow. And her father wouldn’t be home until much later. It was Wednesday, but the pool guys had already come and gone. It only took me a few seconds to come to a decision.
I washed my face and brushed my teeth, then stood over my backpack, surveying my outfit options. I only had three choices: the angsty grunge clothes I’d been wearing when I left Seattle, the capris and tank top from my Playa Hermosa wardrobe, or a skirt and T-shirt that would fit in anywhere. I chose the skirt and T-shirt combo, making a mental note to stop in at a thrift store to buy a few things. I’d been washing my clothes in the bathtub and hanging them to dry, but they were starting to look wrinkled and dingy, and I needed at least a couple more options if I didn’t want people to think I was a homeless waif.
Once I was dressed, I stuffed my laptop and everything else into my backpack. It felt heavier after a few days of downtime, but I didn’t dare leave anything behind. Detective Fletcher could be out there. I could be arrested on the street. Someone could find my stuff in the bungalow and call the police. Selena could have a change of heart and do it herself. Anything could happen. When it did, whatever it was, I wanted to have my stuff. It wasn’t much, but it was mine.
I closed the door of the bungalow and edged my way around the side of Selena’s house, keeping an eye out for jogging moms, landscapers, detectives conducting interviews. An unfamiliar girl on the street was one thing. An unfamiliar girl leaving the fenced-in backyard of an affluent dentist in Playa Hermosa was another.
No one was there, and I continued down the street and headed for the Town Center. I picked up the bus and rode it all the way to Hermosa Beach, where I walked to a diner on the strand.
I was exhilarated to be outside, comfortable among the eclectic mix of surfers and hippies, Rastafarians and soccer moms. I chose a table outside, then ordered breakfast and a carafe of coffee. I had just opened my laptop, hoping the change of scenery would clarify one of the clues, when I saw the man on the strand.
Something—a loose string, a wrong note—twanged inside of me at the sight of him. He was slender and agile, walking toward the café with a casual but purposeful stride. He wore chinos and an obnoxiously loud Hawaiian shirt. His eyes were hidden behind aviators, his head covered with thinning strands of gray hair. He turned to look out over the water, and I had a flash of another man, face concealed beneath a straw hat, steam rising around him in the Jacuzzi.
It couldn’t be.
He was about ten feet away when I realized he was whistling. I recognized the melody not as belonging to a certain song, but because it sounded eerily similar to the melodies whistled and sung by the man next door to us on Camino Jardin. The tune was slow and a little sultry, a perfect match to the way he strolled down the strand.
I watched him from behind my sunglasses, my pulse racing as he came closer. He would pass me. He would walk right by without even looking my way. It was just a coincidence. I told myself all of these things even as he turned onto the patio of the café and walked directly toward my table.
The world seemed to tilt, a low humming building in my brain like it had when I’d almost passed out at the fast-food place in Lomita.
He slid into the chair across from me and took off his sunglasses. “Hello, Grace. Is it time to call in reinforcements?”
Fifteen
I didn’t say anything for a full minute. I was trying to reconcile the fact that the man sitting across from me was the same man who had lived next door to us when we’d been planning the Fairchild con. The man who had sung strange songs and talked to the parrots like they could understand him, whose verbal meanderings had always seemed directed my way, even when I knew it was crazy to think so.
“What are you doing here?” I finally asked. Then I registered that he knew my name, and I put my hand on my laptop, ready to run. “Who are you?”
He put both hands on the table
and leaned toward me, his blue eyes rheumy but sharp. “I understand why my appearance might come as a surprise, but I mean you no harm.”
“You didn’t answer my questions.” I forced my voice steady and held his gaze. People took advantage when they thought you were weak, even if they didn’t mean to. Unless the person in question was the kind who thrived on being needed. Then you could pretend weakness to get their help. But I already knew the man in front of me wasn’t that kind of person.
He leaned back, studying me. “My name is Marcus. And from your reaction, I’d say you remember me.”
I closed my laptop and put it in my bag. “I do. I just don’t know why you’re here. How did you find me? And how do you know my name?”
“I know a lot of things,” Marcus said.
The words caused a flash of memory, and I suddenly heard Rachel Mercer’s voice in my head, back in the days when we were circling each other, Rachel trying to put her finger on why she was so suspicious of me while I did everything I could to deflect her suspicions.
I know lots of things, Grace. Lots and lots of things.
“Like what?” I asked him.
He fiddled with the sunglasses in his hands, pursing his lips as he considered his words. “Let’s just say your dear old dad and I go way back.”
It took me a minute to figure out what he was saying. “You know Cormac?”
The sound of his laugh startled me. It was so genuine. Like he really thought it was funny. “I know him better than anyone. But his name isn’t Cormac. I imagine you’ve already thought about that.”
I hadn’t, actually. In spite of all their lies, Cormac and Renee were still Cormac and Renee in my mind. Stupid. But with the knowledge of my own naivety came something else, something unexpected: hope. Here was someone who knew Cormac. Someone who might have information that would help me find out more about him.
A waiter appeared at the edge of our table. He looked at Marcus. “Would you like a menu?”