The First to Lie

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  Another knock.

  “Meg? What does Abigail say? This is her apartment, after all. Maybe it’s the mailman. UPS. Amazon. A neighbor with a cat.”

  Meg strode toward the door. “Who is it?” she called.

  CHAPTER 57

  ELLIE

  “It’s Will.” His voice came through the wooden door. “The front door was propped open, so I just came on up. May I come in?”

  Ellie had never been so happy to hear someone’s voice. Monteiro had given him the all-clear. So, all good. She checked that the Abigail interview had properly recorded. Clicked out of the app so her phone would work again.

  “Hang on!” Meg called out. “I’m just changing clothes. I spilled coffee all over myself.”

  Ellie turned to her, baffled. “Changing clothes?” she whispered.

  “He’s a Pharminex employee.” Meg’s eyes got bigger. She whispered, too. “How the hell did he know we were here?”

  “I told him.”

  “You told—” Meg raised her eyes to the ceiling, folded her hands as if in prayer. “Look, Ellie.” Meg took a step closer to her. “Abigail knows Will. She says Will Faraday is a Pharminex hired gun. He’s trapping you. Using you.”

  Ellie stared at her, trying to take in all she was saying. Especially in light of Monteiro’s verdict about Gabe’s trustworthiness. “Abigail told you that?”

  Meg nodded, eyes wide.

  “Did you tell her about Will?”

  “Of course not!” Meg whispered. “She brought it up. She knows what he’s doing. Somehow.”

  “Abigail knows Will,” Ellie confirmed. “From Pharminex.”

  Meg nodded again, then held up a forefinger and mouthed the word: Wait.

  “Can you come back in ten, Will?” Meg called. “Go get coffee down the street. I’ll be decent again by the time you get back.”

  “Okay.” Will’s voice sounded uncertain, and Ellie didn’t blame him. “See you in ten.”

  “Meg—” Ellie began.

  “Will befriended Kaitlyn, did he ever tell you that? And Lydia Frost. They were, like, an item. I have to get Abigail out of here before he returns,” Meg went on, glancing toward the back room. “If he sees her…” She pressed her lips together. “That’d be horrible.”

  “Yeah. Wow.” Ellie heard a ping. Picked up her phone. She glanced at the text on the screen. From Warren. Read it again. Grabbed her coat and began to ease toward the apartment door. “Wow. Abigail knows about Will. Amazing.”

  “I know. I need to warn her to be careful when she leaves.” Meg looked as if she was about to burst into tears. “She’s probably trying to hear us now, poor thing.”

  “Listen. Here’s an idea. I’ll run after Will and pretend I don’t know any of this, okay? Like I’m still all on his side. I’ll take him for coffee, saying I need to tell him something. And then you set up your phone to record in the living room. Hide it somewhere. And then you sneak Abigail out of here. Does she have a car? A phone?”

  “Sure. And then—”

  “And then, when Will and I come back,” Ellie interrupted her, “you and I can get him to … I don’t know. Implicate himself. We can do it. That in itself will nail Pharminex. Pharminex is the bad guy, right? And he’s their spy. You are so smart.”

  “So terrifying, Ellie. He probably killed Kaitlyn and Lydia—for Pharminex! We could be next.”

  Ellie put a hand on the doorknob. “You are so right. I’d better go. If this works, you’ll get so much credit. You found Abigail. And arranged that pivotal interview. And now we have to get Will back here and trap him. You could even be the one to do it. I’ll follow your lead.”

  “Great.” Meg nodded. “I’ll think of something. And can you confirm my spilled coffee story? That was all I could think of, I was so terrified.”

  “Sure. Ten minutes? Is that enough time to get her safe and set up the secret taping?”

  “Of course.” Meg was already tapping on her phone. “Be careful.”

  “You too.” Ellie opened the door, stepped into the hall.

  She did not have to run after “Will.” He was on the landing below, looking up at her. She took the stairs down, two at a time, as quickly as she could, one hand on the railing and the other holding her cell.

  “Oh my god, Gabe,” she said. She showed him the screen. “Look at the message I got from Warren, my news director. Just read it.”

  She watched him take it in. Try to digest its meaning.

  Her heart pounded, and Ellie tried to control her breathing. “James Armistead phoned Warren, wondering why Channel Eleven employee Meg Weest left a car in his driveway yesterday. Warren called the police, and they came and took it.”

  “Wait—her car? Meg’s car? But, El, it’s Lacey’s car.”

  “Gabe, listen. Meg might have been in the car, but Meg doesn’t drive. So who was driving?”

  “Abigail? Could she be Lacey?”

  “Come on,” Ellie said, grabbing his arm. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve gotta get to the back, to the parking lot, see what happens. See Abigail when she comes out.”

  She half dragged him down the rest of the stairs, talking at him over her shoulder. “We can hide in the bushes. Come on.”

  She cut across the scraggly snow-dappled front lawn, beckoning him to follow. “Over here. Where we can see the back.”

  They huddled in their dense boxwood refuge, shoulders touching, their eyes trained on the back parking lot of Abigail’s apartment. Three cars. No people.

  The winter sun was high in the sky, noon, but its cloud-muffled heat didn’t reach the ground. Two adults hiding behind an evergreen hedge was not the cleverest tradecraft, but it was their only option. When Abigail came out, they’d duck. Abigail. Who Meg had told Ellie was terrified of Will. But Abigail could not have known Will—because he did not exist.

  Gabe and Ellie knew Will was a fiction. But Meg believed he was real. Only Meg.

  Meg was lying.

  Why?

  She stared at the grim apartment, thought about who was inside. Thought about Meg’s passion for the story, her arrival in Boston, her disturbing behavior. Her dead brother. Her intense and continuing interest in the upcoming gala. Her insistence that Abigail knew Will.

  “Gabe,” Ellie whispered. She clamped her hand on his arm.

  “What? Do you see Abigail?”

  “It’s Meg,” she said. “Meg wasn’t using Lacey’s car.”

  “Of course she was, Armistead said she was.”

  “No, we just assumed that. But Gabe?” Ellie said. “I think Meg was driving it. That car was Meg’s. And Lacey’s. Because Meg Weest is Lacey Vanderwald.”

  CHAPTER 58

  ELLIE

  The words caught in Ellie’s throat as she said them, realized what they meant. Meg was Lacey Vanderwald. Wanted for murdering her husband. Gabe and Ellie stood, surrounded by branches and the dark cold of the afternoon and the dawning understanding of Meg’s dark charade. Murder, Trevor, murder. Not a sailing accident. Not an accident at all.

  The words throbbed in her head, pounded through her heart. She could almost hear them. Not an accident. Ellie’s balance gave way as she stood in the cold, and somehow the sky began to spin.

  Gabe grabbed her, catching her, held her up. “Ellie?”

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” she lied. But she couldn’t lose it, not now, not when they were about to—not an accident. A wave of power overcame her, determination.

  She pulled her phone from her coat pocket and yanked off one glove with her teeth, tucking it under her arm. “I’m texting Monteiro. Telling him Meg is Lacey. Lacey is Meg. Holy crap. Watch the back door. Watch the front. Watch everything.”

  “I am. But Ellie? What’s Lacey Vanderwald doing at Channel Eleven? Helping you bring down Pharminex? Why would she do that? She’s a Vanderwald, it could only hurt her.”

  “I know, I don’t know.” Ellie tried to text and talk at the same time. “I mean—how do I know? Maybe there’s some
financial thing that protects her, maybe she’s not liable, maybe she doesn’t care, who knows.”

  “But she’s in there with a Pharminex victim,” Gabe said. “We should go in. We have to go in because…”

  Ellie looked up from texting. “Okay, done. Monteiro knows.”

  She hit send, relieved to put her glove back on. She kept her voice low. Kept her eyes on the triple-decker. Tried to keep her head straight. “Meg. I still can’t believe it. I mean, Lacey Vanderwald is in that building right now.”

  Ellie’s phone pinged. She read the message out loud. “Monteiro. Sending guys. There’s a warrant for her. They’ll arrest her, and—”

  “They’ll never get here in time, Ellie, she’ll bolt. I have to go in. What if Abigail’s in danger? If Lacey killed Trevor—”

  Ellie’s heart twisted; she could not hear that again, killed, not one more time. She had to think about now, what to do right now.

  “It’s got to be both of us,” Ellie said. “That’s what she’s expecting, that I bring you back, and we trap you with our clever secret taping. But we’re not supposed to go in until she signals that Abigail is gone.”

  “But no one’s come out, front or back.” Gabe shook his head. “Maybe that was Meg’s way to get rid of us, then she’ll run. If that’s true, there’ll be no one inside when we go in. No one alive, at least. Let’s do it. Now.”

  Gabe grabbed her hand, pushing the branches away, pulling her toward the house. They headed across the snow-tipped grass. Ellie looked up at the third-floor windows as they arrived. Paused. Not a flutter of the blinds, still down.

  “Okay, Will. You ready to confess you’re a Pharminex goon?”

  But Gabe had already yanked open the front door, taking the steps to the third floor two at a time. Ellie dashed after him, grabbing the bannister to pull herself up, his black parka and jeans racing ahead of her. Lacey frigging Vanderwald. Ellie searched her imagination, trying to fit Lacey’s face—as she’d seen it—into Meg’s.

  They arrived, both panting, on the third floor, the mud-brown carpet soggy under her sodden boots, the overhead light struggling to cut the gloom. Ellie tried to quiet her breath, thinking about what was ahead, and what was behind. About Trevor Vanderwald, his body never found, languishing forever in the depths of Chesapeake Bay. Not an accident, not an accident. But she could not think about that. They paused, listening, but there was no sound from apartment 3, only the rumbly hum of a heater, somewhere, fighting the outdoor bluster. No word from Monteiro, no sounds of sirens, nothing to do but go in.

  “Knock?” Gabe whispered. “Or go?”

  “She said she’d leave it open.” Ellie put her hand on the knob. “It should be me she sees first, okay? So it seems according to plan.”

  “Hope we’re not too late.”

  Ellie turned the knob. It gave with a soft metallic click. She swung it open. “Meg?” she called. But the apartment was silent. “Abigail?”

  She looked at Gabe, eyes wide: Where are they?

  Gabe looked back. Don’t know.

  “Meg?” She took a step into the living room, scanning, Gabe behind her. Front window, empty couch, bookshelves. Kitchen. Windows to the parking lot. Hallway. Two doors open. One door closed. She cocked her head, pointed down the hall. “Meg?” She tried again. “Abigail?”

  Nothing.

  “Could Meg have gotten Abigail out of here without us seeing her?” Ellie tried to picture it. “I guess she could have gone out the back the minute we hit the front, before we could watch. Cutting it close, though.”

  Gabe nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Meg too, though? They both left? Meg?” She called again. The place had the feel of empty, not a creak or a footstep. “Let’s go in. What if someone’s hurt?”

  Gabe took another step into the silent apartment, left the door open behind him. “If Meg or Lacey or whoever she is has harmed Abigail—”

  Ellie had just thought of it another way. “Or Abigail harmed Meg.”

  She took a step down the hall, then another, her body taut with apprehension. What if Abigail had lured Meg and Ellie here? Maybe Abigail had contacted Meg after seeing her social media search for victims. Targeted her, somehow knowing she was Lacey Vanderwald? Ellie had always thought that connection had happened too easily. Maybe this Abigail had set them both up.

  They took the final steps toward the closed bedroom door. Ellie realized she was holding her breath. She felt Gabe’s presence close behind her. The door was within reach.

  But no. Meg was the first to lie. Because there was no real Will Faraday. Meg had insisted she knew the inside scoop about him. But in fact, Will only existed in Meg’s imagination. Meg’s true identity had been exposed by a person who did not exist.

  But no matter who was really who—where were they?

  Gabe took a step past her, reached toward the doorknob.

  “Gabe, wait.” She grabbed his arm, stopping him. “Meg insisted that Abigail knew you.”

  “Knew me?”

  She tried to read his face. “Yeah, you. ‘Will’ you. The made-up you. From Pharminex. Why would Abigail say that? And if Lacey is Meg, who is Abigail?”

  “That’s what we’ve gotta find out. Ready?”

  She put her hand on the bedroom doorknob. Turned it. And pulled open the door.

  Bed. Nightstand. Lamp. Dresser. Window. Closet, open and empty, except for a few metal hangers tangled together at one end.

  Ellie took it all in. Looked again and again, as if someone would somehow appear.

  “Stating the obvious.” Gabe’s voice was not quite back to normal. “They’re gone. And no one’s dead.”

  “That we know of,” Ellie said.

  She stood in the silence. Stared at the bedroom window. At the window where there were no blinds, closed or open, but only white lace curtains. White slatted blinds, Meg—she still had to think of her as Meg—had said. Describing how “cool” the stripes looked behind the silhouetted Abigail. But there were no blinds. Meg had lied again.

  “Shit,” Ellie said. “She tricked us.”

  It took only seconds to open the other bedroom door—a white-painted office, bare desk chair and throw rug. Empty. They yanked open the next door—a yellow tiled bathroom. Translucent yellow shower curtain. Empty.

  “I’m an idiot.” Ellie planted her hands on her hips, now standing in the center of the living room, taunted by the emptiness around them. “They must have gotten out the back as we were going out the front. And one of those cars in the back was hers, Meg’s, I have to still call her. And that’s how she was getting everywhere—Miss ‘Oh I don’t drive and I take Ubers.’ Bullshit.” Ellie remembered, calculating. “Lacey Vanderwald could probably afford to rent a million apartments and a million cars. Her bank account must be bottomless. This is where she hides her other life.”

  “Didn’t you notice she was gone all the time?” Gabe asked. “From the station? Or your apartment building?”

  “Yeah, but no biggie,” Ellie said. “She has other assignments at the station. And if you remember, I was more interested in juggling my own—”

  “Double life.” Gabe finished her sentence. “Yeah.”

  Ellie’s phone pinged with a message.

  “Monteiro,” Ellie said. “He’s on the Mass Pike.”

  “But she’s gone!” Gabe said. “Tell him—”

  “I know, doing it.” She’s gone! Ellie typed back.

  Got it. Going to apt. Monteiro’s words came back. You OK?

  OK.

  “He’s headed to her apartment—my apartment. He’ll get there before we can.”

  “Do you think Meg took Abigail with her? Lacey, I mean.” Gabe frowned, as if trying to game out a scenario. “Like she abducted her, or lured her, or—”

  “Gabe,” Ellie interrupted. “Here’s the thing. I read somewhere that Lacey Vanderwald is a Monifan victim. It wasn’t … confirmed. But there was some chatter online that she’d been harmed by Monifan. Just like Abigail
was. Supposedly.”

  “Supposedly? You don’t think Abigail is a real victim?”

  Ellie played back everything she knew. Everything Meg had said. Why she’d never let Ellie see Abigail, be in the same room with her. Why Abigail appeared at the perfect time. And vanished at the perfect time. And then came back. At the perfect time.

  “No,” Ellie said. “I don’t. I don’t think Abigail is a real victim.”

  “You don’t? But Meg interviewed Abigail. They were both here.”

  “Were they? Did she?”

  “Of course they were here. Meg—or Lacey—interviewed her. In there.” Gabe gestured toward the bedroom. “It’s recorded!”

  “Something’s recorded. Someone told a victim’s story.” Ellie saw the puzzle pieces fit together. Understood the picture they made. “But I think Meg and Abigail—Lacey—are one and the same person.”

  CHAPTER 59

  ELLIE

  Ellie’s phone pinged again. Monteiro. “Monteiro says she’s not at the apartment,” she told Gabe. “Super let them up. They’re getting a search warrant now, staying there till it comes through.” She typed in her response.

  Meg=Lacey?

  Looking.

  Now what? Ellie typed back. She said it out loud as she thumbed in the letters. Gabe here with me.

  She almost felt the message fly through cyberspace. But there was no answer. No three dots.

  “No Abigail.” Gabe seemed to consider that. “If you’re right, and maybe you are, do we need to warn Monteiro? We should head to your place, anyway. There’s no reason to stay here. It’s empty.”

  “Gabe? Yeah, there is.” Ellie thought about reasons someone would want a second apartment. A secret apartment. “Because like you said. It’s empty.”

  Ellie turned, scanned the living room, the bookshelves, the cushioned couch, the cheap travel posters hanging on the walls—Rome, Paris, London. “There’s no ‘Abigail’s apartment.’ Because if I’m right—and I think I am—there’s no Abigail. Meg’s using this as a hiding place. And who knows what she might keep here. You’re a lawyer. It’s not illegal or anything for me—us—to check things out. Right?”