“Look,” the agent says, “at this point, you ladies haven’t even been charged with a crime. You’re only wanted for questioning.”
“So,” Grace says, as if seriously considering what he’s saying, “what happened this morning—the minor incident with the guns, the carjacking, the kidnapping—if we turn ourselves in, all that will be forgotten?”
The agent hesitates, and Hadley looks at him, her heart pounding as she waits for him to reassure them that this morning was, in fact, not a big deal, a misunderstanding that could easily be straightened out if they turn themselves in and explain what happened. After all, Hadley was just reacting to the circumstances. She was scared and worried about Grace.
Mattie cranes her neck to look at her, her brown eyes wide, and Hadley swallows as she turns to Grace, then back to the agent.
Carefully, as if measuring his words, he says, “It’s not up to me, but I’m sure a prosecutor will take the circumstances into account—”
The car slams to a stop so violently Hadley could swear the back tires lift off the ground. Hadley’s seat belt chokes her, and Mattie and Skipper lurch forward, Mattie’s arm flying in front of Skipper to protect him as the agent crashes with incredible force into the console. His chest takes the blow, and it knocks the wind clean out of him.
He wheezes and gasps as Hadley helps him back up. She pats his back, not knowing what else to do, fresh tears escaping and running down her face. Miles squeals and kicks his legs, thinking it is all great fun. The agent glances at him, then drops his face to look at his lap.
They drive the rest of the way in silence, except for Mattie, who whispers almost silently to Skipper that it’s going to be all right as he rocks back and forth with his hands over his ears.
Hadley stares out the window at the thin road winding its way through the desert, her mind catching again and again on the words prosecutor and take the circumstances into account, her brain unable to process what is happening and that she is the one who caused it, that because of what she did, she and Grace are now criminals.
The agent shifts his leg to touch hers, a small comfort but the only one he can offer. It is kind but does little to quell her panic. She wishes she could click her heels three times and reverse time, find herself back in her warm bed at home, with Skipper and Mattie safe in their rooms down the hall. She wishes she had never decided to leave, that she could have a redo or an undo, return to the time before she and Grace ever met. But, she supposes, that is the lesson in life, the one she trips over again and again. There is no going back. One decision leads to the next and then the next, a continual stumbling forward over each past mistake until you find yourself someplace entirely different from where you started or from where you ever intended to go.
The car rolls to a stop. Beside them is a trailer that serves as the ranger station for the archaeological site. Across from it is a hole the size of a basketball court and deep as a two-story building.
Before Grace can open her door, Hadley blurts out, “We can’t just leave him here. They don’t open again until Tuesday. There’s no food or water.”
“We’re not going to just leave him,” Grace says, and Hadley sighs in relief. “You’re going to stay with him.”
31
MARK
The trailer is oblong, with a door on the short side and two high windows on each of the long sides. It is warm and musty and full of artifacts—maps and photos, rocks and fossils, spearheads and ancient tools, and a yellow human skull, the bottom jaw missing.
Mark sits on the floor, hard gray carpet with a blackened path worn around the displays. A hall opposite the door leads to a restroom, mechanical space, and storage room. His pants are tied by the back belt loops to the ranger’s desk through the hole for the computer cables by the ACE bandage that was on Torelli’s ankle. And his hands are still bound by his tie but are now in front of him.
Herrick and Torelli fought about where to tie his hands, Torelli arguing it was horribly uncomfortable to sit with your hands behind your back, and Herrick spitting back that she didn’t care, that they weren’t running a spa, and the reason you tie the hands behind the back is because it makes it more difficult to escape.
Herrick was right, but thankfully, Torelli won. She threatened that, if Herrick tied Mark’s hands behind his back, she would release him the moment Herrick left.
The women glared at each other for a full minute before Herrick finally backed down. “Fine,” she said, “but I’m taking the guns.” Then she muttered, “Not that I’d mind terribly if he broke free and shot you.”
They are an odd pair, the two of them, and Mark wonders again how they partnered up. Like twins separated at birth, then reunited, they are like squabbling siblings with nothing in common except a fierce loyalty to each other.
Herrick is scrappy and cunning like an alley cat—wily and defensive with guile and toughness that speak to her rough history. Torelli is the opposite. The woman belongs in the society pages of a magazine, not sitting in a trailer in the middle of the desert hiding from the law.
“Hadley,” he says.
She looks up from where she sits at the desk, her leg propped on top of it, her ankle blue and swollen.
“Please, you need to listen to me.”
Her face drops to look at her hands in her lap as her head shakes, her black hair swaying with it.
Not wanting to make her cry again, he softens his tone. “This is all a misunderstanding.”
Her head switches direction, nodding with his words.
“You’re not a criminal.”
It returns to swaying, and though she’s nearly forty, she looks like a little girl who’s been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to, and he finds himself feeling bad for her. She so obviously doesn’t belong in this situation. She is a good person whose only real crime was making some bad choices, the worst being marrying Frank Torelli, a two-bit crook.
“Which is why you need to turn yourself in,” he says. “Before this gets any worse.”
A tear falls from her chin and lands on her lap, and his heart twists as he realizes he’s failed. He has a debilitating weakness when it comes to women and children crying. Tears destroy him.
He tries to block it out and soldiers on. “At this point, there’s still a case to be made that you didn’t know I was an agent. You could’ve thought I was working for your husband.”
Her face snaps up, her expression slick with tears and guilt, the confession that she knew perfectly well who he was written all over it.
He looks away, unable to take her sad green eyes.
After a long minute, she mumbles, “What did he do? Frank?”
“You don’t know?”
“I thought he just ran a parking business,” she says.
She either is a very good liar or genuinely has no idea what Frank was into. He believes it is the second. He sighs, irritated and angry, frustrated that women so easily put their trust in men, and angry that men like Frank Torelli take advantage of that trust. When Shelly gets older, he is going to set her straight on how a marriage should work—two people who take care of each other and respect each other. He and Marcia might not have had much passion, but they damn well respected each other. He’s surprised when he feels a twinge of appreciation for his ex-wife. It’s been a long time since he’s felt anything but hurt and rage.
“Frank was laundering money,” he says. “Along with running an illegal gambling operation and dealing in some small-time trafficking.”
“Drugs?” she says.
“Cocaine. Ecstasy.”
Her eyes drop again, and her arms fold across her stomach like she has a stomachache.
“The money you took was evidence,” he says. “So we were trying to get it back.”
A long beat passes as she considers this; then she says, “So, at the hospital, you weren’t trying to arrest me?”
“Nope. Just trying to stop you from destroying our case.”
“So, if I�
�d have just talked to you and given you the money, that would’ve been it? You would’ve arrested Frank, and I would’ve been free to go?”
“Assuming you knew nothing about what your husband was doing.”
She shakes her head again and cries harder. “I didn’t. I hate drugs. Frank knows that. I can’t believe he . . .” She hiccups, and her voice gets swallowed by her emotions.
“Okay,” he says gently. “I believe you. Then, yes, you would have been free to go.”
She squeezes her stomach tighter, rocks back and forth. “But now, because I did what I did, Grace and I are going to go to jail?”
Prison, he thinks, but he doesn’t correct her. Kidnapping a federal officer, firing a deadly weapon during the act, hijacking his car—even with extenuating circumstances, these are serious charges that will draw hard time. He thinks of Herrick’s baby gumming a smile at him in the car, of the little boy who loves Hank Aaron and was upset over losing his baseball uniform, of the girl who took sailing lessons last year, where she learned how to tie knots, and his guilt stabs him, knowing had he just waited for backup or gone to the field office first, none of this would have happened.
“Hadley,” he says.
She shakes her head like she doesn’t want to hear any more.
“How well do you know Grace?” he says carefully.
She doesn’t answer, but he can tell by how quiet she is that she is listening.
“Did you know she has a record?”
Her head is bent so far forward he can’t see her face, but he hears the small catch of her breath. She had no idea about Herrick’s past. He feels terrible for what he is doing, but it might be his only shot at turning this around.
“How’d the two of you pair up?” he says.
More rocking and a full beat of silence; then finally she answers, “We didn’t. Grace just happened to show up when I was trying to find the money. I didn’t know where the safe was, and she did, so I told her I would split the money with her if she showed me.”
“She just happened to be there?” Mark says, not buying it for a second. He has never been a big believer in coincidences, and the likelihood of the two of them accidentally showing up at Frank’s business at the exact same time is too impossible to be true.
Sensing his doubt, Hadley adds, “She thought the uniform delivery had been shorted, and she wanted to check it.”
“On a Friday night?”
“She was a really good employee. And she said the baby had been crying, and driving with him was a way to calm him down.”
Torelli’s face is entirely earnest, but he still doesn’t trust it. “So, you offered her half?”
“I had no idea it was going to turn out to be so much.”
“How much was it?” he asks, as if he has no idea. By Fitz’s estimation, Frank was pulling in somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred grand a month from his side racket, and the operation, as far as they could tell, had been running for a couple of years. So Fitz figured he had close to two million, give or take.
The slightest hesitation, her eyes flicking up and to the right before settling back on his. “Around nine hundred grand,” she says.
He reveals nothing and says in a steady voice, “That’s a lot of money.”
She nods. Looks back at her hands.
“Weren’t you worried Frank would come after you?”
“Of course,” she says. “That’s why I ran at the hospital. I did think those guys worked for Frank.”
She looks small and defeated, and he feels terrible for her. In his line of work, he’s seen a lot, and unfortunately nothing matches the cruelty of those closest to their victims.
She sniffles, wipes the tears from her face, then hugs her arms around herself as if she is cold, though the trailer is impossibly warm.
She is right to be scared. Mark has watched Frank Torelli for a year. The man is ruthless, erratic, and mean, and there’s no way a man like him is going to let his wife waltz away with a million dollars of his money, along with his daughter, and not come after her.
“Which is the other reason,” he says, “why you need to let me help you. Frank is dangerous, and you and Grace are in trouble—”
“Stop,” she croaks, clearly on the brink of losing it.
So he does. He clamps his mouth shut around the next words he was going to say, unable to take the distress he’s causing.
For a long time, they remain silent, his heart heavy and his mind spinning as he tries to figure a way out of this, for him and for them. Finally, he says, “How’d you end up hurt?”
“I tripped over the toilet lid that had been concealing the safe.”
“The safe was inside the toilet?”
“The tank.”
He nods. He’s seen a lot of creative hiding places for safes but never a toilet.
“And Grace knew where it was and had the combination?”
“No. I had the combination.”
Does he detect another lie? It’s impossible to tell. He thinks it through. Torelli goes to the office to pilfer money for her escape. She searches for it but has no idea where it is. Then, by some wild coincidence, Herrick shows up and just happens to know where the safe is, but without Torelli, she can’t open it because she doesn’t have the combination.
Not a chance. Coincidences like that just don’t happen in real life.
Torelli continues, “I stepped back, and my heel caught on it, and my ankle twisted when I fell.”
The bag. The image of Herrick walking into the building flashes in his mind. She walked in carrying a bag, the same bag she carried from the hospital, so bulky it made it awkward for her to walk. Why would she need a bag to check on the uniform order? Herrick was there for the money, so the question is: Does Torelli believe the story she’s telling, or is it a lie?
“I couldn’t drive,” Torelli continues, “so Grace ditched her car and drove me to the hotel where my kids were. We were supposed to split up the next morning, but instead Grace drove me to the hospital, and that’s when your guys showed up, and the rest you know.”
He nods as if it all makes perfect sense. “Why didn’t she leave you at the hospital?”
Torelli shakes her head and lets out a heavy sigh. “I have no idea. She should have. None of this has anything to do with her.”
Bullshit, he thinks, and he wonders what Herrick has on Torelli to make her weave this story to protect her.
“Well, it does now,” Mark says.
Torelli’s head shakes harder. “It doesn’t!” she wails. “She was only trying to help us.”
“Hadley,” he says, his voice firm, “you need to listen to me. If you don’t turn yourself in, this is not going to end well. You need to think about your daughter.”
Torelli’s jaw slides out, and she doesn’t answer. Then, after a long time, she says, “What did Grace do? You said she has a record. For what?”
“She made some bad choices when she was young.”
“But it’s not like she killed someone?”
Mark remains silent, his heart pounding with guilt, hating himself for using Herrick’s past against her, but also knowing it might be his only chance of convincing Torelli to turn herself in.
Torelli looks up. “She killed someone?”
Herrick didn’t actually kill the girl. She died from pneumonia, and the charge was negligent homicide, but homicide nonetheless. He gives a small nod.
Torelli swallows, then looks back at her hands and shakes her head, either not believing him or choosing not to let the revelation change things.
“Hadley, a good lawyer, and you could walk away from this.”
Her hands twist in her lap, and he watches as a shadow of uncertainty crosses her face.
He tries to capitalize on it. “Grace is the one who pulled the trigger. The one who ordered me into the trunk. The one who drove me here.”
She looks up, her brow seamed, uncertain what he’s saying.
“Hadley, she’s the one with
the record,” he says, keeping his eyes steady on hers.
He watches as slowly his meaning becomes clear, her eyes widening before turning dark and hard as stone, and he realizes his mistake.
“This isn’t Grace’s fault,” she hisses, a growl that reveals a tiger hidden beneath her kitten exterior. “The only reason Grace is here is because of me. She risked everything to help me.”
And just like that, the door of possibility slams closed.
Torelli returns to studying her hands, and Mark returns to contemplating his options, feeling infinitely worse for what he has done and wishing he had just waited for backup and that none of this were happening at all.
32
GRACE
They stop at Walmart to buy supplies. Grace loads up on formula and diapers and buys provisions to tide the agent over until Tuesday: water, food, blankets, a pillow, a flashlight, several magazines, and heavy-duty cable ties. The choice to take the agent with them was a risky one. It adds kidnapping to her list of crimes. But it’s also given them the best chance for escape. And truthfully, with all the other charges she’s facing, adding another felony to the list won’t make a difference. If she’s caught, she is going away for a very long time, long enough that Miles will be grown by the time she’s released, so getting out will no longer matter.
She can’t believe she is part of this. The thought sickens her. It’s as if her worst nightmare has come true, the past repeating, as if she is destined to be a criminal, no matter what.
As soon as she fired that gun, everything changed. Until that moment, she and Miles had had a shot at a new life. But now, her only chance to raise him is on the run, looking over her shoulder and hoping she never gets caught. So, while she feels bad for the agent, there was no choice. Taking him gave them the smallest advantage. The backup team would show up, and they’d be confused before panic set in. The agent and his car would be gone, and the van would be parked outside her and Hadley’s rooms.
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