“Savannah?” Mattie says. “That’s pretty.”
Grace nods. It’s been a long time since she recalled that name or the time when she used it.
“There came a point when I needed to let it go,” she says. “The name and the girl that went with it.”
Grace can tell Mattie wants to ask why, but she doesn’t, and Grace appreciates it. It isn’t something Grace likes to talk about.
Instead Mattie says, “So you gave yourself a new name?”
“More like a new start. I moved to California, and I began again as Grace.”
“And it worked?”
“I suppose. I mean, I was still me, and I still had all the memories from my life before, along with the regret for some of the things I’d done. That stuff doesn’t go away. But no one in California knew who I was before, so I was able to start fresh, move past it, and decide who I wanted to be from that point on.”
Mattie is listening hard, her eyes narrowed tightly on Grace’s. “So, you lied about who you were?”
“Not really. I just didn’t talk about it. I kept the parts I didn’t want people to know to myself. You’d be surprised how little people ask about your past and how little they pay attention when you answer. Most people are so caught up in their own lives they don’t really care about yours.”
A long beat of silence passes, Grace looking down at her hands and remembering when they were Savannah’s—same hands, different girl.
“You think I can do that?” Mattie asks.
Grace lifts her face. “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, for you it’s a little different; your mom and Skipper still know you. But no one else does. It wouldn’t be easy. You’d actually have to change. No one can do that part for you. For me, it was all about forgiveness, learning how to let go of all the anger I was holding on to. It was tough. Changing.”
Mattie looks away, and Grace watches as she turns the idea in her mind, once again feeling like looking at Mattie is a little like looking at a reflection of her younger self.
“So, I would need to change my name?” Mattie says.
“You don’t have to. For me, it helped. Savannah is who I was, and Grace is who I am. Like one of those before-and-after transformations, there’s a clear break between then and now, past and future.” She pauses, then adds, “What’s your real name? What is Mattie short for?”
“Matilde,” Mattie mumbles, looking embarrassed. “It was my dad’s grandmother’s name.”
Grace considers it for a moment. “How about Tillie? That’s pretty cool.”
Mattie doesn’t say anything, but Grace feels her rolling it around in her brain. Tillie Torelli. Grace thinks it rocks.
Finally, Mattie says, “Do you really think I could pull off being Tillie?”
“I do.”
Mattie almost smiles, then pushes off the tub to stand. “You know that boy who posted the picture last night?”
“Yeah.”
“He was wearing Superman underwear.”
“You saw his underwear?”
“He forgot to zip his fly.”
“Too bad you couldn’t post that on Snapchat.”
Mattie snort laughs, and Grace laughs as well thinking about it: #supermanskivviesloser.
“What’s going on in there? Let me in,” Hadley pouts, sounding like a toddler who’s been left out of a game.
“Should we let her in?” Mattie says.
Grace touches her hair and is about to shake her head, but Mattie is already reaching for the door.
47
HADLEY
Hadley opens her eyes and immediately regrets it. Her hangover has really heated up now, and the light through the windshield works like daggers on her brain. She grabs hold of her head on either side, fearing her skull will actually split in two from whatever is chiseling at it from the inside. She was dreaming of her mom, the sweet memory drifting away before she could grab hold of it—granola and berries, perhaps a dream about breakfast. She’s hungry. It’s a little past four, and they haven’t eaten since their late breakfast six hours ago.
Grace pulls into a gas station with a minimart, part of a small outcropping of businesses with a smattering of houses and cows behind them. It’s amazing how many of these small towns they’ve driven through, communities of a few thousand people in the middle of nowhere, making a living ranching, farming, running a gas station, or who knows what. So little surrounded by so much emptiness, and it makes Hadley wonder how the world can be so crowded in other places.
“Where are we?” she says.
“Laramie.”
“State?”
“Wyoming.”
Hadley pushes herself up and goes to run her fingers through her hair and hits only air.
She keeps forgetting it’s gone, her silky mane now shorn to a choppy pixie cut. She glances sideways at Grace, and just like this morning, the sight of her with straight-ironed ink-black hair makes her smile, mostly because she knows how much Grace hates it and also because of how much it makes her look like Melissa. Though, on second glance, the fierce scowl and piercing glare are 100 percent Grace.
“What?” Grace says, catching Hadley looking at her.
“Nothing.”
The scowl deepens; then she turns to the back seat. “Mattie, take Skipper to the bathroom but keep him out of sight. I’m going to pay for the gas and buy some snacks.”
Things this morning did not go well with Skipper. While the rest of them had all agreed, however reluctantly, to transform their looks, Skipper would have none of it—not a haircut, not a hat change, and definitely not a uniform change. So, while the rest of them no longer look like themselves, Skipper continues to look exactly like himself: a special little boy in a Dodgers uniform.
This has all been too much for him. He has never dealt with stress well, and the past four days have been extraordinarily stressful. He doesn’t understand everything that is happening, but he understands enough to know that yesterday Mattie was in danger, that Hadley was shooting a gun, that Grace was running over motorcycles with a truck, and that afterward, Hadley was throwing up and everyone was arguing and crying.
When it was time to leave the hotel this morning, Skipper refused. His eyes still fixed on the wall, as they had been all morning, he folded his arms and said simply, “No.”
Then he said it again and again. The only variation in his continued refusal was the occasional addition of, “I want to go home.”
Finally, after twenty minutes of haggling and pleading, Hadley told Grace she needed to physically carry him out. It was the only way, and it was a horrendous ordeal for all of them. Skipper screamed and kicked as Grace struggled with him. Mattie walked behind them trying to console him. And Hadley hopped on her crutches as she gritted her teeth against it all.
By the time they’d made it to the car, they had an audience of several people standing on their balconies of their hotel rooms, watching.
They drove away with Skipper still in hysterics, rocking and crying and kicking the seat in front of him, all of it fraying everyone’s already strung-out nerves.
An hour later, Skipper finally exhausted himself and collapsed against Mattie, crashing into a twitchy sleep, and Grace looked at Hadley and said, “He needs to stop wearing that uniform. It’s going to be the end of us.”
Hadley doesn’t disagree. Skipper stands out like a walking billboard advertising that they are, in fact, the ones from the shoot-out last night outside Pat’s Barbeque. She just isn’t sure what to do about it.
Mattie and Skipper walk back toward the car, Mattie keeping Skipper on the side away from the minimart windows, her body shielding him as best she can. They climb in, and Hadley turns. “Hey, Champ, how you holding up?”
He lifts his face to hers, his blue eyes wide. “I want to go home.”
“I know, buddy. I know.” Heart twisting, she turns back in her seat.
Grace walks from the store, her face blanched and her shoulders hitched up around her neck. In her han
ds are a couple of bags filled with drinks and food. Something is wrong, and Hadley expects her to jump behind the wheel and tear away, but instead Grace sets the bags in the back seat with Mattie, then continues to the pump to fill the car.
When she finishes, she climbs in and pulls back on the road, her eyes glued to the two-lane strip of asphalt that stretches endlessly in front of them.
“What’s wrong?”
“We made the Fox four o’clock news.”
48
GRACE
Renegades, rebels, modern-day Robin Hoods—those are the words the reporter used. She was young, Hispanic, pretty. She stood in front of Pat’s Barbeque, the neon sign blinking behind her. The headline beneath her read, Female Fugitives Still at Large. The television was above the cashier’s head, and Grace watched while the girl rang her up. There were photos and even a short video. It was dark, and it was hard to make out much but the silhouette of Hadley, the flash of the gun firing, and blurry shadows in the distance diving, but it was enough to make compelling television, the five-second clip gripping.
The reporter gave a surprisingly accurate account of what has happened over the past four days, starting with the FBI’s pursuit of them at the hospital, then describing the search for them in Barstow and the FBI agent’s abduction in Baker, and finishing with the events of last night in Salt Lake City. They even had a map and a timeline.
“All set,” the cashier said, causing Grace to look away just as the reporter was introducing Burt, the man she danced with last night.
“Grace was a heck of a dancer . . . ,” Burt was saying as she walked from the store.
Renegades, rebels, modern-day Robin Hoods—Grace doesn’t feel like any of those things. She feels like a little kid who’s accidentally broken a window because she was playing where she wasn’t supposed to, and who feels bad and is now desperately trying not to get caught.
“You okay?” Hadley says.
Grace glances at her, then returns her focus to the road.
“You haven’t said a word for hours.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“The agent got away.”
“Mark? He got away?” Hadley says, clearly excited. Then, realizing she’s not supposed to be excited, she forces her smile away.
“It’s okay,” Grace says. “I’m glad he’s okay.”
The truth is Grace felt awful leaving him there. It was a terrible thing to have to do. She left his firearm in the trunk of his rental car so he would get it back, and she tried to make him as comfortable as possible, but it hasn’t stopped her from feeling bad. He was just a guy trying to do his job.
“This is a bad idea,” she says a moment later as she pulls into the bumper-to-bumper traffic eking its way down the exit ramp toward Coors Field.
“We have to,” Hadley says with a concerned glance back at Skipper, who is sitting up erect, his eyes scanning out the window to take in the flood of fans.
Grace inches the car forward, her heart pounding.
“Think about it,” Hadley says, “this is the last place anyone would expect us to be. And besides, it’s the one place we blend in.”
She’s referring of course to Skipper and his insistence on only wearing baseball uniforms. They stopped at a sporting-goods store outside Denver and swapped his Dodgers T-shirt for a Rockies jersey, and Grace has to admit he looks a lot like most of the kids on the sidewalk.
“I don’t like the idea of leaving the money,” she says as she follows the parking attendant’s gestures to pull into a spot at the far end of a lot the size of ten football fields.
Skipper is bouncing in his seat, the PlayStation that holds his fantasy team and all the stats in his hand.
“Move, First Base,” he says to Mattie as soon as the car comes to a stop. “Go. Get out.”
Mattie climbs out, and Skipper bounds out after her.
“Well, we can’t walk into the stadium with two million dollars,” Hadley says. “It might raise an eyebrow or two.” She offers an encouraging smile. “Come on, Grace. It will be fine. We’ll go to the game, have a couple hot dogs, enjoy a little normalcy for a few hours, then return to our outlaw ways.”
Grace, not able to help herself, smiles.
“Attagirl,” Hadley says. She climbs from the car, looking nearly as excited as Skipper.
Grace slides Miles into the new front baby pack she bought—one where he faces out so he can see all the action. His legs kick with excitement, and she has to admit he looks very cute in his Rockies onesie, with matching hat and socks.
With a final glance at the trunk of Blaire Butz’s Bug, where the diaper bag is stashed with the money and Frank’s gun, she takes a deep breath and walks toward the shuttle bus, trailing Skipper, who’s yanking Hadley forward as she does her best to keep up without her crutches.
When they arrive at the stadium, Grace leaves Hadley, Skipper, and Mattie at the front gate to go to the ticket window. The air smells of popcorn and beer, and Grace inhales deeply and thinks about what she will eat when she gets inside, her mouth watering with the thought of an ice-cold Coors and peanuts.
Bad as things are, they feel a little less hopeless than they did this morning. Despite the calamitous events of last night, freedom is in sight. Mattie agreed to the plan of going with her to London, and Skipper only wanted to know if they had baseball. And now that she’s had some time to think about it, the idea has taken on surprising warmth and brightness, the idea of Mattie and Skipper being with her making her happy each time she thinks of it.
She kisses Miles on the head. “Hey, little man, in two days, you and I are going to be on a plane and headed to London. What do you think of that?”
He kicks his legs and waves his arms.
Her eyes catch on her reflection in the glass of the ticket windows, startling her, then making her smile. There’s no way anyone is going to recognize her. She barely recognizes herself—a realization both comforting and disturbing. Without her fiery-red curls, she is plain as rain, entirely unremarkable.
Miles squeals and babbles as they wait for the ticket girl to print out their tickets, clearly excited by the colorful commotion around them, the sidewalk teeming with fans, vendors, laughter, and voices.
The scent of hot dogs drifts past her nose, and her stomach rumbles. She loves ballpark hot dogs. There’s something about them that makes them so much better than a hot dog from anywhere else. Closing her eyes, she imagines the first delicious bite, followed by a swig of beer.
She’s still relishing the thought when the hair on the back of her neck bristles, a premonition or her sixth sense sending off an alarm. Moving slowly so as to not attract attention, she opens her eyes and turns.
At first, she sees nothing and thinks maybe she was mistaken, but then the man behind her shifts, and the world stands still.
He is a hundred feet away, concealed beneath the shadow of a tree—brown sport coat and white button-down shirt—broad shoulders, thick waist, and cinnamon-blond hair. He is wearing sunglasses, but she can tell by the way he turns his head that, behind them, his eyes are scanning.
“Here you are,” the ticket girl says.
Grace glances at her, then back at the agent, then, calm as she can manage, takes the tickets and walks back toward the entrance, her pulse pounding in her ears.
49
MARK
Mark is supposed to be on a plane back to DC. He is supposed to be moving on to a new case involving credit card fraud. He is supposed to be arranging a makeup day with Shelly and Ben. He is supposed to be putting all this behind him.
He almost didn’t see her. Had that woman not said, “Look, honey, isn’t he cute? The littlest Rockies fan,” he wouldn’t have turned and he would not have caught sight of Grace’s distinct walk as she moved through the crowd with Miles strapped to her chest. Her hair was changed, black and straight, but she still carried herself with a sort of defiance that was unmistakable, her sho
ulders back and her head high.
He moves quickly to catch up, uncertain if she’s aware he’s there. Judging by how fast she’s moving, he thinks she is.
His instincts paid off. This game was important to Skipper, and the stadium on course to their destination of Omaha. He didn’t clear the plan with O’Toole or tell anyone about his hunch, and if this doesn’t work out, he will be out of a job, but he’s amazed how little that concerns him.
Grace glances over her shoulder, and Mark ducks out of sight. When he straightens, she’s turning the corner toward the entrance. His hand goes to the holster beneath his jacket, and he releases the clip and flicks off the safety.
He rounds the corner, then stops in his tracks. Grace is stopped as well, ten feet still between them.
He looks past her to Hadley, whose hair is now short, cropped almost to her scalp. Her crutches are gone, and she stands with most of her weight on her good leg. Her right arm is wrapped over Skipper’s shoulder, while Mattie stands slightly behind her.
In front of them, a few feet away, is Frank. Beside him, his brother, Tony.
Mark’s mind spins quickly, assessing the situation as he watches Frank say something to Skipper that causes Hadley to tense. Then he leans in and whispers something in Hadley’s ear, and Hadley starts to shake her head as she reaches back protectively for Mattie.
She is too slow. Quick like a rattler, Frank grabs Mattie by the arm and wrenches her forward. Hadley reaches out, but Frank’s threatening glare stops her. Then he hisses one more thing before pulling Mattie with him through the crowd, his brother following.
Hadley cries out, “No, Frank, please!” and Mattie looks over her shoulder, her face pale.
Hadley steps toward her, but Grace lunges forward to stop her. “No, Hadley, don’t.”
After that, everything moves in hyperspeed yet slow motion at once: Grace holds Hadley back, the baby between them, as Mattie is pulled through the crowd, then pushed into the back seat of a black car with blacked-out windows parked illegally in the taxi queue. Mark races toward them, weaving through the herd of people that stream toward the entrance, his gun in his hand. “Frank Torelli!” he bellows over the crowd. “FBI. Stop!”
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