by Carrie Ryan
Morales notices my unease because she waves a hand and says, “Don’t worry, this is all off the record. For now. I figure we have a few loose ends to tie up.” She pulls a chair close to mine and sits, elbows braced on her knees and hands clasped.
For a moment, I can only stare, frozen like a rabbit caught in the sights of a predator. Finally I manage to find my voice. “Do you have word on how Grey’s doing?”
She seems surprised at the question. “Cuts and scrapes, minor concussion—what you’d expect after what he’s been through.” She looks meaningfully at the scrapes visible across the backs of my knuckles. I tug the collar of my shirt higher, hoping to hide the bruises circling my throat from Thom strangling me earlier.
But Morales must notice them because she frowns. “Have you had anyone look at that?” she asks, motioning.
I shake my head. “I’m fine. How did you find me?”
She tightens her jaw and for a minute I think she’ll argue, but she ends up letting it go. “Because I don’t trust you,” she answers. “Never have.”
Her statement takes me aback and I frown, confused.
“There’s a note in Shepherd’s file that I’m to be notified of any visitors.” She looks at me pointedly. “Imagine my surprise to get a call about a young female visitor who fit your description. You know, with you supposedly being dead and all.” She glances toward the TV. It’s now replaying a clip of the Senator’s arrest.
We watch for a moment before she continues. “You were there earlier—at the O’Martin estate.” It’s a statement, not a question.
Cringing, I clench my fingers into fists. Not caring about the cuts that open along my knuckles. So close, I think. I glance again at the door but when I look back at Morales, she shakes her head.
I let out a long sigh, resigned. “Yes, I was there.”
“The two bodies . . . ?” She leaves it as a question.
“The news is right—his name’s Thom Ridger.”
Her lips press together. “That’s what Grey reported as well. We found a gun . . .” Again she trails off. She already knows most of this, but she wants to hear it from me.
“It was Thom’s,” I tell her, my voice bizarrely calm and even.
She nods and then frowns. “And the other body?”
I hesitate, swallowing before finally answering. “The other body belongs to Elizabeth O’Martin.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Morales bristles; she’s not the kind of person who likes to be toyed with. “They’re planning to do DNA tests, you know.” The words are short and clipped, her tone testy.
I struggle to suppress a smile. “And the DNA will come back a perfect match to Elizabeth O’Martin.”
For the first time since I’ve met her, Morales is flummoxed. Her eyes narrow as she leans back and crosses her arms. “How’s that?”
I hesitate, not sure how much to share. But then I realize, what does it matter now? If I’m arrested, the truth will come out anyway. It has to. The DNA tests will prove that Libby’s dead, and then all eyes will fall on me.
“I don’t know how much you know about the Persephone disaster,” I tell her. “But there were two of us who survived when the ship sank: Libby O’Martin and Frances Mace.” I stare down at my hand, feeling the nakedness of where Libby’s signet ring used to be. I had to leave it behind with the body. It never really belonged to me anyway—it was always hers.
“Only one of us lived long enough to be rescued.”
Morales’s eyes sweep over me and then she lets out a surprised breath. “You’re Frances Mace.”
It takes me a moment to figure out how to answer that. I meet her gaze head on. “I used to be.”
“So the body that burned?”
“It’s Libby’s. She was buried in Frances Mace’s grave.” I hesitate, clear my throat. “I dug her up the other night. And then made sure the fire would burn hot enough that no one would be able to tell the body had been dead for years.”
Morales blinks, trying to take this all in. “We arrested Senator Wells in connection with your—I mean Libby’s—murder.”
“I know,” I say, nodding at where the TV still plays an endless loop of the charred wreckage and of the Senator being escorted out of his house in handcuffs. I still feel a jolt of satisfaction watching it.
Morales’s expression is apologetic. “You know I can’t let an innocent man go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
I lean forward, hands clenched. “Trust me, Senator Wells might not be responsible for the fire last night, but he’s still the reason Libby died. He killed her.” My voice comes out tight and barely controlled.
We stare at each other, her waiting for me to say more, me wondering how much I can trust her. In the end, I tell her everything. The entire story: meeting up with Libby; me and Grey falling for each other on the Persephone; the attack; witnessing my parents’ murder; the days adrift in the raft with Libby; the rescue that came after; and Cecil’s proposal to switch identities.
And then I explain the why, laying out everything about DMTR, the Senator’s corruption, the Ecuadorian oil. Morales takes it all in, her expression betraying nothing.
“Senator Wells just . . .” I struggle with the words, the familiar anger simmering. “He got away with it. There was never enough proof. No way to make him pay.” I lift my chin. “The Senator deserves to pay for what he did. If he hadn’t lied, we would have been rescued while Libby was still alive.”
“Why not just let the FBI investigate—let him pay for his corruption then?”
“Because I don’t trust the system,” I argue. “I don’t trust that he’d truly be punished the way he should.”
She lifts her eyebrows. “For killing an entire ship of innocent people?”
This is where I bite my lip, glance at the TV for a moment. Bringing the truth about the Persephone to the light means bringing Grey’s complicity. There may never be any official consequences for his lying, but society would judge him. Even if they understood the why of it.
While my intent has always been to out the truth, damn the consequences, now I’m not so sure. Because there are some consequences that aren’t worth risking.
Grey is worth more to me than my need to let the world know the truth.
“Let the Persephone lie where she rests.” Morales opens her mouth to argue but I don’t let her. “Thom Ridger was responsible for the attack and he’s dead now. The Senator will go to jail for Libby’s murder as he should. It’s over—all of it.”
She draws a sharp breath, still uncertain. “Look,” I continue. “Think of all the families out there who mourned their loved ones four years ago. The truth would only dredge all of that up. Even worse, it would prey on them.
“It’s easier to believe in the cruel hand of nature than the cruel hand of man. Trust me.”
In the silence that follows, Morales taps her fingers against her knees, thinking. On the TV, the news cycles between clips of the Senator being escorted to the police car in handcuffs and the arson investigators sifting through the rubble of the burned house.
There’s no way the Senator can escape this. Not with Grey implicating him. They’ll find the texts that he was supposed to meet me last night. That his head of security was found in the wreckage with a gun only adds to the Senator’s guilt.
He’ll lose everything because of this: his job, his marriage, his son. Even his freedom once he’s convicted of Libby’s murder.
Finally Morales lets out a deep breath. “So what now?”
I lift a shoulder. “You take down the Senator—use it to advance your career. I walk away. So long as you let me, that is.” I wait to see if she protests, but she doesn’t. “I transferred most of my inheritance—or rather Libby’s inheritance, I guess—to Shepherd and his brother. The rest I’ve set aside in a series of trusts that are pretty untra
ceable. It won’t take much to develop a new identity—give her a history. I’ll disappear—you’ll never have to worry about me again.”
With a wry smile, I add, “I’ve had practice sliding into someone else’s life.”
She nods, but there’s still something concerning her and it makes me anxious. “So everything—from the moment you returned to Caldwell—was part of your plan. And we were all just pawns you pushed around to get what you wanted, regardless of the consequences.”
A hot flush of shame creeps up my neck. “No.”
But she’s not done. “Doesn’t that make you just like the Senator? Eye on the prize, damn the people who get in your way?”
“That’s not the way it was,” I protest.
“You broke Grey’s heart, you put people’s lives at risk, and Shepherd—” All she has to do is glance down the hallway to make that point.
“Shepherd wasn’t supposed to be part of it,” I say softly, chagrined. “And neither were you.” I stare at the blood smeared along the back of my hand, one of the cuts on my knuckle opening up from having clenched my fists earlier. “Everyone’s life will be better with me gone.”
“Was it worth it?” she asks.
Yes, I want to tell her, but for some reason the word won’t come. On the TV a red BREAKING NEWS! alert flashes and is replaced by the scene of a reporter standing outside the Caldwell County Hospital, cameras everywhere.
The hospital doors slide open and Grey steps out, his mom by his side. The media crushes toward them, everyone shouting questions at once. Mrs. Wells keeps her head down, repeating “No comment,” again and again as she follows in Grey’s wake, pushing toward the waiting car. Grey holds the door open for his mother, who slides gratefully into the backseat. But he hesitates, and then glances up. He must have chosen the camera to look into at random—there’s no way he could know I’m watching him.
And yet it feels like he’s staring right at me. There are dark, sleepless bruises under his eyes and his hair’s disheveled. A bandage covers his forehead and his cheek is scraped an ugly red. His shoulders sag under the weight of everything that’s happened, and I know, I’m the one who did this to him.
Then he slips into the car, closes the door, and is gone. I let my head drop, closing my eyes tight against the tears. Morales still waits for the answer to her question. Was it worth it?
“I don’t know,” I finally tell her, my voice barely above a whisper.
She says nothing, just taps her fingers against her knee. “You know,” she finally says. “There was this kid once—lost his parents young but was taken in by a good family and seemed to be doing fine. Until his adoptive mother died and his adoptive father started spending all of his time out of the country, taking care of his adoptive sister who’d been in a pretty horrific accident.”
I clench my teeth, knowing that I’m the girl who took the father away from that boy. That the boy in question is Shepherd. But I listen anyway because this is a woman who could throw me in jail right now if she wanted and it’s probably best that I don’t tick her off.
“See, the problem was that everyone he’d ever seen as family had just up and left,” she continued. “Either dead or gone voluntarily. And that left him pretty angry and he didn’t know what to do with that anger so he started getting in trouble. Which got me involved and I started to pay attention.
“You know what I realized?”
She waits for me to answer, but I shake my head, gaze still focused on the ground.
“He just wanted someone to see him. Even if it was the cops.”
I press my palms against my eyes, struggling to draw jagged breaths. Knowing this was all my fault. Cecil was taking care of me when he should have been home taking care of Shepherd.
She leans forward, the tips of her fingers just barely brushing my shoulder. “I told him the same thing I’ll tell you: You can’t be seen when you’re constantly pushing people away. You’ve got to let people in. Even though it’s a risk. Even though it’s scary. That’s what life is.”
I’m so wrapped up in the memory of Shepherd telling me the same thing that I don’t even realize she’s gone until I look up to find the waiting room empty. I wipe a hand down my face, trying to figure out my next move.
Because that’s the thing—everything in the last four years has been geared to a moment that’s now passed. I never considered what would come after. And now that my revenge is wrought, now that retribution is complete . . .
I have no idea what’s next.
Life still grinds forward. I still have to figure out who I am and what I want.
And though I reach for answers, I come up empty.
EPILOGUE
In the end, though I’ve spent hours—days—agonizing over it, my letter to Grey is simple. I write it on plain paper, with my new address at the top, and tuck it under the ribbon tying my journals and notebooks together along with the only backup of the video from his old phone.
You want to know who I am, here it is. This is me—every thought, every fear, every truth. I leave myself in your hands. You can turn me in, you can condemn me, you can ignore me.
You can come find me.
I’ll be waiting, for whatever it is you decide.
But know this: I’ve lied about most everything in my life, but never about my love for you. It is as strong now as it ever was. There is a reason your heart found mine. It is my sincerest hope you find me again.
Yours always,
I struggle in the end, not knowing how to sign it. And so I leave it blank. But that’s the thing about silences and futures; someone always comes along to fill them in. If you let them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I love that I get to spend my days in the world of books. Thank you to my passionate readers for making this possible—you are a dream come true!
The very first seeds of this book were planted around Ally Carter’s breakfast table, and I owe her a huge thanks for saying, “Yes, write that!” and for cheering me on ever since. Thanks also to Jennifer Lynn Barnes, whose quick plot adjusting not only helped to sell the book, but also spawned a cult following of eight box plotters, and to Melissa de la Cruz who gave me great advice when I needed it. Sarah MacLean and Diana Peterfreund not only read, but listened many, many times as I talked through plot details. Several other folks read this book at various stages and helped me work through the snags: Beth Revis, Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan, Kami Garcia, and especially the Bat Cavers. Thanks also to the Debs who have been there from the beginning.
I’m so grateful to have had the chance to work with editor extraordinaire Julie Strauss-Gabel, whose keen insight teased out themes I didn’t even realize were there. She’s brilliant! The entire Dutton and Penguin Young Readers team is amazing, especially Melissa Faulner, Anna Jarzab, Lisa Kelly, Carmela Iaria, Venessa Carson, Rachel Cone-Gorham, Erin Berger, Emily Romero, and Doni Kay. It’s a huge honor to have their creativity and enthusiasm behind this book and a delight to be working with Jessica Shoffel once again.
Merrilee Heifetz excels in her many roles as agent: fear-alayer, fire-putter-outer, advice-giver, advocate, and confidant (to name a few). I’m thankful to have her in my corner! Thanks also to Sarah Nagel, Cecilia de la Campa, and the Writers House crew for championing my books home and abroad.
As always, my family is a continued source of love and support (whose patience is boundless!). Thank you never feels like enough to show how much I love you all!
There were many hurdles in the way of getting here, but JP was there at every one, ready to catch me if and when I tripped. Thank you, my love!
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