99 Lies

by Rachel Vincent

  Both men are holding shovels.

  “You’re here for Ryan . . .” My words carry very little sound. The clearing blurs as my eyes water.

  “I’m here for you both. But I promised Daniela that I’d bring him home.” He studies me closely, his eyes still damp. “Princesa, I know that saying I’m sorry is nowhere near enough. But I’m hoping it can be a start. I’m so happy to have you back.” He reaches for me again, as if he can’t quite process my rejection of his hug.

  I can’t really process it either. It’s been the two of us against the world since my mother was murdered. But I can’t pretend nothing has changed, when the truth is that nothing will ever be the same again.

  “I—” I turn away from him without offering any explanation, fighting the urge to let him hold me and make everything okay. “Call the helicopter. I want to go home.” With that, I head for Indiana and Holden, who sit on opposite sides of one of the picnic tables. It’s strange to see them there, where we shared bottles of beer with our fellow campers hours before Uncle David’s men kidnapped us at gunpoint.

  Someone has given them each a steaming paper cup of coffee and a protein bar.

  I limp over and slide onto the bench next to Indiana. His arm settles around my waist and I lay my head on his shoulder, flexing my foot as the pain in my ankle begins to fade. I only met him a week ago, but in that time we’ve seen each other at the lowest of lows. Injured. Starving. Threatened with dismemberment. Nearly blown up.

  In that time, everything I thought I knew about my life—including my father—has turned out to be a lie.

  Maybe it’s time for something new. Something sweet, and—

  A loud rustling at the tree line draws my attention. The soldiers who left the clearing a few minutes ago are back, and two of them have Sebastián by the arms, his hands cuffed at his back.

  As they march him past our table, he holds my gaze with an unsettling smile.

  “It’s over,” Indiana whispers as I snuggle closer, clinging to the only person on the continent who hasn’t let me down.

  “Maybe for you,” I say. “For me, it’s just beginning.”

  7 DAYS, 12 HOURS EARLIER

  This is my fault.

  MADDIE

  “Maddie!” Luke jogs past the nurse’s desk, his worried gaze trained on me. He’s still in the same shirt he was wearing when he came over last night. The shirt he put on when he woke up in my bed early this morning. “What happened?”

  “I made egg sandwiches,” I say as I stand from the chair in the hospital waiting room. I know that’s not what he’s asking, but for some reason, it’s what my brain keeps bouncing back to.

  He folds me into a hug. “I mean, what happened to your mom?”

  “She made a long-term residential decision in favor of a box in the ground. With a bottle full of Ativan.”

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  I shrug as I sink back into the padded green chair I’ve been sitting in for the past hour and a half. “The doctor says that, like, ninety-eight percent of suicide attempts by pill overdose are unsuccessful.”

  “Ninety-eight point two,” Luke corrects, and I’m not surprised that he knows the actual numbers. “Though survivors sometimes have long-term organ damage from the attempt.” I frown, and he takes my hand. “Sorry. I guess you don’t need all the details right this moment.”

  “I told her, Luke. This is my fault. I told her about my dad, and she tried to kill herself.”

  “That doesn’t make it your fault. You can’t blame the messenger for the content of the report.”

  “You’re right.” Anger blazes through me as the truth of what he’s saying sinks in. “It’s my dad’s fault. All of this is his fault.” Yet I can’t help chafing over the knowledge that my mom was happier with the lie about his death than with the truth about his life.

  And the supersecret truth is that I can’t really blame her for not wanting to live in a world where everyone will know she’s married to a mass-murdering terrorist. I don’t want to live in that world either. But the alternative—death—holds no appeal.

  I’ve spent the past hour and a half sitting here in the waiting room trying to figure out how my father, a spirited activist I knew and loved, became a man willing to kill thousands to make a point.

  I suspect that what happened to my father was apathy.

  Not his own. Everyone else’s.

  I think people got tired of hearing what he was saying—and really, he only ever spoke about one thing. He was obsessed with his cause, and the less they listened, the louder he shouted. Looking back—knowing what to look for—I can see that.

  Parties where someone’s casual xenophobia would send him into a half-hour diatribe. Dinners when my mother couldn’t get a word in around his railings against the US policies that contributed to the decline of the Colombian farming economy.

  Eventually, I think, he realized that his voice wasn’t loud enough to reach people who were determined to turn a deaf ear. So he decided to say something they couldn’t refuse to hear.

  The truly terrifying part is that I understood his frustration with the willfully ignorant. We shared that frustration. At least, I thought I’d understood. . . .

  “I wonder if he’d care. My dad, I mean. If I told him about my mom.” I pick at a ripped seam in the vinyl upholstery. “I wonder if he ever loved her. Or me and Ryan. I mean, how could he have, if he—”

  “Maddie.” Luke’s voice sounds strange. He’s staring at something on the wall over my shoulder. “Look.”

  I turn and see that the television mounted in one corner is tuned to a news station. A ticker at the bottom shows a never-ending loop of headlines, and the volume is muted, so I can’t hear what’s being said. But at center screen, to the right of the news anchor’s head, is a still photograph that sucks the breath right out of my lungs.

  It’s Holden. In a jungle clearing. Carrying Genesis in both arms.

  The caption reads:

  Holden Wainwright rescues heiress girlfriend from armed terrorists.

  You can’t believe anything they told you.

  GENESIS

  The soldiers drag Sebastián across the clearing and he fights their hold, straining to turn and look at me. “This isn’t over, princesa! You will never be free!” he shouts.

  I flip him off as they haul him into the bunkhouse. Then I take the protein bar Indiana offers me and I exhale. Long and slow.

  The man who kidnapped us has been caught.

  We are free. But even if the world never finds out that I blew up the Splendor, they will find out about my father. According to Sebastián, they already have.

  Two men with shovels are digging up Ryan’s grave as the sun finally climbs high enough to be seen through the jungle canopy. They’re being very careful. Very respectful. And they haven’t said a word so far, except to answer my father’s questions.

  I wonder if they know who they’re digging up.

  Ryan stares at me through sad, half-focused eyes, his legs splayed out in front of him on the spotless white carpet. I pluck the glass from his hand before he can spill his whiskey, then I toss it back myself. He’s had enough.

  “I’m so sorry about your father.” I sit against the wall next to him and let my head fall onto his shoulder. “But you and Maddie don’t need to worry about money. My dad will take care of everything. Family first.”

  Ryan lets his cheek rest against the top of my head, and for a moment, we just sit like that. Leaning on each other. “It’s more complicated than that, prima. Hermanita,” he says at last. “But you can’t tell Maddie. . . .”

  Ryan and I never talked about it, after that first time. I always felt like acknowledging the truth would have driven a wedge through our family. Pulling us apart, rather than bringing us together.

  But now that he’s gone . . .

  I can’t watch them pull him from the ground, yet I can’t make myself turn away. So I watch Ryan from the corner of my eye. In death
, as in life, he exists on the edge of my awareness. Always there. Yet never my focus.

  That’s only one of a million things I would do differently, if I could go back and talk to the girl I was a year ago. But it’s too late for so many things. . . .

  “Genesis.” My father’s standing at the end of the picnic table, and he’s probably said my name several times. He’s finally off his satellite phone. “The helicopter’s on its way.”

  “Good.” I stare at the cracked picnic table, trying to pull myself out of a fog brought on by malnutrition, sleep deprivation, and shock. “Where’s Indiana?” I don’t remember him leaving the table.

  “He and Holden are getting cleaned up in the bunkhouse.”

  Indiana and Holden, alone in a bathroom. I can’t help thinking I should go in there, to stand between them, but I’m too tired to move. To even think.

  My father sinks onto the empty bench across from me. He hasn’t tried to touch me since I shrugged out of his hug. “Here.” He sets a bottle of SmartWater with electrolytes on the table between us. I’ve already had three of them, and I still haven’t needed to use the restroom. “I’ve ordered a steak for you on the jet. But I have another protein bar for now, if you’re hungry.”

  I’m starving, but the thought of eating makes me feel sick. I suspect I’ll have to go slowly until my stomach adjusts to normal meals again.

  I blink and force my gaze to bring my dad into focus. “So there’s still a jet? Sebastián said your assets were frozen.”

  My dad reaches across the table for my hand, but I pull it out of reach, and the fresh pain that flickers across his face actually hurts me too. Why is it so hard to be mad at him? “Genesis, no,” he says. “You can’t believe anything they told you. Our assets are intact.”

  “But should they be?” I demand softly. “Silvana and Sebastián didn’t make up the part about you trafficking drugs for twenty years, did they? So everything we have is profit from illegal activity?” How am I ever supposed to accept another dime from him, knowing that?

  He glances around to make sure no one’s listening, but the diggers are still carefully digging, the soldiers are speaking on a radio to colleagues out in the jungle searching for Sebastián’s accomplices, and the photographer—why is there a photographer?—is sitting on a log near the fire pit, scrolling through the images on his digital camera while he holds it toward the sky, searching for a stronger signal.

  My gaze slides from the dark patch of dirt where Ryan died to the bare spot where we all pitched our tents last week. I can’t believe we’re back here. Where the whole thing started. Couldn’t Uncle David’s men burst into the clearing again at any moment and start shooting?

  Panic spikes my pulse. My leg bounces beneath the table. We have to get out of the jungle. I can’t be here anymore.

  “Princesa, this isn’t the time,” my father says. But I don’t understand his answer, because I’ve forgotten what I asked.

  Oh yeah. Drug trafficking. Illegal profit.

  “When will the time be? When is it going to be convenient for you to explain to me how my entire life—everything I’ve ever had or done—has only been possible because my father is a criminal?”

  He looks like someone’s replaced his coffee with straight lemon juice. Like he wants to spit it out and rinse away the uncomfortable truth. But I can’t let him do that. “We can discuss this in detail once we’re home. Once you’ve had a chance to rest.” Then he blinks, and suddenly he looks like there is something he wants to discuss now. “Genesis.” He leans toward me over the table and lowers his voice even further. “What happened to Silvana?”

  “Why?” I demand softly. “So you can resume sleeping with the enemy?”

  My dad recoils as if I’ve slapped him, and I feel both guilty and justified.

  “So I can make sure she pays for what she’s done to you,” he says through clenched teeth.

  “I don’t know where she is.” I look into his eyes so he can see that I’m telling the truth. I don’t want to answer any more questions about this. “I haven’t seen her since I woke up in that cabin.”

  My father presses his lips together, but I’m too tired to try to figure out what he’s thinking. Especially if it’s anything other than “good riddance.”

  “What’s going to happen to Sebastián?”

  “The Colombians have agreed to hand him over to the US,” my dad says. “But not until tomorrow. They have until then to interrogate him.”

  “And Uncle David? Dad, he’s planning something else. A new target or a new weapon. Sebastián said he’d use us in his plan B.”

  “He also told you our assets had been seized and that Indiana was dead.” My dad glances at the bunkhouse, where several soldiers are gathered in a tense discussion. “I told them everything you told me. Soldiers are crawling all over the cabins where you were held, looking for David and the rest of his men.”

  They won’t find my uncle. A man with the resources to fake his own death and hide in the jungle for a year won’t have any problem evading the authorities for as long as he wants. But . . .

  I frown at my dad from across the table. “How do you know what the US and Colombian governments have agreed to?” That’s more access than he should have, no matter whose pockets he’s lining. “Who do you keep calling?”

  “I have a contact at the State Department.” He’s speaking so softly I can hardly hear him.

  “What kind of contact?” I whisper. His silence makes me nervous. “Dad. What’s going on?”

  He exhales slowly and glances around the clearing again. Then he looks me in the eye from across the table. “Genesis, I’m a witness for the State Department, in their case against Gael Moreno and his organization. For drug trafficking. I’ve been working with them for the past year.”

  “You’re an informant?”

  She’ll be better soon.

  MADDIE

  I follow Luke down the sterile hospital hallway toward the elevators, sipping my coffee, but I don’t truly register the buzz of voices until we round the corner and I can see the crowd.

  My first thought is that something terrible has happened. Why else would so many people be gathered near the emergency room?

  Then I realize they’re all holding cameras and microphones.

  “Maddie!” one woman yells, and the other heads turn our way.

  Flashes go off in my face, and I flinch. “Is it true your mother tried to kill herself?” a thin man in a baggy T-shirt demands.

  They’re gathered between us and the elevator. Which puts them between us and my mother. I am frozen.

  “Was this about your brother’s murder?”

  “Have you heard anything from Genesis and Holden? Can you confirm that he carried her out of the jungle, and they’ve been rescued by the Colombian army?”

  “How is your mother, Maddie?”

  “Is it true that she shot herself?”

  A panicky feeling closes in on me—suddenly the hallway feels much too narrow.

  “Come on,” Luke murmurs, wrapping an arm around my waist. “There have to be other elevators.”

  “Hey!” a sharp new voice shouts over the din, and it takes me a second to realize that the woman pushing her way through the crowd isn’t a reporter. She’s a doctor in a white coat, followed by a security guard. “You all can’t be in here!”

  “Everybody out!” the security guard shouts as he spreads his arms and begins pressing the crowd toward the sliding glass emergency room doors.

  As soon as they’ve cleared the bank of elevators, Luke starts forward, ignoring the reporters as if he simply can’t hear them. As if they don’t matter. As if they aren’t fighting one another for the chance to plaster the most difficult moment of my life all over the news and the internet.

  I follow Luke into the elevator and press the button for the second floor. The doctor gets in with us just before the doors slide closed. “Do you know where you’re headed?” she asks. She’s not my mother�
��s doctor, but thanks to me, my mom’s a high-profile patient. Everyone in the hospital probably knows she’s here.

  “Yeah. We’re good, thanks,” I tell her.

  When the doors slide open, she goes left and Luke and I go right. My mother’s room is three doors away.

  The door before hers opens, and a woman in shorts and a pink tee comes out. She pulls her phone from her pocket and leans against the wall while she scrolls through whatever she’s reading. I hope it’s something funny. Something that helps her not think—just for a moment—about whatever sad thing is happening to whoever she’s here to visit.

  Then I push open the door to my mother’s room and go in.

  She’s still unconscious, and she looks very small on the bed. She and I are the same height, but she’s lost weight since both her children disappeared into the jungle. She’ll be better soon.

  I have to believe that.

  “What did the doctor say?” Luke asks as I circle the bed to sit in the chair by the window.

  “The nurse said he’ll be in to give me an update in—” My phone buzzes with a new text, and I pull it out of my pocket. My focus narrows on the message and the rest of the room seems to fade around me.

  The truth will set you free.

  My face feels warm, my palms damp. It’s another unidentified number. Or maybe the same one from before. I look up to find Luke watching me.

  “What’s—”

  The door opens, and I turn, expecting to see a doctor or a nurse. Instead, I find the woman in the pink T-shirt. She’s aiming her phone at us, and I hear at least ten camera clicks before Luke and I recover from shock enough to yell at her.

  “Out!” I shout while he closes the door in her face.

  Ten minutes later, I find three of the shots on a tabloid website, with the caption:

  America’s sweethearts bond by mother’s deathbed.

  7 DAYS, 10 HOURS EARLIER