99 Lies

by Rachel Vincent

  I’m stronger.

  GENESIS

  The roar of the jet engines is both isolating and intrusive, locking me inside my head, yet stealing my thoughts before I can truly focus on them.

  I stare into the mirror in the rear bathroom as if I’ve never seen my own face. And the truth is that I haven’t. Not like this.

  It’s not just the dirt smeared over my skin or the bruise from where my uncle hit me. It’s not how tangled and filthy my hair is. It’s not even the sharp quality of my cheekbones, after nearly a week with very little food.

  This feeling that I don’t know the girl staring back at me comes from my eyes. From something behind them. Something reflected in them.

  I am not the same Genesis who hiked into the jungle more than a week ago. That Genesis is still lost out there somewhere, and I may never get her back.

  But maybe that’s not as much of a loss as it sounds like.

  The old Genesis trusted too easily. She would have sworn she was independent and skeptical, but she let a stranger lead her into the jungle. She failed to notice that her boyfriend and best friend were hooking up. She lived her entire life under the lie her father crafted.

  This jet is a part of that lie. This bathroom, thousands of feet in the air, is a part of that lie. So are the clothes and makeup waiting for me in the bedroom beyond the small folding door and the car that will pick us up at the private airfield.

  My entire life has been a lie, and the worst part is that I don’t know how to live with the truth.

  Disgusted, I turn away from the mirror and step into the shower. I don’t really care about clothes and makeup at the moment—all I really want to do is sleep—but there will be cameras when we get off the plane, and I know I will care later. When I see the footage. When I hear myself described as unfashionably thin and washed out—an irony considering that most people think there’s no such thing as being too thin or too white.

  Ten minutes later, wrapped in a thick towel, I comb my clean, wet hair, then step into the bedroom. Through the open door, I see Holden and Indiana eating a steak dinner on satin placemats and a linen tablecloth. They’ve washed up and changed into the clothes my father’s assistant bought for them while we were being airlifted out of the jungle.

  “And they’ll need new phones. Get whatever’s newest and has the most memory. Make sure they’re activated, and program Genesis’s with all of the family numbers . . .”

  My father’s on the phone with another assistant, making sure that the moment I get off the plane, I can leave the jungle behind and step back into my life without missing a beat.

  I close the bedroom door and put on the new clothes waiting for me. My dad’s assistant knows what I like better than he does, so they fit, and somehow they seem to say “I’ve been through hell and I’m stronger for it.”

  Or maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part.

  Wearing a light layer of makeup, I emerge from my mile-high cocoon and take a seat at the table. Indiana smiles at me as he chews, but the look Holden gives me as the flight attendant slides my plate onto my placemat makes me want to shield my meal from him with one arm.

  The attendant removes the stainless steel dome to reveal a still-sizzling steak, a baked sweet potato rolled in sea salt, and several thick sprigs of asparagus drizzled in hollandaise.

  I smell the meal sitting in front of me, and my stomach growls. But what I see is a peanut butter sandwich on a paper plate.

  I have no idea what to say.

  MADDIE

  The nurse comes in with a tray of Jell-O and a pitcher of water, even though my mother’s still unconscious. She stares at me as she sets the tray on a table made to slide over the hospital bed, and I realize that she’s not just being nice. She’s curious. She knows who I am.

  Everyone on the second floor knows who Luke and I are, after the incident with the paparazzi.

  He comes into the room holding his phone, and the nurse stares at him as she slowly backs into the hall. As if she expects us to start making out, right there on the foot of my mother’s hospital bed, for her entertainment.

  “Is there anyone you want me to call?” Luke asks for the third time as the door closes behind the nurse. I get it. I feel like someone else should be here too. But my mother’s parents died years ago, and Abuela is in Cartagena.

  Does she know my dad’s alive? Does she know what he’s done? Does she know about Ryan? I should call her. But I have no idea what to say.

  “There’s no one else,” I tell Luke, and he looks as sad about that as I must sound. His family’s normal. His parents love him, and they love each other, and neither of them has ever pretended to be dead or tried to make that fantasy a reality. “Are you sure it’s okay with your parents that you’re here?”

  He grins. “I didn’t ask them. Did your uncle text you back?”

  “Not yet.” I’m beginning to think that if Genesis really has been found, I’m more likely to hear about it on the news than from Uncle Hernán. He still doesn’t know what my mom did. . . .

  I stare at the television so I don’t have to see her closed eyes and pasty skin. Her cracked lips. She’s breathing on her own, but the doctor says we won’t know whether there’s any long-term damage until she wakes up and they can run some tests.

  But there’s already long-term damage. That’s why she took the pills in the first place.

  There isn’t room for me in the vinyl-covered recliner, but I dig my phone from my pocket and squeeze in next to Luke anyway. “I changed my mind. I want the app.”

  Luke gives me a blank look.

  “The app that will trace a blocked text.” I’m still scared that if we find and confront whoever’s sending them, Luke will figure out that Genesis pushed the button. That it could just as easily have been me. But I’m more scared of the fact that there’s a stranger out there in possession of that same information. “I got another message.” I open it to show him.

  “Oh. Okay.” He takes my phone and types while he speaks. “According to Michael Tu, this is the best one.” He hands my phone back to me with the App Store open to a call-tracing app.

  “You and Michael just happened to be talking about third-party number-tracing apps?”

  He shrugs. “I thought you might change your mind. It works on calls and texts. The next time this happens, follow the directions and the app will show you the phone number or email address the texts are coming from.”

  “No name?”

  He actually smiles a little at what’s evidently a stupid question. “No, we’ll have to do a little detective work of our own from there. But a phone number is a good starting point.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I tap the button to download the free app.

  And for the first time since we landed back in Miami, I feel like I am in control.

  We’re happy to have you.

  GENESIS

  “Indiana, we’re happy to have you,” my father says as the jet taxis toward our private hangar at the private airport. “Please stay with us for as long as you like.” But he’s being polite. He’d rather be alone with me. So we can talk.

  “Thanks, but I don’t want to be in the—” Indiana’s polite protest ends in a surprised sound as he slides up the airplane window shade on his side. “Who’re all those people?”

  I lean forward to look out his window and Holden crosses the aisle to bend over me—much too close for comfort—with one hand on the back of my chair. “Paparazzi,” he declares, sounding satisfied.

  My father takes a look. “Security has them cordoned off.”

  “First time?” Holden asks Indiana, and I want to punch him.

  “Just keep walking.” I close the window with a decisive click. “No matter what they ask. Dad has a car waiting.”

  A shadow falls over the plane through the other open windows as we roll into the hangar, and a minute later, the attendant opens the door. I file down the steps behind my father, with Indiana at my back. Holden takes up the rear.<
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  As the press shouts questions from behind the barricade, out on the tarmac, Indiana follows my father and me across the hangar toward a black limo. After the dark jungle and the narrow plane, the Miami sun feels too bright, the hangar too broad and echoing. I feel . . . exposed.

  The driver is already loading my dad’s bags into the trunk.

  Indiana and I don’t have bags. The supplies we hiked into the jungle with are long gone, and the luggage I took with me to Colombia is still at my grandmother’s house in Cartagena. She’s promised to bring it with her when she comes for Ryan’s funeral on Tuesday.

  My father was in such a hurry to get me home that he wouldn’t even wait for his mother to join us on the jet, and I can’t help wondering if that’s because he doesn’t want her to find out about his criminal past.

  Or because he isn’t ready to find out whether she knew that Uncle David is still alive.

  I’m not ready for that either.

  My dad’s assistant stands next to the car, holding a bag from the Apple store. My new phone.

  A week ago, the inability to communicate with the world was nearly as difficult to get used to as the guns constantly pointed at us. Genesis from a week ago would be itching to rip open that box and tell the world that she was back, and that she’d arrived in style. She would have texted all her friends and posted dozens of pictures of tropical drinks and Caribbean sunsets.

  But with the paparazzi shouting my name and the Splendor haunting my memory, that phone feels more like a noose than a lifeline. I don’t want to go anywhere or see anyone.

  I turn when I reach the car and realize that Holden hasn’t followed us. The car his parents sent is parked outside the hangar—which gives him an excuse to march right past the gaggle of photographers.

  “Holden! How many terrorists were there?”

  “How were you treated?”

  “What was it like to be held at gunpoint?”

  “Why weren’t you and Genesis brought home with the others?”

  I scowl when he begins answering their questions, holding court with a somber but obliging air.

  “Wow,” Indiana whispers from my right, half shielding me from the cameras with his body. “It’s like he feeds on the attention.”

  “Like gasoline tossed into a fire,” I agree.

  My father has hardly noticed. He’s scowling at his phone as he scrolls through messages he was too busy to check on the plane. “Maddie texted,” he says as he takes the rear seat, next to his assistant. “Daniela’s in the hospital.”

  I slide onto the bench seat facing him, the paparazzi forgotten. “What happened?” How much more could life possibly throw at Maddie?

  My father is still reading his messages as Indiana climbs into the car next to me. As he closes the door, one last question from the reporters follows me into the car, shattering this safe space like a hammer through a sheet of glass.

  “Holden, tell us how you rescued Genesis from the terrorists and carried her to safety!”

  6 DAYS, 23 HOURS EARLIER

  I actually prefer it.

  MADDIE

  “Do you want more juice? Or some soup?” I ask as I back away from the hospital bed.

  My mother shakes her head with a small smile. “I’m really fine, hon.”

  It’s ridiculous of me to treat her like she has the flu, but I don’t know what else to do. Feed a cold, starve a fever, but how do you help someone who took an entire bottle of pills?

  She regained consciousness about half an hour after Luke went home, but she’s been fading in and out of sleep ever since, and as terrible as it sounds, I actually prefer it when she’s asleep, because I have no idea how to talk to her now. I’m so mad at her, but I’m terrified that telling her that will send her into another tailspin. So I keep finding reasons to leave the room until she passes out again. Or at least pretends to.

  I don’t think she knows what to say to me either.

  “Okay, well, I’m going to get a bottle of water.” I turn toward the door just as it opens, and for a second I can only blink at the thin, pale face staring back at me. “Genesis!”

  Our hug is more like a collision in the middle of the room, and suddenly I’m crying. “When Silvana tackled you on the beach, I thought you were dead!” My words all run together, and I’m not sure anyone else can even understand them. “Then the news ran this picture of you and—” Over her shoulder, I see her dad follow her into the room, and behind him is . . . “Indiana!” I hardly know him, but I let go of my cousin to throw my arms around him. “I thought you were dead too!” After the past week, this feels almost too good to be true.

  Indiana laughs as he returns my hug.

  “There’s a whole story,” Genesis promises me. “I’ll tell you tonight.” She lowers her voice as her father sinks onto the side of my mother’s hospital bed. “Is it okay if we stay with you?”

  She’s pissed at her dad. I get that like no one else possibly could.

  “Of course.” My cousin the heiress and her hot vagabond boyfriend. Crashing in my eight-hundred-square-foot apartment.

  No problem.

  “A pallet on the floor?” Genesis looks at me as if she doesn’t understand why I’m rolling out the sleeping bag next to my bed. But she knew there was no guest room before she asked to stay over.

  I shrug. “Or you can sleep in my mom’s bed while she’s gone.” Indiana’s already making a place for himself on the couch. “But you’ll have to wash the sheets yourself.” We don’t have a spare set of full-sized sheets, and I doubt Genesis has ever been within a few feet of a washing machine.

  My cousin shrugs, and I’m almost impressed when she takes the bundle of spare blankets from me, studying my sleeping bag as if she’s made a decision of more significance than a single night spent on the floor. “I haven’t slept in a bed in a week. One more night won’t hurt.”

  She must really not want to go home. But what I can’t figure out is why she doesn’t just stay at a hotel. She probably has the Four Seasons in her contacts list.

  “Thanks for letting us crash. I’m not ready to forgive my dad, though he seems to think that testifying against the Moreno cartel makes up for working with them in the first place.”

  “Your dad’s going to testify?”

  Genesis nods. “That’s the only reason they haven’t frozen our assets.”

  I sink onto the edge of my bed and watch her make her pallet. “So where’s Rog? He and Indiana blew up the jungle to rescue you, and he what? Stayed in Colombia?”

  “Um . . . yeah.” The stiff way she unfolds the last blanket says there’s more to it than that, but she won’t talk until she’s ready. So I change the subject.

  “Did Holden really carry you out of the jungle?”

  She grabs a pillow from my bed and puts it at the head of the sleeping bag. “Of course not. I twisted my ankle right before we got to the bunkhouse and he only picked me up because Indiana threatened to shoot him in the foot if he didn’t help me. He seriously carried me for, like, a few feet out of a two-hour hike. And that stupid picture has gone viral.”

  “The world wants a hero. Even if he’s really an asshole. How’s your ankle?”

  She shrugs. “I iced it on the plane and it’s fine now.”

  “If Neda were as persevering as you, we wouldn’t have been at that bunkhouse in the first place.” We’d detoured from our sightseeing goal so she could be airlifted out of the jungle. “We would never have been kidnapped.”

  “That’s not true. We were targets.” Genesis doesn’t mention that the whole thing is my father’s fault, but I know that’s what she’s thinking. It’s what I’m thinking. “If they hadn’t gotten us at the bunkhouse, they would have gotten us wherever we camped.”

  I know she’s right. But blaming Neda feels good. Beyond that, it feels fair. “Your dad said they caught Sebastián?” That was all he’d been willing to say at my mother’s bedside, other than that he was bringing Ryan home.

 
; “Yeah.” Genesis pulls herself up to sit on the end of my bed, and all the joy and relief of being home is suddenly gone. “Maddie, I don’t think this is over. Your dad told me he has a ‘plan B.’ And Sebastián said he can still use us from here—from home. He said we’d ‘push another button’ for Uncle David.”

  I sit up straight on my bed, chills rolling up my spine. “Oh my God! Is that real? Or is he trying to scare us? I mean, Sebastián could just be trying to ruin freedom for us, right? Making sure we’re looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives?”

  “Maybe. But what if he’s not? What if this is real? We can’t afford to ignore that possibility. Right?”

  Genesis has literally never asked me for advice. I’m pretty sure this is one of the signs of the Second Coming.

  “Maybe we should tell someone. Has the FBI interviewed you yet? They talked to Pen, Luke, and me for hours. Separately.”

  “Not yet, but my dad got a call from them on the way to the hospital. They’re going to schedule something.” She lies across the end of my twin bed, propped up on one elbow, her eyes dull from exhaustion. “What did you tell them?”

  “That I was already on the escape boat when the cruise ship blew up. Genesis, I didn’t tell them you had the detonator.”

  “I know. Thanks.” She rolls onto her back with her eyes closed. “But they have Sebastián now. He’ll tell them. Or Holden will.”

  I take a deep breath and lie back on my remaining pillow so that I won’t have to look at her as I ask my next question. “So . . . what happened to my dad?”

  For a long time, she doesn’t answer, but I can tell from the rhythm of her breathing that she’s still awake.

  “Please.” My voice is so soft that at first I’m not sure whether I’m asking her or silently pleading in my own head. All I know is that I can’t handle any more lies.

  “He’s gone, Maddie.”

  An odd mixture of fear and relief washes over me. “Gone, as in . . . ?”