How to Disappear

by Ann Redisch Stampler

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake! What is it with guys owning up and confessing and being a man and taking responsibility? What’s the point of telling people, ‘By the way, I might have gotten my dad killed’?”

  This makes him cringe. Good going, Nicolette.

  “Maybe if I did that, I’d get what I deserve.”

  Oh God, he’s so completely effed up for a smart person.

  I say, “I spent my life being totally bad, Jack. I swear. I ignored five or six rules a day. Sneaking around. Taking my clothes off for a college boy who was totally into someone else and completely depraved. I mean, I’m a good person. I’m like the opposite of a mean girl. But I’m close to being the daughter from hell. And Steve never even acted like he wanted to hurt me. Not once.”

  Apart from the time he said he was going to get rid of me (and I believed him), but this wouldn’t help my argument.

  I say, “I wish your mom had taken him out. I truly do. Then he never would have gotten a chance to slice you up.”

  Weakly, Jack says, “She wasn’t in a position where she could call the police.”

  “She could have stopped him and plead self-defense when they got there.”

  He says, “You’re locked and loaded, aren’t you?”

  “I didn’t used to be. I told you. I used to be nice.”

  “The nice daughter from hell? What are you now, the scourge of God?”

  I climb onto the other bed and take his hand. I wait for him to look at me, his face that rigid mask he has sometimes. I say, “One of us has to be.”

  Jack puts his arms around me, his face in my hair. “Sometimes you make my blood run cold.”

  But I know he likes the way I am, or why is he leaning back into me? Why is he cupping his hands on my head like a bulletproof hat? Why is he holding me like this, like I was blowing past him in a tornado and he has to hold on tight to pull me out of the vortex and into his shelter?

  74

  Jack

  I’m a very persuasive guy. In Model UN, whatever country they gave me took over the world. But the closer we get to Ohio, the harder it is to persuade Nicolette of anything. By now, you’d think she would have figured out how into her I am and how I’m trying to look out for her.

  “Could you at least lay out what I’m supposed to do?”

  “You’re supposed to have my back,” she says. “That’s it. You don’t like it when the girl makes the plan, do you?”

  “Give it a rest. I wasn’t ecstatic when my brother made the plan either.”

  “That was a bad plan. This is a good plan.”

  “Will you at least entertain the possibility that having me wave a gun at Mendes could escalate the situation?”

  “For you. What about for me? How does sending a guy to throw me off a cliff get escalated? Just because you’re reformed, you think the next guy he sends after me is going to think I’m adorable? Because I don’t.”

  The problem isn’t that she’s wrong about how bleak her situation is, it’s that she doesn’t see how storming the stronghold of the man who made it bleak—her stepfather, the deadly force behind Don’s errand—could get us killed.

  Nicolette puts her hand over my hand. “All I want is for you to do this one thing for me. You know how to work that gun, right? If you have to.”

  I look over at her, and she’s dead serious. “Yeah, but it’s not like I’ve been in combat.”

  “Or hunted. Or shot skeet. Or a moving target.”

  I don’t let myself blow up. I say, “That’s all the more reason we shouldn’t be doing this.”

  She’s tiny, but she got the gun away from me, held it on me, and humiliated me completely. What’s Mendes going to do, fold his hands in his lap?

  “You just have to stand there and look scary,” she says, as if showing up armed were an everyday occurrence, like getting the mail and putting on your pants.

  I’m gone. I shout, “Do you not see that invading the place with a gun makes it likelier someone gets shot?”

  She has complete, steely focus and equally complete irrational determination. “It’s my house! And he says I’m next? Think again. I live in that house, and nobody gets to make me scared to be there.”

  “Nick! If someone in there wants you dead, you’re supposed to be scared.”

  75

  Nicolette

  We park by the lake and walk into the woods. The sun is starting to set, the sky lavender and orange, the path dappled with shafts of dying light.

  Home.

  I touch the moss on the trunks of the beech trees, hear the water lap against the shore as we hike toward Green Lake. Smell the almost moldy, loamy aroma of the place. The remnants of a campfire.

  I live here.

  I’m not hiding out in a converted garage in California ever again. Or wherever. No one is driving me out of here. My life is my life.

  I want it back.

  If everything goes right, this ends tonight.

  Nicolette, one. Challengers, zero.

  If it goes wrong, God help us. Literally, that’s what it would take.

  Jack says, “Slow down.”

  He’s the one loaded for bear this time, prepared to break into a fortress. He has ropes and knives and, for some reason, an Allen wrench. Weighted down by instruments of mayhem.

  I tell Jack, “I’ve been sneaking in and out of here since I was thirteen. You can offload a bunch of that stuff.”

  I know where the spare key is and which door you can open with a credit card. How to run across the dark part of the yard to slip back in at night. Which windows squeak and which don’t.

  “You really weren’t a very good girl, were you?” Jack says. “You said, ‘Night, Pops,’ and cut out through the back door?”

  “I said, ‘Night, Papa.’ ”

  “You called Mendes ‘Papa’?”

  “What was I supposed to call him? Plus, who doesn’t sneak out occasionally?”

  “Try sneaking out past my mother,” Jack says.

  I’m trying to stay strictly focused on what we’re doing. To avoid consideration of what God or anybody else would think about it.

  To avoid thinking about the Steve who was my mostly nice dad and focus on the one who helped bury a body and said he was going to kill me.

  To blot out the memory of him buying me pink summer dresses or signing off on notes that said I talked in class.

  To avoid thoughts that might lead to crying. Anything that could keep me from getting this done.

  But when I think about going in through the French windows (which I’ve done a thousand times), seeing his back at the desk in his office, I feel mushy. Thinking about how much I missed home, and him, and being in a family. How much I wish I didn’t have to put him through this.

  Then I think about the dead girl and how she got that way.

  When we get in there and things go even worse than Jack imagines, I can’t be that mushy girl.

  When things go bad, I have to be on top of it.

  This is what Jack is for.

  He’s so pissed at his scumbag brother and everyone who had anything to do with this thing, he’s good to go.

  He can talk up peace and love and backing down all he wants. But bottom line, if some guy threatens me, he’ll take him out. I think.

  Jack says, “Anytime before he sees us, you can bail. We don’t have to do this.”

  I’m literally pulling him toward my personal horror show. “Let’s just do this. I want to hear him admit it to my face. Then I can die happy.”

  Jack says, “You’re not dying tonight.”

  It’s all on me.

  I can’t let anything go wrong.

  I picture Steve clammy and corpselike, and I start to shake. I hear the words, It’s not my kid, echoing in my ears. It. Useless. Whore. It.

  Tear my insides out through my eardrums, why don’t you?

  What was I supposed to think?

  I’m glad that I’m in front of Jack because my face is crumpling. Te
ars are streaming down my cheeks.

  This better go just right.

  At the edge of the woods, the trees thin out at the clearing where our house stands in the middle of a lit-up lawn.

  Jack says, “Odd to say this when we’re in a reasonable facsimile of a yellow wood, but you could still take another road. You could still walk away. But if I use this gun on Steve . . . no matter what he did . . . Just think about it, okay?”

  Oh God!

  I think about it.

  Jack says, “Now what?”

  Between the coiled rope and the holster, there’s a space against his chest I can fit into. His hands find the small of my back.

  One hot failed assassin who gets to retire in a couple of hours.

  But first, I have to make this whole thing stop.

  76

  Jack

  She’s lost it. It’s as if she feels omnipotent when she’s on the trigger side of flying bullets. When I mention that geese don’t shoot back, she won’t listen.

  If Mendes wants to bury her, shoving Don’s gun in his face isn’t going to defuse things. If he wants to bury his kid, he’s a monster who could do anything.

  I’m holding her so close in the darkening woods behind her house. I’ve tried to talk her out of this a dozen different ways—reasonably, soothingly, threateningly—but if I were facing her down in Model UN, there’d be thermonuclear war.

  I say, “What about if Mendes is armed?”

  Nicolette sniffs. “He hunts. It’s not like he carries a Winchester around the house. Come on!”

  She bounds through the woods with cheerleader enthusiasm. I can barely see the path in the twilight. She thinks we can just walk up to the house and use her Catherine Davis prepaid Visa Buxx card to unlock the door and get in, that if we trip the alarm, Mendes will think it’s a raccoon because it’s always a raccoon.

  I don’t know what she plans to say to him because she won’t tell me. If her plan is to provoke him so he strikes, provoking me to do something to stop him, it’s a bad plan. I’ll try. But why would she think she could disarm me, but a guy with decades on me couldn’t?

  Being this humbled this recently doesn’t make for a shit ton of self-confidence.

  77

  Nicolette

  The French doors in Steve’s office open with the credit card.

  The doors creak slightly, but it’s a creaky house. The motion detector isn’t on, no beams of light. Great, because I don’t have to sprint into the kitchen to turn it off. Bad, because it means Steve is home, walking around.

  I wanted to get here first.

  But it’s home. It’s Steve. It’s what I’m used to.

  For a second, I relax. As if it’s safe.

  But this is the opposite of safe. This is the lion’s den. Not the nice lion that likes the mouse for pulling a thorn out of his paw. The hungry kind that drags his prey through the woods. And stabs it eleven times.

  There’s a light on in the hall.

  We creep toward it.

  I turn to lift the rope off Jack, motioning for him to put down all his stuff. It’s not like Steve is going to call the police on us, incensed homeowner pointing to a bunch of abandoned burgling tools.

  Jack shakes his head.

  This is what Jack looks like when he stops breathing.

  He holds up his hand and points.

  There’s a guy in a white shirt, sitting in the kitchen, texting.

  Perfect.

  You don’t forget the guy who hits you with the shovel he’s using to bury a girl. You don’t forget his profile when the flashlight lit him up, or his voice, or what you want to do to him.

  Jack puts his hand on my shoulder. He actually thinks he can hold me back.

  Well, he can’t.

  Then Gertie comes charging out of nowhere. A tiny brown fur ball, barking her head off.

  The guy stirs.

  Starts to turn.

  Starts to ruin everything.

  I grab the white china pitcher that has orange roses in it. Always. In memory of my mom.

  Bring it down on the guy’s head.

  It’s not like TV. The vase doesn’t shatter. The guy doesn’t make a sound. Slumps forward over the table. His phone hits the floor.

  Roses strewn.

  Jack mutters, “Jesus. Are you sure you didn’t cut Connie Marino?”

  I punch him in the side. He grabs my wrist. I’m wrestling to get my hand back when Steve walks in. Comes toward me.

  Followed by Alex Yeager.

  A guy I’ve known since his dad, Karl, brought him up here to play in the lake while the fathers talked business.

  And who is the scum of the earth.

  I thought I knew how Jack sounded when crazy angry.

  I didn’t.

  He jerks around and yells, “Stop! Now!”

  Steve stops dead. He’s sock-footed, like he was just taking his shoes off. Changing out of his suit. Just reaching for his jeans when he heard the vase bouncing off the guy’s head. Holding out his arm to keep Alex back.

  Alex is glaring at me like his eyes could burn holes through me.

  I’m glaring back. Like bullets could burn holes through him.

  78

  Jack

  This isn’t looking too good for Mendes, one guy down, his other guy taking cover behind him.

  He reaches out toward Nicolette as if she were an apparition. “Nicky, you came back. Did this boy hurt you?”

  I reach for the gun.

  Nicolette yells, “Shit, Steve! You better duck!”

  “Nicolette!” Like he’s the stern dad, having missed the facts that I’m aiming Don’s gun at him and that once your kid figures out you’re going after her, you don’t get to rein in her language.

  Mendes says to me, “Whatever you want, you can have it. But why don’t you put that down on the table? I’ll stay back here. No problem.”

  “No problem!” Nicolette says. “What would be a problem to you? Your kid sees you burying someone and then you say she’s not even your kid and you’re getting rid of her?”

  “How could you think I meant that?”

  The young guy half-crouched behind Mendes says, “What is this, fucking Family Feud? Why am I even here?”

  Nicolette screams, “You said I was next—are you kidding me? How could you say that? Hey, Nicolette, I love you, just kidding, now I want you DEAD! How could you hire someone to kill me?”

  “What are you talking about?” Mendes is getting unhappier by the minute.

  “He wasn’t stalking me for fun!” Nicolette nods in my direction. “Somebody made him. Someone has to pay.”

  Mendes is moving almost infinitesimally toward her, saying, “Nicky, come over here and stand behind me,” as if he missed what she just said, missed her face when she said it, and missed the fact that there’s already a chickenshit bozo right behind him.

  I tell Nicolette, “Don’t!” with a lot of conviction.

  Nicolette gives me a withering look. “Right, I’m an idiot. I want to be a human shield.”

  Mendes keeps coming. “He’s lying. I wanted to find you and bring you home. I sent people to find you.”

  I say, “Nobody said anything about bringing her home.”

  “You look exactly like Art Manx. You’re Art’s boy,” Mendes says. “Do you think he’d be proud of you, menacing a sixteen-year-old girl?” Mendes fixes his gaze on Nicolette. “Nicky, I love you. I didn’t hire this boy.”

  But the fact that he has one guy slumped over his kitchen table and his second guy trailing him like a puppy, and the smooth way he’s trying to deal with me, snuffs out hope that he’s just an accountant with a couple of rough clients, in over his head. He’s way too comfortable with this.

  Nicolette puts her hands over her ears. “I heard you! How could you say those things about me?”

  “What do you think you heard?”

  She starts to sob, leaning against the chair that holds the comatose guy, who hasn’t budged si
nce she beaned him.

  Mendes keeps inching toward her, his minion behind him like a mime playing a shadow. The minion’s a good-looking guy, his mouth hanging open, a little confused. I’m not that worried about him, but Mendes is another story.

  I bark, “Stay back!”

  My arm is extended; the gun is extended.

  Nicolette yells, “Don’t!”

  At first, I think she’s yelling at Mendes.

  “Jack, don’t! This is a mistake! Don’t hurt my dad!”

  My grip tightens, and my finger is tense around the trigger. The younger guy has started creeping closer too, reaching for a kitchen drawer on his way, sliding it open, and I don’t like it.

  Mendes keeps coming. He’s so close, I could get him through the eye with a peashooter.

  Then Nicolette screams, “Knife! He’s got a knife!”

  It’s the younger guy pulling a long kitchen knife out of a drawer as Mendes moves toward Nicolette.

  “Knife! Knife! Knife!”

  Nicolette has all but jumped on my right arm with all her weight, forcing the barrel of the gun away from Mendes; Mendes is reaching for it; and this muscular guy with the knife—who’s no use guarding Mendes, if that’s what he’s supposed to be doing—is coming at her, or me, or both of us, blade first.

  Screw Mendes, I have to stop the guy with the knife. Assess your target: he’s it.

  I’m pulling back, taking aim, not giving up the gun, when Mendes tackles Nicolette from the side. A chair pitches toward me. The bodyguard—or whoever he is with the knife—charges. And there’s a blast like we just broke the sound barrier.

  Blast after blast after blast.

  Everything explodes. There’s a spatter of blood.

  It could be anyone’s.

  It could be mine.

  79

  Nicolette

  Blood everywhere.

  Steve’s blood and Alex Yeager’s blood.

  Jack’s pressing on Steve’s arm with a dish towel.

  There’s no point in trying to help Alex Yeager. He’s gone.

  Nobody is saying anything.