I see a glimpse of Lysa’s face on the screen just before Spam kills the connection. At least now she knows something’s wrong.
“I don’t believe you. There’s no way. I have red hair.…” It’s a struggle, but I manage to keep my voice steady.
“Your hair is the spitting image of my Aunt Grace’s.” Mr. Roberts keeps the gun on us as he moves in and takes our phones. He tucks mine in one pocket and Spam’s in the other.
“Step over here and I’ll reunite you with your friends.”
Spam and I cling to each other and take small steps closer to the back of the van. Principal Roberts swings open the back doors, revealing Victor and Journey slumped inside. Both of their eyes are closed.
I let out a yelp and start toward them.
“Not so fast,” Principal Roberts says, raising the gun. “Come and sit on this bumper where I can take care of you properly.”
I sidestep toward the van. Spam clutches my arm so hard she’s squeezing the life out of it, and yet she stubbornly refuses to lift her feet. I’m dragging her along just to keep moving. I shift my gaze between Victor and Principal Roberts. Then I steal a glance at Journey and my heart drops. A trickle of blood outlines the side of his face.
“Are they dead?” Spam worries. “Are they? You’ve got to tell me.”
Almost everything I care about is right here—almost.
Except for Rachel and Lysa.
We have to make it out of this. If for no other reason than for Rachel. She can’t go through something like this again.
Spam and I help each other hop up onto the bumper of the van. I glance over my shoulder at Victor. His eyes flutter open and link to mine. He pinches his lips together, a silent signal for me to stay quiet.
Principal Roberts picks up a pair of industrial-strength plastic zip ties, already looped together like handcuffs. “Let’s see those hands, little lady.”
I stick my hands out in front of me. A sob catches in my throat. How can he do this using the pet name he always had for me?
“Behind,” he orders.
I put my hands behind me and he tightens the loops around my wrists. Next he moves behind Spam. “Reach back and stick your hands through here,” he orders.
She complies, but clenches her fists and extends her middle finger on both hands. He yanks on the ends, tightening the loops around her wrists.
“Not so tight, a-hole,” she says.
“Oh, Samantha, really? Your mouth is atrocious,” he says.
“And your mouth looks like a cat’s butt,” she retorts.
“You’re disgusting,” Mr. Roberts says.
“Bite me,” Spam replies.
I’m happy to hear the famous Spam spitfire attitude. We’re going to need it, plus every bit of guts and bravado I can muster to get out of this alive. I notice how he keeps the gun trained on me nearly the whole time and I decide that’s something I can work with.
“So, what’s the deal, Mr. Roberts? You say you’re my dad but now you want to kill me. That’s not very fatherly.”
“Don’t go there, Erin,” Victor says from inside the van. “And whatever you do, don’t make any deals with him. You can’t trust him.”
I’m relieved to hear Victor speak. He sounds okay. But his hands are bound behind his back and his feet are lashed together, too.
“Aww, Vic,” Principal Roberts says. “You always thought you were better than me. It must’ve hurt when she chose me over you.”
“Let the kids go, Carl,” Victor says. “If this is about Sarah, we can keep it between you and me.”
Sarah? What are they saying?
Principal Roberts shoves his gun right into our faces. “Erin. Samantha. Now scoot back into the van and stick your feet out so I can bind them, too.”
“How do you think this is going to end, Carl?” Victor asks. “Someone is going to figure this out.”
Out of the corner of my eye I can tell he’s working to get out of the bindings.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Principal Roberts says. Using one hand and his teeth, he loops two more cable ties together. His other hand keeps the gun on me. “I’ve thought this through.” He sweeps the gun briefly toward Journey. “I’m going to pin everything on that poor, crazy young man over there. His father’s a murderer, too.”
“Shut up,” I blurt out. “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.”
“They won’t be lies when I’m done,” Principal Roberts says. “Murder-suicide events happen every day.”
I hate him with every pore in my body. I couldn’t disguise it if I had to.
“They’ll find your bodies here on his property. You’ll be tied up and he won’t. There’ll be a note,” he says. “What else do they need?”
“Some evidence, maybe, or a motive?” I add a sneer to my voice.
“Yeah. Not so much,” Mr. Roberts says. “Especially not with Victor gone, too. The Iron Rain PD tries, but as you know, they don’t have a crime lab. Most of their evidence just sits in a box for years. It really hurt to have to get rid of Laura Peters, but unfortunately she left me no choice. She ruined everything with that DNA test of hers.”
My head is spinning and this is coming at me faster than I can process it. The only thing I know to do is to stall for time. “You should have been more careful with your trophies,” I say.
He casually steps back, a cool customer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But his voice thins.
“Really?” I taunt. “You don’t remember dropping a blue-and-white strip of fabric?”
“Oh, so you found that, did you?” he asks.
“We did. And we know where it came from, too.”
“Well, that is impressive,” he says. “But it won’t matter. Once you’re gone, there won’t be anyone to follow up on those details.”
That’s when it sinks in. He really is planning to kill us.
It couldn’t end any other way, but hearing those words from a man holding a gun in your face is life altering. I won’t get to apologize to Rachel for all the lying and I won’t get to tell her what a great mom she is.
I won’t get to see how things work out between Journey and me.
Hopefully, there are enough clues in the trunk of Rachel’s car that Sydney or someone will be able to figure out who the killer is, though.
I’m determined to keep Mr. Roberts talking to delay the inevitable for as long as possible and hope Lysa comes through.
“I don’t get it, Mr. Roberts. I’ve wanted a dad my whole life. If you were really him, why didn’t you tell me or buy me a birthday present or something? Do you even know when my birthday is?”
“April sixth.” He props a ridiculous smile onto his lips. “I know everything there is to know about you. I even know that—still to this day—you sleep with a stuffed bunny that I gave you when you were just a tot.”
I suck in a ragged breath and try to look casual, but this guy is way too good. The ragged one-eyed bunny is the sole remaining relic from my childhood, but I had no idea where it came from. All Rachel ever said was that it was my favorite.
“Gross, Mr. Roberts. Creeping on people while they’re sleeping is some depraved crap,” Spam says.
“Spam, stay out of it,” Victor warns.
“Yes, Samantha. Stay out of it,” Principal Roberts says.
“You’re not smart enough to pull this off, Carl,” Victor says. “Thanks to Erin, your DNA is stored in a place where it will be found. I saw it. And by the way, I can confirm the fragile X gene. You wound up with your Uncle George’s shaky hands after all.”
I glance at Victor and wonder if he’s just making all this up. The fragile X stuff is news to me, but it’s having an impact. Mr. Roberts’s hand was a little shaky before, but now he places his other hand over the top of the gun to steady it.
“You and your investigations. You were always such a little pain,” Principal Roberts sneers right in my face. “Where’d you find it, in Laura’s lab?”
/> “That’s right,” I brag. “I found it and only I know where it’s hidden.”
He slips the zip-tie loops over my feet and up to my ankles, savagely wrenching the ends tighter. Pain shoots up my legs, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of even the slightest wince.
“I’m curious. You want us dead. But what do you get out of that?”
“It’s good news, bad news,” he says. “The good news is I retain my freedom. Once Vic showed up and started sniffing around, I knew I had to take action to insure nothing could come back on me. I might have to leave town and maybe even the country. But freedom … you really can’t put a price on that. So yeah, that’s the good news.”
He assembles another zip-tie loop set. “The bad news, of course, is I’m losing an esteemed friend from my high school days and a daughter. It doesn’t matter that no one knew about you. I knew. You held a special place in my heart, and it pains me to have to let you go.” He cradles the gun against his chest in mourning. “And all because of a stupid, surprise DNA test. I made it fourteen years without anyone looking at me for anything, then all of a sudden my DNA could wind up in a database. I need you to tell me where it is.”
“The FBI has it,” I say.
“If that were true, we wouldn’t be here right now. So, tell me and things will go easier on you.”
“Pound sand. I’m not telling you anything.”
“Go ahead and tell him, Erin,” Victor says. “It’ll be better if you do.”
Furious, I give Victor a laser glare.
He’s so confident that I slow down for a second and try to think like him. I get the vibe that he wants me to tell Principal Roberts that the samples are in our freezer at home because that’s where he put the ones we ran today. Is he forgetting that Miss Peters’s samples are in there, too? Of course, Mr. Roberts probably won’t go browsing into a bag of peas once he finds the first set.
Principal Roberts waves the gun in front of Spam’s face. Her eyes are the size of golf balls and they move and follow the gun, but she sticks her tongue out at him anyway.
“What’s it going to be, Erin? Hard, painful bullets, where I kill everyone else and make you watch? Or a nice, soothing, eternal, happy nap?”
“Fine!” I play the part, looking torn and broken. “In the freezer at my house.”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it? Is your spare key still under the mailbox?”
I nod. Creepy. I guess that explains how he got into my room.
He stares at Spam’s feet and shakes his head. “Look at you with your ridiculous costumes. Why can’t you wear normal shoes like everyone else?” Using one hand, he jerks off her boots, first one and then the other, and tosses them randomly into the back of the van.
Mr. Roberts bends to slide the loops over Spam’s ankles, and as he does, a large crucifix necklace slips out of the front of his shirt. The way it dangles there, free around his neck, catches the light from the headlights on Rachel’s car and casts a small shadow of a cross on my leg.
A sudden memory explodes in my brain, loud and painful.
I turtle my shoulders protectively around my head. If my hands were free I would bury my ears in them. I would do almost anything to block this pain. It’s sharp and intense, like being shot in the skull.
There’s a woman’s voice … a voice I’ve never heard before but suddenly remember. It’s a voice that’s clear and bright and strong.
She’s not your daughter.
I look around the van. Where’s it coming from? I stare at the cross on my leg.
“I remember now.…” My voice is barely a whisper.
“What?” Mr. Roberts turns his head sharply toward me.
“Oh my god. It’s her. My mother.” It feels strange to finally say it and mean it. I stare at the shadow swaying on my leg. “I remember now.… She yelled at you.”
“No. No.” Principal Roberts fumbles, trying to lash Spam’s feet together.
“She did. She said: ‘She’s not your daughter.’”
“No!” he roars.
“Yes … and then you hurt her.”
He grabs me roughly by the arms, picks me up, and tosses me farther into the van. I land just beyond Victor’s shoulder, near Journey. Spam scoots next to me, trying to stay out of his grasp.
“Shut up. Just shut up,” he yells. “She only said that because he was filling her head with lies. You have been my daughter every day for the last sixteen years.”
For some reason I know it in my bones; I feel it in my cells. There’s no way this crazy psycho’s blood pounds in my veins. He’s not my father. I’m 100 percent sure of that.
“Liar!” I scream.
“Just shut up,” he says, his voice cracking.
From my angle in the back of the van, I watch him duct-tape a three-inch flexible hose to the exhaust pipe and secure it to the bumper with heavy strips of tape. He then works the flex hose up through a piece of dry, rotted wood flooring. He brings the hose up to about the middle of the van wall. Then he tapes it in place.
When he’s finished, he slams the rear doors, locking us inside. A few seconds later, he opens the driver’s door, reaches in, and attempts to start the engine.
The van sputters and dies on the first two tries and I’m hopeful. If ever there was a perfect time for Journey’s van not to start, this is it.
But no such luck. Third try, the engine cranks over.
Mr. Roberts pounds on the side of the van. “Okay, chums. I’ll be back in a bit to set the murder-suicide stage. Don’t worry, I won’t wake you.”
And then he’s gone.
Carbon monoxide pours down on us from the hose and begins to build up inside. The smell is strong, like sticking your head under a bus … only maybe worse.
41
Keep this in mind, nearly everywhere you go, you’re surrounded by a cloud of bacteria that is as unique as a fingerprint.
—VICTOR FLEMMING
Victor rocks from side to side, twisting around and worm-crawling to the back of the van.
“Somebody check on Journey,” he says. “I need him working with me.”
I try to roll to Journey’s side, but it’s awkward and I end up stuck, face down, because it kills my shoulder to roll over on it.
“I’m awake, I’ve just been laying back,” Journey says. “Let’s do this.”
I’m flooded with relief. I roll onto my hip and struggle into a semiseated position. “Thank God,” I whisper.
“Journey, back here. We need to bust out these windows to let in fresh air,” Victor says. Journey squeezes between me and Spam to get to the back. I go first, rolling to the left. Then Spam goes right. Journey grunts as he makes a powerful crawl and manages to squeeze between us. I gasp for air. With all four of us trying to move in different directions, it’s quickly getting tight and sweaty, and the exhaust fumes are getting thicker by the minute.
Victor surges up on his knees and starts to ram the back window. It’s too high for his shoulder, so he’s forced to slam it with his forehead. It sounds a lot like trying to break glass with raw chicken.
Journey has made it to the back, so now instead of one thump against the window I hear two: thump, thump.
“Erin, get to the front,” Victor gasps. “You and Spam … away from the fumes. Find a way to turn off the key.”
“Okay.” My voice sounds thin and papery. If I stretch my head and neck forward and then bring my knees up toward my chest, I’m able to move across the rough wooden floor. Splinters gouge my skin straight through my clothes.
Spam stops. “Wait,” she says. “Over here. I found the boot phone.”
A crazy laugh escapes my ravaged throat. I turn to roll toward her instead of heading to the front of the van. “Coming,” I say.
“Forget the phone,” Victor orders. “Get to the engine.”
“You don’t know Spam.” I don’t know if they even hear me because I can hardly hear myself over the loud thuds of them banging their heads against the window
. There’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears and my mother’s voice, which sounds like summer rain on a tin roof. “Don’t touch her. She’s not your daughter.”
I don’t know how, but I manage to scoot up to Spam’s back. She presses her boot into my hands. “It’s in there, I just can’t get it out.”
I get it. It’s hard to think with all these fumes. I try to tip the boot upside down and it tipples over. I giggle a little bit. It doesn’t tipple. It topples over. It must have been enough though, because far away, I hear Spam’s voice.
“Got it.”
Even farther away, I hear the rhythmic drumming of Victor and Journey still bashing their heads against the window. The sound is dull and wet, and the air inside the van grows hotter and thicker, so I know they haven’t succeeded.
“Erin, damn it. Get to the front.” Victor coughs.
I realize I’ve been holding my breath for a long time. I take in a huge gasp and it’s like sucking a load of hot sand into my lungs. I cough. I’m so tired.
“I will … in a minute. I just need to close my eyes for a sec.”
“No!” Victor shouts. “Do not close your eyes! Get to the front. Kick your feet. Crawl. If you don’t find a way to shut off that engine, we will die in here.”
Too late. My eyes are welded shut. But Victor’s voice drives me to push on. I kick and struggle. I imagine that I’m one of those fish that live in the mud. I don’t exactly have feet and I don’t exactly have flippers.
I’m a mudfish.
I keep scooting, inch by inch, through a thick haze until I bump my head on the gearshift. The stupid, ridiculous gearshift in Journey’s stupid, ridiculous van. I’m going to die here and I never learned how to drive a stupid ridiculous stick shift without stalling the stupid—
Ha! All of a sudden I go from stupid to brilliant, because even though I can’t open my eyes or climb over the seat or figure out how to turn off the key with my teeth, I know how to kill the engine … if only I can stay awake long enough.
I press my side against the gearshift and use it as a brace to raise myself up into a sitting position. Once I’m sitting up, I lean back into it. My arms ache and my hands are so numb they feel like they aren’t there anymore. I’m sweating and exhausted, but I struggle to lift my left side high enough to wedge the gearshift knob into my armpit. My plan is to twist and throw my body forward until I pull the van into one of the gears, but instead I begin to cough and gasp for fresh air.
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