Chasing Truth

by Julie Cross

  He steps closer, examines the calendar, and then before I can even blink he tugs it down, revealing a safe built right into the wall.

  No wonder he wanted to come in here. No wonder he thought we’d have more luck than the Feds.

  My mouth falls open in shock. “How did you—”

  “He told me.” Miles carefully uses tape to pull any fingerprints from the safe and tucks all the evidence into a small plastic bag. “He built this himself while his parents were in Fiji one summer.”

  I try and fail to conjure a mental image of middle school Simon building a safe. “Any chance you know the—”

  Miles is already twisting the dial with such confidence I’m not at all surprised when the safe door pops open seconds later.

  “Guess that’s the sort of thing you tell your best friend,” I mumble.

  Miles shines a light inside the safe, but before we can get a good look, a beeping noise fills the room. It’s soft at first, a low buzz, and then it grows louder.

  “We must have tripped an alarm,” Miles whispers.

  I make a move for the bedroom door—we need to get out of here—but already, several pairs of feet are thundering up the steps. Miles heads for the window, popping it open.

  “It’s probably the cat again,” a deep male voice says from outside.

  “Never make assumptions,” another voice says, one that’s familiar. Shit. Oh shit.

  Miles swings a leg out the window. “Ellie, come on!”

  I glance between him and the door. The footsteps grow louder and closer. If I jump out that window, it’ll be the first place they look. We’ll never make it to the woods without being spotted. Not both of us, anyway. Since we’re not a team anymore…

  “Go!” I order him. I give myself two seconds to look over the contents of that safe, close the door and stuff the calendar in place. Miles is still waiting. “Now! Get out of here. I got this.”

  He’s clearly torn, so I take the initiative to peel his fingers from the sill and give him a shove until he’s forced out onto the ledge. I have enough time to shut the window, enough time to yank my ponytail out and toss hair over the earpiece, but not enough time to hide.

  The bedroom door swings open; a bright light points right at me.

  CHAPTER 34

  Nearly nine months ago, I was in this exact same position. Caught red-handed in the office of a sleazy banker. Only I hadn’t known he was sleazy at the time—as a general rule my family prefers to con innocent, naive people. Turned out the FBI had been investigating the guy for fraud for a long time. Turned out I knew things they didn’t about Mr. Sleazy Banker.

  Thus began a beautiful relationship with “the good guys” where I was given freedom and a second chance to break in somewhere else, apparently.

  But before our fairy-tale ending, I had pulled the performance of a lifetime in that office. It hadn’t worked back then because the FBI already knew who I was and more importantly, who my family was. But tonight, it might work.

  “Ellie…?” Jack says. “What the—”

  A younger guy in a suit interrupts Jack by whipping out his gun. “What are you doing in here?”

  I swallow back fear and shake my head. “No…I mean, no one. I’m just—”

  Jack lifts a hand, placing it between the younger guy’s gun and me. “Hold up there, Rider.”

  “I’m sorry…I just…I can’t believe he’s gone and I don’t have anything—” I cover my face with my hands and sink down onto the floor. “He never told me anything was wrong but I should have seen it. He was my friend and I didn’t see that he was hurting. If I had just—”

  “Should we take her down to the interrogation room for questioning?” Rider asks.

  I reach for Simon’s suit jacket and pull it to my face. It still smells like him. Like a dozen lab reports, like friendly dances and Twizzlers. I hug it tight.

  Above me, Jack sighs and turns to Rider. “I’ll take care of this. Go shut off the alarm.”

  Jack strides across the room, lifts me up by the arm. He plucks the jacket from my hands and tosses it back onto the floor. His grip is tight on my arm until we reach the hallway. And then I’m released.

  He brings his phone to his ear, looks right at me and says to whoever is on the other end, “False alarm…I’ll check the wiring again…thanks.”

  He tucks the phone away, gives me this long look silently saying, this is your one and only chance. Lucky for me Jack doesn’t know about all those other chances I’ve had.

  Rider appears in the hallway. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a false alarm,” he points out, but it’s obvious he’s reluctant to call his boss out.

  “She came with me,” Jack says. “Lawrence’s stepdaughter.”

  That’s a bit of a stretch, especially considering Aidan is only twenty-seven. Jack gives me a stern look, but there’s no need. He doesn’t have to convince me to keep my mouth shut.

  “She was supposed to stay in the guest house office to study, but apparently had other ideas.” Jack nods toward the steps. “Let’s go, young lady.”

  I follow him without hesitation, keeping my eyes on my feet. The second his back is to me, I pluck the earpiece out and crush it between my fingers. I shove the bits into my pants pocket and continue moving forward.

  .

  Harper jumps up from the love seat and paces the room again. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  I glance at Aidan from my spot on the couch, trying to read something from him. He’s not moving, not shouting, not giving away one shred of emotion. Unlike my pissed-off, freaked-out sister.

  Harper shakes the blond hair off her face. “Do you realize what could have happened to you? Immunity is a one-time deal, Ellie. You do something again and—”

  I don’t know what to say. How do I begin to tell her that this search for answers about a dead kid I knew for literally three months is more important than all the sacrifices she and Aidan have made for me? I was definitely in Junkie Mode.

  “I’m sorry, Harp,” I whisper, hoping she believes me. “I screwed up, okay?”

  She eyes me suspiciously. “So if you could do it over, you wouldn’t break into Senator Gilbert’s home?”

  No, I just wouldn’t get caught. I’m not heartless enough to lie to my sister’s face, so I say nothing.

  “Yeah, I thought so.” She sighs, swears under her breath, and then she’s pacing again. “Every month I have to meet with that woman and her fancy FBI badge and—”

  “What woman?” I demand.

  Harper lifts a hand to her mouth and then closes her eyes for a moment. “Agent Sheldon. She makes me report all your whereabouts and activities for an entire month. And she’s like a damn lie detector. Jack might have swept this under the rug with the Secret Service, but I’m gonna have to sit there and lie to a fucking federal agent. Because no way in hell can I tell her that you fucking broke into a United States senator’s home and convince her it was an innocent mistake!”

  I shrink back into the couch, pull my knees to my chest. Okay, I take it back. I wouldn’t do it again if I had the chance. Not after hearing that.

  “What do I have to do to get you to understand how serious this is? How fragile our lives are at the moment? We are hovering inches from losing everything.” The anger drops from Harper’s face. She looks worn, exhausted. “Why, Ellie? What was so important?”

  Again, I don’t know what to say. I hadn’t ever imagined how difficult this would be for her, how tense. I never imagined we would still be answering to the FBI in any form. I thought we were done with that. But I’m only seventeen, and apparently the FBI is making Harper shoulder the responsibility for my actions—past and present.

  “Please, Ellie,” Harper whispers. “You have to give me something. Something so that I know I can trust you.”

  My stomach knots with guilt and hurt. First Miles, now my own sister. “Of course you can trust me.”

  “Swear to God you haven’t talked to Dad? You haven’
t had contact with any of our family?”

  The desperation in her voice, the need for me to prove myself, is like a punch to the gut. If I don’t have Harper’s trust, I’m not sure I have anything.

  “I know why she was there tonight,” Aidan says, and both Harp and I stop and look at him, surprised considering he’s been silent this whole time. Aidan stares right at me, several different emotions crossing his face. “The surveillance video. I should have never showed that to you. That’s what started all this, isn’t it?”

  Harper looks confused, her gaze drifting from me to Aidan for clarification.

  “She doesn’t think Simon killed himself, and she’s trying to prove it.”

  Harper slowly lowers herself into the empty cushion on the love seat and looks at me. “Is that true?”

  There’s no way out of this now. “You said the same thing. You don’t think he did it, do you?”

  Her eyes widen. She shakes her head. “Ellie…I don’t know. God, I wish that were the truth, but surely the FBI must have evidence if they stopped their investigation. And they did. They stopped looking for answers. This is a senator’s kid. They wouldn’t give up early unless they were sure. You have to trust that.”

  Now my sister is looking at me like I need grief therapy and she missed the warning signs, but both of us are distracted by Aidan, deliberately pulling out his phone and removing the battery. He scrubs a hand over his face.

  Harper touches his shoulder. “What, babe?”

  “The reason they stopped the investigation,” Aidan says, and there’s a shake in his voice that sends my heart racing, “is because of me. Because of what I saw.”

  I sit there frozen, waiting. Harper tosses me a sideways glance.

  “I didn’t know he was home. I thought you guys were still at the dance.” Aidan stands, walks over to the window, looks outside, then shuts the blinds. “The Gilberts had hosted a dinner party the previous night, and I was going through the standard inspections. Simon’s room was dark, the door opened a crack, I didn’t know he was in there. He was standing in the dark, looking inside a safe. Looking at a gun inside the safe.”

  He never told me he was assigned to the Gilberts. The idea that Aidan was there that night, that he saw this gun is…well, I’m not sure what it is yet.

  “Wait,” Harper interrupts. “You confronted him about the gun? How did he end up—”

  Aidan shakes his head. “That isn’t my job. Not without knowing the history. I was filling in for someone. For all I knew, he owned that gun legally. But when he went in the bathroom, I checked to make sure it was locked up again. I had planned to inform his father as soon as he came home. I stayed parked at the far end of their driveway long after my work hours, making sure Simon didn’t leave the house. Making sure no one went in. What happens inside their home…you don’t realize how much we have to ignore.”

  I can’t move or speak. Across from me, Harper’s eyes are round orbs.

  Aidan looks at both of us, desperate for understanding. “I figured he went to the range like his dad, maybe even with his dad. I figured as long as I didn’t let him leave—” He stops, chokes up a little. “I never thought he’d use it on himself…never in a million years.”

  “Oh God,” Harper mutters. She drops her hand from his shoulder and slides back a few inches. “Aidan…”

  Aidan looks at me. “I’m so sorry, Ellie. I should have told you sooner. Should have seen how much you needed that closure. But now you know why the investigation was closed. There was no one else in that house. And I wish I could change that night. For Simon. For you. Every day I wish that.”

  “Did you hear it?” The words come out in a croak. I clear my throat and try again. “Did you hear the gun?”

  He nods.

  “What time did you hear it?”

  Aidan shakes his head. “Ellie, just let it go—”

  “What time?” I demand.

  “Oh one two four.”

  1:24 a.m.

  “If you knew th-this…” I sputter. “If you were so sure, why did you ask me about the video? About Bret Thomas in the parking lot that night?”

  “Because I wanted to know if that punk-ass kid did or said something to push Simon over the edge.”

  Jesus. We were never on the same hunt. Aidan never saw any hope, just a need to right a wrong. “I don’t think he did,” I manage to say.

  Aidan stands, gives me one more long look, then says again, “I’m sorry.”

  He walks through the kitchen and out the door. I’m still frozen, processing, but I expect Harper to go after him, and when she doesn’t, I shift my attention to her.

  Harp covers her face with her hands and draws in a deep breath. She lifts her head, eyes on me. “All this time, I thought we were so different—opposites—my life versus Aidan’s job, but maybe it’s not so different? Maybe we’re all lying and keeping secrets.”

  I want to defend Aidan. I want to tell her that he’s still the man she loves, but I’m not there yet.

  She gets up, walks toward her bedroom instead of the front door. “It’ll be okay, Ellie. We’ll be okay.”

  After she’s in her room, I move toward the window, peek out the blinds, and spot Aidan seated in a chair by the pool, his head in his hands. I know he’s doing exactly what I’ve been doing, what Miles has…probably Dominic, too.

  We’re all trying to rewind time. Earn a second chance at that night. But sometimes there are no second chances.

  CHAPTER 35

  I’d just fallen asleep when I heard the rattling in my room. I peel my eyes open in time to see Miles land softly on my bedroom floor. He tiptoes across the room and locks the door.

  “You know, some girls would call this behavior creepy,” I mumble, still half asleep.

  “Are you okay?” Miles asks. “I heard Jakowski cover for you, but then I lost reception.”

  I sit up and yawn. “That’s because I destroyed the earpiece.” Miles winces but doesn’t say anything. It’s probably school property. “I had to. I couldn’t exactly explain the spy gear with the story I came up with.”

  “The crying thing is becoming your trademark, isn’t it?”

  “It works. Why wouldn’t I use it? Plus, I didn’t cry tonight. It was more about the dramatic monologue.” I fold my arms over my chest, giving the appearance of being ready for an argument, but really I’m not sure I have it in me. “Are you actually complaining that I kept your ass out of trouble? Again?”

  Instead of giving a snide remark he surprises me by saying, “No. Not complaining. What you did—what you did for me…that was pretty incredible.”

  “We wouldn’t have both made it to the woods,” I say, trying to brush off the compliment. “Besides, if we were working solo, then I wanted to go down on my own. Get all the credit.”

  “Maybe we can reconsider that solo thing?”

  I look down at my hands, my face heating. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  Miles sits at the opposite end of my bed, but turns to face me. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Me, too.” I swallow back nerves and all the swirls of confusion. “But you first.”

  “I ran some of the prints from Simon’s room.” He exhales, leaving enough time for me to ask how the hell he ran fingerprints? Seriously, does his school have a fingerprint machine it lent him? But I’m too nervous about telling him what Aidan told me to put that question front and center. “The prints we found on the safe…they belong to—”

  “Aidan,” I say at the same time he says, “Lawrence.”

  Miles blinks, surprised. “How did you know?”

  With a heavy heart, I explain what Aidan told me tonight. Miles just sits there listening, still as a stone. Several seconds of silence follow after I finish talking.

  “Did you know Simon had a gun?” I ask.

  Miles shakes his head.

  “I mean, you have a gun and you’re both from the same school so maybe—”

  “I’ve only been training
in firearms for two years,” Miles says, his voice flat, unreadable. “It’s part of the honors program, but the rest of the school doesn’t…definitely not the middle school. I wasn’t even issued a weapon to use outside a range until right before I came here, and only on probationary terms. Guns are a last resort.”

  “I would hope so,” I say under my breath. I still hate that he has a gun in that secret room, sometimes on him. He probably had it with him tonight. Another reason not to let Miles get caught. Breaking and entering and carrying would not fit under any rugs.

  “What I mean by that is, we first learn ways to take down an enemy without a weapon. With our bodies, with our hands,” he tells me.

  I’m taken back to that horrible day in the bank, when I stood there in the midst of a storm, watching FBI agents pop out of every nook and cranny, some pointing weapons, others pouncing on the sleazy banker, on me. I try to put Miles on that team, in that bank preparing to save dozens of American citizens from losing all their money by blackmailing a teenage girl and then assaulting her during the heist you forced her into. I hate the idea of him doing that. Any of it. Hate that he even knows how.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Miles says, breaking me out of my own thoughts.

  “What doesn’t? The gun?”

  “That he had the gun,” Miles explains. “That it’s the one someone used on him. If anything, it makes it even more obvious that someone did this to him.”

  “But Aidan said no one was in the house. He parked outside and sat there until he heard the gunshot.” It occurs to me right then that Aidan probably ran inside at that point. He probably saw Simon—

  I shake off the thought because I’m not ready to feel sorry for Aidan. Not yet.

  “Did he split himself in two and patrol the woods behind the Gilberts’ house?” Miles says. “Think about it, Ellie, we walked that way tonight, went right into the house unnoticed until I messed with the safe. You said he waited for hours, right? Anyone could have gotten in. Plus Jack covered for you tonight. We don’t know that he isn’t doing that for someone else. Why the hell would Jakowski take that big a risk for a teenage girl he’s not even related to? He made up a complete lie to a new trainee.”