The Book of Lies

by Brad Meltzer

  All around me, seats are empty. Still, all three of us sit separately, just to keep it safe.

  Checking over my shoulder, I peer ten rows back at my dad, who’s fast asleep with his head sagging forward. After everything we’ve been through, he needs some rest. So do I. Across from him, I look for Serena, but her seat’s empty. I glance back at my dad. Don’t tell me she snuck over to—

  “Calvin,” a female voice interrupts, “would you mind if I joined you?”

  In the aisle, Serena stands over me, her back leaning on the edge of the seat behind her, as if she’s trying to steer clear of my personal space. I’m tempted to keep her there, but I can’t risk letting anyone overhear.

  She slides into the aisle seat, with the empty middle seat between us, then crosses her legs Indian style. It’s then that I see she’s barefoot. “I appreciate the kindness,” she says.

  “I didn’t offer any.”

  “You were about to, Calvin. Your eyes said so.”

  I’m ready to vomit right there. “Listen, Serena—I don’t know you very well, and I don’t know Lloyd much better. But when I look at his expensive silk shirts . . . or his unscuffed shoes—I know my dad has a big need to impress. And as I know from my clients, desperate men are the most easily mesmerized by new-agey, yoga-filled nonsense—especially when it comes from younger, sexed-up women who lock pinkies with them in hopes of getting whatever it is they think those men can get for them. Now I realize this isn’t a complex analogy, so to stay with that theme: Go flap your lashes somewhere else.”

  She looks at me in silence for what seems like a full minute. “I’m sorry I made you angry.”

  “No, angry’s what you get when someone dings your car. This is the cold bitter rage that comes when someone kicks around in your personal crisis.”

  “Calvin—”

  “Cal,” I growl at her.

  She’s still unfazed. “Cal, I’m not sleeping with your father.”

  “Then what’s with the pinkies and the hand-holding?”

  “He was shaking, Cal. In all your anger, did you not see that? I was trying to calm him—refocus his energy.”

  “His energy? Oh, Lord. Listen, even as a stranger, I can tell he’s clearly in love with you.”

  “And I love him, but as I’ve told him, it’s solely as a teacher. When we first started doing meditation—”

  “Whoa ho ho—my father couldn’t meditate if—”

  “He’s doing it right now,” she says, calm as ever.

  I turn back to my dad, whose head is still down. His eyes are closed. I thought he was sleeping, but the way he’s swaying forward and back . . .

  “The key is breathing through your nose,” Serena adds. “Each breath needs to reach down to your diaphragm.”

  I stare at her across the empty middle seat. She nods and smiles.

  “Serena, why’re you really here? And please don’t insult me by saying you came all the way to the airport and potentially risked your life just to wave good-bye and teach my dad how to breathe and realign his energy.”

  Most people turn away when you ask them a hard question. Serena continues to look straight at me, and her yellow blue eyes . . . I hate to say it . . . there’s a real depth to her stare.

  “He helped my brother. Andrew,” she finally says.

  “Who? My dad?”

  “You almost had it right before, Cal. Your dad—he’s Andrew’s sponsor,” she explains. “And my brother—been in AA for years—always relapsing. A few months ago, the judge sent him back, and your dad—it wasn’t anything heroic—but your dad was nice to him. They connected. Really connected. Whatever they had in common, Andrew was Andrew again.”

  “So all this—coming to help my dad—it’s just a thank-you?”

  “Oh, no. I’m not just helping your dad. I’m helping myself,” she says as easily as if she’s telling me her shoe size. Reading my confusion, she adds, “Two weeks ago, they found Andrew’s body in the sea grapes grove—near Holiday Park. But it was your dad who helped us locate him—he knew Andrew’s old hiding spots. He knew my brother. And even though I think you have a hard time with things like this—being near your dad . . . somehow I’m still connected with Andrew.”

  “Can I offer you a snack?” a flight attendant interrupts, approaching just behind Serena and holding out a tiny bag of pretzels.

  “No peanuts?” Serena asks.

  “Sorry, just pretzels,” the attendant says.

  “Then I’m meant to have pretzels,” Serena decides, smiling as she pops open the little bag and turns back to me. “Your dad tried to save my brother, Cal. And by helping Andrew—with that strength your dad shows, like in the airport—your father helped me. He’s still helping me. And I’m helping him. Do you not see that? That’s what being family is—that’s the best part—it’s not tit for tat or who owes more, it’s simply—when one hurts, so does the other; when one finds good, you share in that, too. That’s family.” But as Serena continues to stare my way . . . “This is making you uncomfortable, isn’t it?” she asks.

  I shake my head, trying to convince her she’s wrong.

  She goes silent, her stare digging even deeper. She’s not upset. She’s excited. “I was wrong before. This is why I’m here, isn’t it?” she blurts, not the least bit concerned that we brought her on this plane to save her life. “Not just for what your father and I share . . . the lessons are for you, too, for all three of us. Oh, I didn’t see it before. I mean, until you showed up, I didn’t even think he had family.”

  “He did have family! He just—” I catch myself, clenching the fuse that’s lit in my chest and digging my feet into the airplane’s thin carpet. “He has a family,” I say quietly. “He just chose to ignore me.”

  “You sure about that?” She tugs on her ankles, tightening her Indian-style position and reaching for a pretzel.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You were, what, sixteen years old when he was released? Just taking the SATs, starting to wonder about going to college. You really think having a convicted murderer enter your life was the best thing for you?”

  “You don’t know that. You met him, what, four months ago?”

  “Six months,” she says. “How’d you know that, anyway?”

  “I was bluffing. But that’s my point: You barely know him. I heard you at the hospital, asking if he got the shipment. So answer my question, Serena: Why’d you really come to the airport?”

  I wait for her yellow blue eyes to narrow, but they just get wider. She’s not insulted. She’s hurt. “I came for the same reason you did,” she tells me.

  “Let me guarantee right now that’s not true.”

  “Do you really think you’re the only one whose life didn’t turn out the way they dreamed, Cal? When I was eleven years old, my mother remarried a man who . . . well, shouldn’t’ve been living around eleven-year-old girls. Or their younger brothers. I still pay for those years. But when I was seventeen—when I finally told my mom, and she threw me out because she couldn’t handle that it might actually be true—I remember sitting in this filthy McDonald’s. It was pouring, one of those thick Florida rains, and I had this feeling to go outside. When I did, I saw this puddle—shaped like a mitten—that reminded me of this great puddle we used to jump in back when we could afford camp. And reliving that moment . . . that was blissful. Real bliss. All because I listened to that feeling to go outside.”

  “Okay—so to find true meaning in life, I need to go stand out in some sentient downpour. Very Shawshank Redemption.”

  “Let me ask you something, Cal: Why’d you come on this trip?”

  “I almost got killed this morning.”

  “Before that. When you saw your dad lying there in the rain . . . You had your own feeling, right? You listened to something inside yourself and suddenly your life was reignited. Like in Don Juan, where he says that sometimes you need to lace your belt the opposite way. We get so comfortable in our lives, things get
so mundane, we spiritually fall asleep. But you don’t have to go to an ashram in India to reignite your life. If we just follow those feelings, like my feeling to go talk to your dad at the airport—”

  “Serena, the only reason I got on this plane was to save my own rear.”

  She undoes her Indian-style position, stands up from her seat, and never abandons the soft, knowing smile that lifts her cheeks. “Your father told me where you work, Cal. If you really were as tough as you think, you wouldn’t be there. And if you really didn’t want to connect with him, you wouldn’t be here. It’s no different than taking me along with you. In that act, you did one of the most beautiful things anyone can do. You said yes to me. And with your father, just getting on this plane, you did the same. You buckled your belt the other way.”

  As she walks back to her seat, I look down at my unfastened seat belt. “Airline buckles only go one way,” I call out.

  “Not when you share them with the person next to you,” she calls back.

  40

  The blue lights swirled, the siren howled, and Naomi held her breath.

  Three minutes. She’d be there in three minutes, Naomi told herself, clenching the wheel as her car slowly elbowed through the lunchtime traffic on Miami Gardens Drive.

  In her ear, Scotty was gone. She needed her cell to make sure—

  “Pick up the damn phone, Mom!” she screamed. But all she heard back was a droning ring, again and again and—

  “This is Naomi,” her own voice replied on the answering machine. “I’m probably screening you right now, so—”

  With a click, she hung up and started again. Mom’s cell. Still no answer. Home phone . . .

  “This is Naomi. I’m probably screening you—”

  Click. Redial.

  Two minutes. Less than two minutes, she swore to herself as she cut off a black Acura and the phone continued to ring. . . . Dammit, why isn’t she picking up!?

  On the GPS screen, the glowing crimson triangle still hadn’t moved from her house. No, don’t think the worst—

  Swerving across two lanes of traffic, Naomi jerked the wheel to the left, and her dark green Chevy bucked and bounced over the last few inches of the street’s concrete turning lane. The phone beeped and she reacted instinctively.

  “Mom?” she asked, picking up.

  “Local police are en route,” Scotty said. “For all you know, this is just—”

  “Just what!? He’s at my house, Scotty—with my son!”

  “That doesn’t mean—”

  “How the hell’d he know where I live!?”

  Ramming the gas, Naomi sank her nails deep into the rubber of the steering wheel. As she craned her neck wildly back and forth, she fought to get a better look past the thin trees. At the far end of the block was a modest, faded yellow rambler with a crooked garage door and . . .

  Her mom’s car. Still in the driveway. Oh, no . . .

  “Who gave him my address!?” she shouted at Scotty.

  “Listen, you need to—”

  “I’ve never been listed! Someone gave him my damn address!”

  The brakes were still screaming as Naomi threw open her car door and leapt outside.

  “Nomi, if he’s still in there . . .” Scotty warned.

  “Scotty, swear to me you didn’t give anyone my address. By accident or on purpose . . . I need to hear it.”

  “A-Are you—? I— Of course I didn’t!”

  There was real pain in his voice. She trusted that pain.

  “Lucas!” Naomi screamed, pulling her gun and sprinting for the front door. Her feet felt like anvils, her throat like a pinched straw. She tried to breathe. . . .

  “Luuucas!” She jabbed her key at the bottom lock, but even before it got there . . . the door slowly swung away from her. God. It was already open.

  She could hear the sirens in the distance.

  “Nomi, you need to wait,” Scotty pleaded. “Don’t go in without—”

  Darting inside, she felt her heart kicking in her neck. Her eyes scanned the hallway . . . the front closet . . . but all she was really looking for were her son’s shoes . . . There.

  Lucas’s flip-flops.

  That means Lucas is still—

  Frantically sprinting toward the kitchen, she heard her phone beep in her ear. Another call.

  “What’re you, a mental patient?” her mother asked as Naomi clicked over. “Who leaves fifteen rambling messages like that?”

  “L-Lucas . . . where’s—? Where are you?” Naomi asked, her gun pointed straight out and her back touching the wall as she prowled around the corner of her dark and clearly empty kitchen.

  “The video store—we walked from the park—though I didn’t realize that was a reason to call out the entire Customs Service,” her mother shot back.

  “Where’s Lucas?”

  “Right next to me. He wants one of those Star War movies—those are okay, right? No nudity or anything?”

  Naomi doubled back into the hallway and quickly checked both bedrooms . . . closets . . . bathrooms . . . All empty. Back in the living room, she studied the carpet, the sofa cushions, even the slight sway of the vertical blinds that led to the backyard. Nothing was out of place. The back door was still locked. But something still . . .

  “Mom, go to the back of the video store,” Naomi said into the phone. “There’s a bathroom there—”

  “Wait, what happened?”

  “Just find the bathroom—they’ll let you use it if you ask nice—then lock the door and wait there for me, okay? I don’t care who bangs on that door, you don’t open it, you don’t let Lucas out, you don’t check on anything until I’m there. Only me.”

  Naomi pulled out her GPS device, clicked back to Scotty on her cell, then began to search for the red triangle.

  “Nomi, don’t click off like that!” Scotty scolded. “I thought you were—”

  “Shh.” It took a moment to reorient herself. On-screen, the tiny crimson triangle stood completely still. So did Naomi. She was rushing so fast, she never even saw it. According to the screen, the beacon was now coming from behind her.

  Naomi twisted around and dashed up the main hallway, rammed her shoulder at the front door, and crashed outside, back into the bright sun.

  Outside, her front yard was empty. There was no breeze. And no sound but the shrieking sirens that finally turned onto her block.

  “He’s gone,” she whispered.

  “You sure?” Scotty asked. “If he came there— No note? No message?”

  On-screen, the crimson triangle overlapped almost perfectly with the white, elongated triangle that represented Naomi’s location. Overlapped . . . Looking straight down, Naomi stepped off the exploding-fireworks-shaped doormat she still hadn’t removed since July Fourth and took a peek underneath. On the ground was a tiny and familiar flat oval disk.

  “Oh, he definitely left a message,” Naomi said, pinching the transmitter with two fingers. Ellis didn’t come here just to leave it under the mat. If her son had been home, Ellis would’ve— A boil of anger bubbled up the back of her neck. The last time she was this mad was during her repo years. The victim sued for the cost of the hospital bills. And won. Four figures.

  “You okay there?” Scotty asked.

  Naomi let go of the welcome mat, and as it slapped against the concrete, a swirl of dust cartwheeled out the sides. For a moment, Naomi just knelt there, thinking about her son, and her mom, and everything that might’ve happened if something might’ve happened. But it hadn’t. And that’s what made it so damn easy to focus back on Ellis. And Cal. Especially on Cal. The former agent . . . the one who was at the port last night . . . and the one who could’ve easily given her family’s address to—

  “You’re plotting their deaths now, aren’t you,” Scotty said.

  “I want the next flight to Cleveland.”

  “Yeah, and I want to eat cream sauce without feeling puffy after.”

  Naomi didn’t say a word.

>   “I was joking, Nomi. (Kinda.) Now do you want the bad news or the really bad news?”

  “Bad news.”

  “You just missed one of the flights to Cleveland; you’re on the next one.”

  “And the really bad?”

  “I got Ellis’s full file from the prosecutor, like you asked. They got everything in here: psych profiles, behavior reports, even identifying marks.”

  “I thought you said this was really bad?”

  “Hear that noise? That’s the other shoe falling, Nomi. Because that tattoo on Ellis’s hand? You’re not gonna believe what it stands for.”

  41

  Cain? As in Cain Cain?” I ask Roosevelt through my newest disposable cell. As we whip down the highway, I scour the buttons on the dashboard, searching for—

  “Here,” my father says from the passenger seat. He clicks a switch, and a cannonball of warm air blasts at the fog on our windshield, lifting it away like a raised curtain.

  “Now find the heat,” Serena pleads from the backseat as the gray Cleveland sky smothers all light and we plow through the slush and past the blackened snowbanks on I-71.

  It’s December in Florida, but not like December here. At barely four o’clock, it’s nearly dark. Still, we’re not completely unprepared. From my job, my dad and I have the two thickest winter coats the donation room had to offer. From Serena’s driver’s license, we have an untraceable rental car. And from the gas station right outside the Cleveland airport, Serena has a Cleveland Rocks sweatshirt, and I—like Roosevelt in Fort Lauderdale—have a brand-new chat’n chuck mobile phone to make sure we’re not traced. Everything’s in place. But it doesn’t stop me from studying every car around us. The next Florida flight to Cleveland left barely an hour after ours. It’s not much of a lead.

  “I thought you were dropping her at a hotel,” Roosevelt says as he hears Serena’s voice.

  “If Ellis is following, it’s not safe by the airport. Trust me, we’re doing it first thing after the house,” I tell him. “So you were saying about Ellis’s tattoo.”

  “Can’t you put him on speaker?” Serena asks from the backseat, looking up from a foldout map. Quickly backing down, she adds, “Sorry. I just—” Her voice drops to a whisper. “It’s not like I can’t hear everything he’s saying anyway.”