by Hannah Jayne
“Who was at the door? Who was the kid?” Shelby rolled to a stop and gaped at Riley. “My God, I didn’t think it was actually true. Was the missing kid you?”
“No one was at the door. I don’t know who the baby was.” She reached into her purse and handed Shelby the second postcard. “And then there was this.”
“I know who you are,” Shelby read out loud. Her cheeks paled. “Ry, this is serious. You have to talk to your parents. Or go to the police or something.”
“I can’t go to the police. What if they arrest my parents? And I don’t know if I can talk to my parents. What do I say? ‘Did you snatch me off the street?’”
“Who sent you this?”
Riley swung her head. “I don’t know. It’s the same person who sent the other one, I guess. I mean, obviously. How many people send random, one-line postcards to strangers?”
“Whoever sent them is no stranger, Ry. I know who you are…”
They drove the rest of the way to the mall in silence, Riley’s phone ringing as they stepped into the first store.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Where are you?”
Riley sighed. “I’m at the mall with Shelby.”
“No one gave you permission to leave the house. You didn’t even call us or leave a note.”
She felt the heat flicker in the pit of her stomach. “I’m not a little kid, Mom. Shelby just picked me up and we’re at the mall. No big deal.”
Her mother spat something back but Riley’s eye was wandering, caught on a little girl and her mother. They were holding hands but when the kid—five or six years old at best—caught sight of the play structure in the middle of the mall, she dropped her mother’s hand and took off running.
Maybe I just ran away, and my parents picked me up?
“Do you hear me, Riley? Tell Shelby to bring you home right now.”
Riley watched the scene in front of her. The mother of the little girl was immediately panic-stricken, her whole face crumpling in the seconds that her daughter disappeared then reappeared on the play structure. The mother had a hand splayed on her chest as if to stop her thundering heart.
Riley tore her eyes away.
“I’m not going to make her drive me all the way home. We just got here.”
“Then your father and I will meet you in front of the coffeehouse in twenty minutes.”
Shelby came out of the store, brows raised. “What’s up?”
“The wardens are picking me up in twenty.”
“Seriously?” Shelby’s face fell.
“Yeah. But you go find your barf-free backpack. I better do as I was told and tether myself to the coffee place.”
“Use your one jailhouse phone call to call me.”
The mall was getting crowded, and Riley wound herself through clutches of singles and groups when she felt fingertips brush against her bare arm. There was a man beside her, staring straight ahead. He was older, maybe in his twenties, and stood a head taller.
She saw the man’s lips move, thought she heard him mutter, “Don’t worry.”
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t repeat himself, but Riley’s eyes followed his fingers as they tightened around her wrist. Her heart was slamming into her ribcage, her pulse hammering underneath his thumb.
“I’ll scream,” Riley said. “If you don’t let me go right now, I’ll scream.”
His grip tightened, every finger like a steel band digging in. “Don’t do that.”
Her mind was racing. All around her people swarmed, chatting, shopping, moving right past without even looking at her. Their chatter was overwhelming. Even if she could scream, she didn’t think anyone would hear her.
“There are police,” she said, “right after the next shop. Let me go and I won’t say anything, I promise.” Her lower lip started to tremble, her eyes filling with tears—but she gritted her teeth. She wouldn’t let this man see her cry. “The police—”
The man gripping her arm gave Riley a quick glance—just quick enough for her to memorize his thick jaw, his ice-blue eyes, and the scar that cleaved his lower lip. “You won’t scream and you won’t say anything to the police. You wouldn’t do that to your parents.”
Riley stopped walking, everything inside of her running cold.
“How do you know my parents?”
He tugged her arm. “Keep walking.”
Heat, picking up speed as it sped through her veins, was breaking out all over her. There was a tightening in her chest.
“Who are you?”
A muscle flicked along the man’s jawline but he didn’t immediately say anything.
“Let me go right now.” Her voice sounded breathy, desperate.
“Hear me out. Trust me. We’re in a public place, Riley. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“H—how do you know my name?”
He didn’t answer or loosen his grip, and Riley fumbled, walking along. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because your parents aren’t who they say they are.”
Riley’s whole body went rigid. “What?”
“They’re lying to you. They’re lying to everybody. Your name is Jane O’Leary.”
She couldn’t help but stop and look up. “Jane?”
“My name is Tim. Have your parents told you anything about me? Have they told you anything about the O’Learys?”
“N-no.”
“They won’t tell you the truth. They’ll tell you something crazy; they’ll tell you that they’re trying to protect you, but they’re not. They’re bad people, Jane.”
Riley ripped Tim’s hands from her arm. “You’re crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about. My parents aren’t bad.” She could feel the tears rimming her eyes but she gritted her teeth, refusing to cry.
“They’re going to isolate you. They won’t let you talk to anyone.”
The heavy iron gates of the Blackwood Hills Estates flashed in Riley’s mind. So did her father, scrutinizing her cell phone bill. That’s normal, Riley told herself. I’m seventeen, not a prisoner.
“Why should I believe anything you say anyway?”
Tim turned to face her, his eyes a slicing crystal blue. “Because I’m your brother.”
The breath was snatched out of Riley’s lungs.
“Come with me.”
She fumbled backward. “No.”
His hand was on her arm again. “Come on, Jane. You’re not safe here. If they even know that you’ve seen me, they’ll hurt you. They’ll hurt us both.”
Riley’s heart was pulsing in her ears. Her skin suddenly felt too small, too tight. I don’t believe you, she wanted to scream. I don’t believe a goddamn word you’re saying. But she couldn’t force her lips to move.
Tim was digging in his pocket, his eyes scanning the crowd before them. Riley’s breath hitched.
He’s crazy and he’s going to shoot me now. He’s going to stab me, to set off a bomb. That’s what crazy people do. Crazy people who claim they’re my brother.
Instead, he pressed a card into her hand. “Call me. I will come and get you from wherever you are.” His eyes cut back to the crowd. “They’re dangerous, Jane. Don’t say a single word or they’ll disappear again.” He shifted his gaze back to her. “You’ll disappear.”
The coffeehouse was directly in front of them, and Riley found herself begging for her parents while pleading that they shouldn’t come. If this man was going to kill her, she didn’t want her parents to get hurt. But she desperately wanted them to save her.
The door opened as if on cue, and Riley’s parents stepped into the store.
Tim saw them too.
She gasped, sucking in air like it was her last breath and rooting her feet to the ground.
“Come on.” He tugged her arm at the same moment Riley’s
father caught her eye. Suddenly, it was as if the whole mall was staring, and there was a cool spot on her wrist where Tim’s hand had been.
SEVEN
Riley stared out the window the whole ride home. Her parents were taking turns lecturing and grounding her, but all she could think about was the man—Tim—his fingers gripping her wrist, and his voice: Your parents are lying to you.
She glanced up and stared at the backs of their heads, catching first her father’s reflection in the rearview mirror and then her mother’s.
Not my parents.
Riley shifted in her seat, feeling the heat of panic as it inched in. What happens now? The man said she wouldn’t call the police because she “wouldn’t do that” to her parents.
Do what?
Riley swallowed and clamped her mouth shut. Her stomach was in her throat, and she was certain that if she opened her mouth, she would vomit.
This can’t be happening…I don’t have a brother. I can’t believe I’m even considering what this guy is saying.
But he knew her name. And he knew Jane.
I’m Jane Elizabeth O’Leary?
No.
My parents aren’t liars. I just want this all to go away.
They pulled through the neighborhood gates and Riley glanced down at her phone. There was a text from JD.
FOUND SOMETHING.
Riley’s breath caught. Her fingers were flying over the keyboard when her mother leaned into the backseat, her hand closing over the phone.
“We said no phone, Ry.”
Riley looked up, stunned as her mother slipped the phone into her purse.
“You can’t do that!”
“And you can’t just take off whenever you want to.” Her father cut the engine and stepped out of the car.
Riley was about to respond, but he looked over his shoulder at her, his glare so severe that it gave her the chills.
“Go to your room.”
Riley silently climbed the stairs then immediately turned on her laptop, tagging JD for a chat.
SMILYRILY: Whatd u find out?
HNTR41: Hi to u too
SMILYRILY: Sry. Hi. Parents took my phone.
HNTR41: Sux. Was doing some research on ur Jane.
SMILYRILY: AND?????
HNTR41: Wait. Downloading the pic u sent.
SMILYRILY: I didn’t send you anything. What did you find out???
HNTR41: Do you know if Jane had a brother Tim?
SMILYRILY: OMG I met Tim today. He grabbed my arm.
Riley sat back from the screen, wondering how much to tell JD. And even if she told him the truth—the truth as it happened—what could she say? The computer chirped when JD messaged her back.
HNTR41: Holy crap, R! That’s creepy. How did u do that?
SMILYRILY: Wait—Do what???
A photo icon popped up on her screen.
HNTR41: U sent this.
Riley clicked on the icon and watched it bounce as a picture loaded, the image filling the whole screen. There was a glowing laptop in the center and a pair of hands resting on the keys. They were female hands and she immediately recognized the Panic Purple nail polish—because she was wearing it too. The head that was blocking the screen was familiar as well. Even in silhouette, she could see the tendrils that were falling out of the back of her ponytail.
“Oh my God!”
Riley jumped back from her screen and turned, clawing at her wall for the device that was filming her—there had to be one. But her walls were smooth, completely unmarred.
She yanked open the bathroom and closet doors, half hoping that her phantom photographer would be inside, half begging that he was long gone. The tears were burning tracks over her cheeks, and every step that Riley took she was sure that someone was tracking, watching, listening to her every breath.
When she heard a car door slam, Riley’s mind started spinning, and she was taking the stairs two at a time. She heard her parents yelling at her but was too focused to make out the words. She flung open the front door and was hit with a cold rush of night air then the burning of something tightening against her throat, pulling her backward. Her father had a handful of her T-shirt.
“Riley, stop!”
“Dad, Dad, there’s someone out there! There’s someone outside, they—they took a picture and—”
“Riley! Stop. Breathe.”
She whipped her head toward the street and then back to her father. “There was…” Riley’s words drifted off.
There was no one in the street. It was dark—not ominous, just regular nighttime dark—with a crushing wind that made skeletal leaves cartwheel past.
“What are you talking about?”
Riley tried to pull in a deep breath, but it was like trying to breathe through a straw. She pressed her hand to her chest and blinked away the tears that rimmed her eyes.
“Breathe, Riley. One, two…” Her mother was speaking to her now, her hands on Riley’s arms, slate-gray eyes focused on her daughter.
Riley tried to do as her mother said. She felt a bead of sweat start at her hairline and make its way down the side of her face.
“Maybe we should call Dr. Morley and have him check your antianxiety medication. Maybe your body is getting used to it?” Her mother’s eyebrows were knitted with worry, and Riley pinched her eyes shut.
Antianxiety, she breathed. My parents aren’t trying to drug me.
After what seemed like a lifetime, she was finally able to take in a full breath.
“What happened, Riley?” her mother asked gently.
Riley looked from her mother to her father then out to the darkness on the street. “I thought I saw someone outside. Someone watching me.”
Her parents shared a look. “Like a Peeping Tom?”
“No.” Riley shrugged out of her mother’s arms. “Someone driving by. Or in a car, stopped. Just like—I was instant messaging—”
“Instant messaging? You’re grounded, remember?”
“Yeah, but I—”
“Your father and I were very clear, Riley.”
“But, Mom, it was just a—I was just talking to a friend and then—”
Riley watched her father suck in a deep breath. He knitted his brow and set his lips, and her stomach dropped. Riley knew that look; she loathed that look.
“Go up to your room.”
“Dad—”
“You want to make your punishment worse? Up to your room.”
“Someone was watching—”
“There was no one outside, Riley. Your father and I were here the whole time.”
“Trust me, if someone has their eye on us—on you—we’d know about it. Now up to your room before I get unreasonable,” her father said.
Riley opened her mouth and then closed it, looking at the hard expressions on her parents’ faces. She knew that if she said anything—if she protested or confessed—her parents would dismiss her. They weren’t going to listen to anything she had to say.
She trudged up the stairs, her heart a stomach-dropping thud each time her foot fell. She didn’t want to be in her room. She didn’t want to be locked into a box where someone—somehow—had photographed her.
Riley swallowed at the lump in her throat as she reached out to turn the doorknob. She flung open her bedroom door and finally let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. She scanned the room with wide eyes before tiptoeing across the carpet and snatching up her laptop. Her parents had commanded her to her room—she was willing to compromise. Riley slid down in the doorway and pulled her computer onto her lap.
She went back to her screen and blinked at the message now displayed.
“‘Internet connection lost’? What the hell?”
She typed in her password, groaning when nothing happened. She typed in the WE
P key and the server password. The computer dinged and red letters lined the screen: SMILYRILY NO LONGER HAS ACCESS TO THIS ACCOUNT.
• • •
Riley’s eyes were bloodshot and raw the following morning. She had spent the night turning, considering: the open front door that she knew she had locked. The postcard, the photograph—Tim. She shuddered. Something about him—about the way he said her name, the way he looked down at her and said she was Jane—it struck something cold and dark way down in Riley’s belly. Not fear, exactly.
Something much, much worse.
She thought of the hard look in her father’s eyes as he yanked her into the house.
Did her parents know that she had met Tim?
“Stop it, Ry,” she muttered.
“They’re going to try to isolate you…”
The severe red letters barring Riley from her email account flashed in her mind.
She had had her phone and Internet taken once before, but that was after she failed a midterm—not after an impromptu trip to the mall.
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE…
Was the note from Tim?
The thought stabbed at her heart, and guilt washed over her. Would she really believe a stranger, someone who approached her in a mall, more than she believed her own parents?
Her eyes instantly went to her laptop and the folded-up birth certificate hidden underneath. She wanted to snatch it up and tear it into a thousand tiny pieces. If she could tear it small enough, make it disappear, then maybe everything would go back to normal and she wouldn’t be Jane Elizabeth O’Leary.
“I’m not her,” Riley said defiantly, as if somehow Tim could hear her. “I’m not Jane O’Leary.”
Even with her admission, she knew that she was beyond the ability to stamp out errant thoughts about Jane. Even when she focused on the hot water pouring over her head in the shower, Jane was there, whispering, wondering about Riley.
No baby pictures…the nightmares…
Riley had been plagued with nightmares for as long as she could remember. They were always the same. They always chilled her to her very core, leaving her skittish and cold for hours after she woke.
Maybe I’m remembering something…maybe it was the night Jane—I?—went missing…