by Hannah Jayne
“Riley!”
The desperate way he screamed after her made her sick. She heard the echoes of the man from the mall, the man from the train station, Gail, and her own parents saying her name, ordering her back, wrapping her in their lies.
Riley cleared the cemented gas station and went for the grove of eucalyptus trees that butted up against it. Each time her foot fell, she heard the crush of dried leaves, the pop of twigs. The menthol scent of the grove stung at her eyes and she palmed the tears away, scanning for someplace to hide, for some way out of the grove and into safety.
“Riley, please!”
JD’s voice was behind her, barely clipping at her ear.
“I’m on your side!”
She wanted to believe him. She wanted to stop running. She had wanted to stop running just after this whole thing began. She had gone from being sheltered Riley Spencer with a completely normal life to a shadow named Jane, constantly on the run, constantly looking over her shoulder.
“Riley!” JD’s voice was fading as Riley covered more ground.
She ran until her muscles hurt, until she was sure JD was gone. She dropped to her knees, feeling the moist earth dampening her jeans, and cried. She couldn’t trust anyone. Her best friend was in a coma, and everyone else in her world was lying to her.
JD had been watching her. She felt herself shudder. Was JD working for someone? Was he being paid to watch her? Had he known she was Jane all along? The thought made her whole body ache. He wasn’t a friend; he was a spy.
For who?
Riley willed herself forward, and after a few steps, her heart sped up when she began to hear the whooshing of cars racing by. The eucalyptus trees were thinner and sparser here, the grove opening up to a sidewalk on a quiet, suburban-looking street. The houses were old but well-kept with manicured lawns and pretty pots overflowing with flowers. The calm scene almost made Riley feel safe.
She stepped out of the forest, focusing on a pot of bright red roses directly in front of her. They were the last thing she saw before everything went dark.
• • •
Everything hurt when Riley woke up. Her shoulders, her stomach, her legs—everything felt heavy and bruised, and her mouth burned with the bitter taste of bile. And it was dark.
Her whole body started to move, to roll, and she instinctively put out a hand and a foot to steady herself—or she tried to. Her legs were bound together at the ankle, a thick ring of duct tape encircling her legs halfway up her calves. There was duct tape around her wrists too, and Riley started to panic.
Where am I?
Her eyes weren’t adjusting to the overwhelming darkness until flashes of red, one by her head and one by her feet, illuminated just enough of Riley’s surroundings for her to make them out.
Black, industrial grade carpet. The faint smell of gasoline. The rumble from underneath her.
A car! My God, my God, I’m in someone’s trunk!
Her mind immediately went to JD, and she cringed, her stomach turning over. He wouldn’t do this to me, he wouldn’t do this to me…
The silver charm flashed in her mind. The image of a dark figure standing in the window, staring down at her. JD.
She gritted her teeth and refused to cry, instead, using her bound feet to kick anything and everything she could reach.
“Help!” she screamed, and struggled against the duct tape, but the more she did, the more it burned hot rings into her skin. “Help!” she screamed again.
The car started rolling again and Riley quieted, trying to listen for any sound—a radio squawk, a police siren—but all she heard was the constant flow of traffic.
What had they told us to do?
Riley had sat through a half-dozen school assemblies about safety and stranger danger and how to run away. Had there ever been one about being locked in someone’s trunk?
She started kicking again, screaming, and trying to use her fingers to claw at the roof.
Nothing happened. The car kept rolling.
After what seemed like a lifetime, Riley felt the car turn onto a road that wasn’t as smooth as the other. The car bounced around, and she bounced in the trunk, wincing, completely unable to protect herself from the next blow.
And then the car stopped.
Everything inside her went hot. She didn’t want the car to keep moving, but once it stopped—right now—she would be faced with JD. He had drugged her, duct-taped her, and tossed her in the trunk. What was he planning on doing with her now?
She heard a car door slam and the sound of footfalls on gravel. She knew they were drawing near. Her heart thumped with every step, but she couldn’t breathe.
Her bladder felt heavy as she heard the jingle of keys and then the smooth way they slid into the lock. She used every last muscle she had to scooch herself to the darkest corner of the trunk, her back up against something hard and metal.
“Please, JD,” she whispered. “Please don’t hurt me.”
She couldn’t help it; she clamped her eyes shut when the trunk opened.
“I didn’t want to have to do this. I didn’t want it to turn out this way.”
Riley opened her eyes and stared into Tim’s ice-blue ones, which looked as sharp as ever. She started then pressed herself tighter, deeper into the depths of the trunk. Tim reached out and grabbed her bound ankles and slid her forward as if she didn’t weigh a thing.
He grinned down at her before pulling her out of the trunk and slinging her over his shoulder. “I told you that you don’t have to be afraid, Janie. I told you I’m the good guy in all this.”
Riley knew she should be screaming. She should be struggling or banging on Tim’s back with her bound hands, but she was paralyzed by fear. She wanted to believe that Tim was a good guy, but good guys didn’t snatch girls off the street, bind their limbs, and toss them in the trunk.
Her throat was bone dry, and all she could do was hang there listlessly as Tim carried her up a cement walkway. She stared down at the concrete as he pushed a key into a lock and, after stepping inside, dropped her on a couch.
Riley looked around, startled. The couch was sagging and full of holes. The room smelled musty and earthy, as if every window was open. It was dark, but Riley could hear Tim moving around, and little by little, snatches of the room were lit up as Tim lit candles all around her. He finished with a Coleman lantern which was in what Riley supposed was the half-rotted kitchen.
Once things were sufficiently illuminated, Tim stood in front of her with a wide grin. He threw his arms wide. “We’re home!” he said, as if Riley was a willing participant.
Riley cringed on the musty couch, trying to find her voice. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Tim’s proud smile dropped. “Why am I bringing you home?”
“This isn’t my home. I don’t live here.”
“It’s only because it’s been so long since the last time you were here. Could have been longer but you changed all that.”
Riley blinked. “I changed that?”
Tim pointed to Riley and then to himself. “You were looking for me. I had alerts on my computer. You accessed the Granite Cay databases and searched Jane Elizabeth O’Leary. I thought it might just be a random hit but…” He shrugged, rolling up onto his toes like they were sharing a giddy reunion story. “But it was you!”
Riley’s mouth was suddenly bone dry. “How did you know it was me?”
“I traced your Internet for a while, but it had been so long I couldn’t be sure. I had to see for myself, so I came out to see you.”
“At the mall…”
“No.” Tim swiped at the air as if she had just said something silly. “I was watching you for a long time before that. You look so different.”
“You—you were in my house?”
He actually looked sheepish. “I gave you the postcard
at the carnival, but you didn’t respond. I had to go inside.”
Riley’s whole body went heavy. “So you came to Crescent City because of me. I—I did this?”
“It was like a homing beacon. And then to find that you were only in the next state! Do you know how happy I was?”
The Witness Protection Program had only moved us one state away? Riley fumed. It didn’t seem logical. In the movies, they moved families halfway around the world, or into nondescript tract-home communities. Tim said they were lying. Tim said they would have made stuff up.
Riley tried to shake off the inching doubt as Tim rambled on.
“Once I found you, I knew there wouldn’t be a lot of time. That’s why the house—our house—doesn’t look as nice as it used to.”
“Our house?” Her eyes darted around the room. The house was clearly a tear-down, because sheets were tacked to the walls, little gusts of wind sucking the fabric through gaping holes. The floor was covered in garbage, dirt, and wood debris; there was a broken lamp tossed on a pile of scorched wood where the floor bowed. In the one spot that didn’t look about to be demolished was a small aluminum table with two chairs—rusty but workable. There was a small vase with a couple of mums stuffed in, and behind that, broken shelves were littered with cereal boxes, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and jelly.
“You live here?” Riley asked.
Tim pointed to her and then to himself. “We live here. You’re my sister, remember?”
“I’m not your sister.” She tried her best to inject confidence in her voice. “Let me go, please.”
Tim looked down at her with an appraising expression that made Riley even more uncomfortable.
“Let me go.” She felt her strength and anger growing. “LET ME GO!” She twisted toward the dark, greasy window at her side and thumped her bound hands against it, trying to reach it with her feet.
“Help! Help!”
The toe of her sneaker caught a crack in the glass and she was able to kick through. Joy obliterated her fear and she screamed louder, a string of tear-choked nonsense words.
“Please help me! Someone, please, he’s crazy, please!”
Tim just stared down at her until Riley, covered with a thin sheen of sweat, stopped screaming. She flopped back hard on the couch, tears rolling from her eyes and into her ears.
“No one can hear you. There’s no one around here. The neighborhood is mostly abandoned. Except for us.” He smiled as if that were a good thing. “I can’t believe I found you. You look so much like Mom did when she was younger.”
Riley gritted her teeth. “I’m not your sister. We’re not siblings. I don’t even know you!”
A dark expression cut across Tim’s face. “Don’t say that. You are.” He advanced on Riley, pulling a small blade from the food shelves.
Riley pulled her knees up to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible. Her whole body was shaking. It didn’t even slow Tim down. He grabbed her by the arm and brandished the blade then slit the duct tape down the center.
“But you have to promise me you’ll be good,” he said, pointing at her with the blade of the knife. “You have to listen to what your big brother tells you.”
Riley’s ears were ringing. “You’re not—”
Tim whirled and stamped his feet. “Do not say that!” He looked like a child, his apple cheeks flushed a deep red, his eyes wild and unfocused.
He’s crazy, Riley thought.
She swallowed hard. “I was just going to ask you, how am I supposed to know you’re my brother? Where have you been all my life?”
Tim’s nostrils flared. “They left me. They left me like garbage, just like they’re planning on leaving you.”
“I—”
“I’ll prove it!” Tim raged.
He yanked her up and plopped her down in one of the aluminum chairs then wound a length of duct tape around Riley’s torso and arms. He held his finger to her. “Once you believe me, I’ll take that off. If you’re good.”
Riley blinked. Tim’s cadence and behavior swung from normal to almost childlike in a matter of seconds, and the switch was chilling—both sides Mr. Hyde.
She heard Tim tinker with some things behind her, and her mind started spinning. He was behind her with a knife. She couldn’t see what he was doing, had no idea what he was thinking.
She had to get him to free her. She had to find a way to get loose. Her eyes went to the rectangle of window that wasn’t covered by a sheet. She squinted, seeing nothing but darkness and the foot-sized hole she kicked through. Where were they? How long had they traveled—how long had she slept?
“There!” Tim dropped a large manila envelope on the table in front of Riley. He snatched it up again then upturned it. “Proof.”
Riley watched as pictures floated out of the envelope. “I don’t understand, Tim. What are these?”
One of the photos worked itself free from the envelope and floated down. It landed face up directly in front of her—an answer to her question.
The bottom fell out of Riley’s world.
She recognized the scene immediately—the birthday party from the postcard she received. But in this one, everyone was ready, grinning and facing the camera. The boy, dead center, eyes round and focused on his cake.
And Riley’s mother next to him.
SIXTEEN
Everything was a blur. Every thought, image, or memory she had shaken, false, wrong.
“That’s my mother,” Riley whispered.
Tim shuffled a few more pictures around then dropped another in front of Riley. It was the same scene, and he jabbed at it. “Dad.” His eyes cut to Riley and there was a crazed, pleased look in them. He jabbed again. “You.”
Riley leaned closer, scrutinizing the photo. She, her mother, and her father were all in this one. She, a toddler in a fluffy pink party dress, sitting on her father’s arm.
And Tim was right between them.
“That’s you?”
He nodded. “That was my ninth birthday. Mom made a coconut cake. You threw it up on your dress.”
Riley felt exposed, the intimate details of a past she didn’t even know laid out for her on a cheap aluminum table by a complete stranger.
“This is when you were smaller. We were all at the zoo.”
Another picture of this unknown happy family. Riley, a bald-headed infant, was reclining in a stroller. Tim, younger, but very much the same kid, grinning a toothless grin, his hand firmly held by Riley’s father while giraffes stood in the background.
“Do you remember this Christmas?” Tim pushed another snapshot in front of her. “You got a tricycle. I got a fire truck.”
A vague memory unhinged itself. Riley, small, being placed on a shiny red tricycle. She felt her father’s hand on the small of her back, giving her a gentle push. She could smell the fresh pine, and somehow knew that her mother was making noise in the kitchen, just off to her right.
Riley swung her head, her eyes scanning the debris pile then trailing back to what remained of the kitchen. “This was our house.”
Tim did a little happy jump. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, silly!”
Riley’s head started to throb. This was the house Jane Elizabeth O’Leary came home to after she was born at Granite Cay Hospital. They were in Granite Cay! It was a little more than a six-hour drive from Crescent City. Riley’s eyes ticked with moisture. Who was going to find her now? Would Gail, Hempstead—would her parents even think to look here?
“You’re surprised, aren’t you? I knew you would be.”
“What happened to it?”
Tim looked away, his shoulders slumping. “I tried to fix it up nice for you. But when you left, there was no one to take care of it. Homeless people came and tried to stay here, and the city tried to tear it down. I tried to make it nice th
ough.”
“Wh—what happened to you?”
His eyes were hard again. “They took me away.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
Tim gritted his teeth. “The people my parents left me with when they disappeared.”
There was a tightness in Riley’s chest. Why didn’t she remember Tim? Had her parents really left him? She didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence was scattered all around her. Riley cradled in her mother’s arms at the beach while Tim dug sand in the background. Her father and Tim, locked mid-arm wrestle.
Proof.
Her parents had left him behind. Tears clouded her eyes. She wanted to tell him he was wrong, that her parents would never do that, but the truth was she wasn’t sure she knew what her parents would do. She didn’t know who her parents were anymore. Nadine and Glen wouldn’t leave a child behind, but maybe Seamus and Abigail would.
“They didn’t tell you where they were going?”
Tim swung his head. “I was asleep.”
“And they left you here?” Riley gaped.
Who were these people?
“I was sleeping in my other house. The house where they put me.”
Riley wasn’t sure what to say. “So you gave me the postcards.”
Tim nodded. “But you didn’t do what I told you.”
“You said my parents weren’t who I thought they were. You said you knew who I was.”
“And then I came and found you. You were supposed to leave them and come with me. You were supposed to know what the postcards meant.”
Riley looked away. “You didn’t sign them or anything. How was I supposed to know who they were from? How was I supposed to find you?”
Tim sighed. “I was there, Janie. I was there with you the whole time.”
The pleased look on his face turned Riley’s stomach.
“Oh.” Tim clapped. “You must be hungry.” He went to an ice-packed cooler and picked something out. “I got you something special. Hot dogs! I remembered you love them.”
Riley couldn’t remember the last time she ate a hot dog. When her parents changed her name, had they changed everything else about her too?