I should have known the Koi would never let me go. Would never let Jordan walk away. There’s always a backup plan. Adrian is his.
“Betsy, what are you doing out here? Where’s Rosie?” Adrian steps between me and Jordan. Will he kill us both here in the parking lot? Or are there others lurking in the shadows?
“Who are you?” Jordan asks calmly.
Adrian glances at the bloody bandage on Jordan’s left hand. “Betsy, what’s going on?”
Jordan steps forward. Placing himself between Adrian and me. “Her name’s Kayla. Who the fuck are you?”
I touch Jordan’s shoulder. “Let’s just go, okay? Before the others come for us.”
Jordan doesn’t look at me. “What others?” he asks. “Who is this, Kayla?”
“He works for the Koi,” I say, but as soon as the words leave my mouth, I’m not sure. I want to take them back, but it’s too late.
Jordan reaches behind him and pulls a gun from his waistband. His hand doesn’t shake. The scary Jordan is back. The Jordan who will pull the trigger.
“Betsy?” Adrian cries. His hands go up to show they’re empty.
I don’t know what I’m doing. My feet move before my brain can catch up. I step between the gun and Adrian. I have a nagging feeling this is wrong. That I’m wrong. “Let’s just go, Jordan. No one will know you were here. Adrian won’t tell anyone.”
“No, Kayla. No witnesses. Move out of the way.”
I turn back to Adrian. His face leaks fear. It could be an act. He could be as good a liar as Jordan. This could be a game to him.
I stare him down and wait for him to do something. Something to show me who he really is. To call for backup or pull out his own gun and point it at my heart.
He doesn’t. His eyes stay locked on Jordan’s gun. He’s trembling.
I feel Jordan getting impatient behind me.
If I step to the side and let Jordan shoot Adrian, it could save my life.
If I step to the side and let Jordan shoot Adrian, it could be innocent blood on my hands. Again.
It’s my choice.
The longer we stay here in the parking lot, the more of a chance there is that a wedding guest will wander by. Wander by and witness Jordan and his gun.
“Kayla,” Jordan says.
“Betsy,” Adrian implores.
My head whips back and forth between them. I’m dizzy, like the weight of the decision will make me fall over. But I have to choose.
There’s only one person I know for sure is guilty. Only one stone-cold person who casually sold a little girl and watched her die. Only one person who haunts my nightmares.
I make my decision.
I reach into my purse and wrap my fingers around the gun. I flick the safety off, swing around, and aim. I close my eyes.
I pull the trigger.
The gun explodes and throws me back. My ears ring. My fingers tingle.
I squeeze my eyes closed tighter. I can’t look. Either Jordan is dead or he, or Adrian, is going to kill me now.
I flinch at the sound of screeching brakes and heavy-booted feet. Moans of agony. Thumping. Peeling tires.
Quiet.
“Betsy?” Warm hands wrap around mine. I open my eyes. I still have my arms out—gun pointed. Teddy takes it from me.
“Is he dead?” My whole body shakes. My heart and lungs won’t work together. I gasp for air.
Teddy shakes his head. “That was one hell of a shot. You hit him in the right arm. He’ll be okay.”
I look Teddy straight in the eye. “I was aiming for the carp.”
Teddy glares into the darkness. “The FBI has him now.” His face twists in disgust. “They had a van waiting.” He turns back to me and weighs the gun in his hand. “I don’t even want to know where you got this.” He pops the remaining bullets out.
Music from the party wafts over us. Thank goodness it’s loud. Almost blaring. Teddy looks in its direction. “We need to get you back there. Someone may have heard the shot.” He takes a step forward but then stops. Hard breathing makes us both turn around.
Adrian is pale and vacant-eyed, like he’s going into shock. Teddy moves to help him, but I put my arm out to hold him back. I didn’t let Jordan shoot him, but I’m still not fully convinced.
I get right in his face. “Are you one of them?”
“What? One of who?” His breathing is ragged. If this is for real, he’s going to pass out soon.
“Your carp.” I motion toward his pocket. “Why do you have it?”
“I got it in Seattle.” Gasping sucks of air. “It was the first big city I had ever been to. I got it to remind me there’s more to the world than San Justo.” I examine every inch of this face. “They were for sale everywhere,” he whimpers.
I pull the neck of my dress down until my carp shines under the parking lot lights. His eyes widen in surprise. You can’t fake that. He didn’t know what it was. He never knew anything about me. He’s telling the truth.
I slap my hand over my mouth as my eyes fill with tears. “Oh my God, Adrian, I am so sorry. The carp is their symbol. When I saw yours, I thought…”
He doesn’t look away from where my tattoo lies under my dress. “Couldn’t you have gotten a lucky cat figurine in Seattle?” I joke, and let out a forced, tear-smeared laugh. One that tries to cover up what almost happened. That I suspected Adrian this whole time. That I’ve been horrible to him. That I almost let him die.
Adrian’s fear turns into red-hot anger pointed right at me. “Who was that guy, Betsy, or whatever your name is? Who did you think I was?”
I shrink back. After what he’s seen, there’s no point in lying to him. “He’s a human trafficker and murderer.”
“And you thought I was working with him?” He points to my now-empty yellow purse. “You’ve been carrying a gun? What were you going to do? Shoot me?”
“I didn’t want to!” Tears stream freely down my face. “I wouldn’t have done it.”
That’s a lie, and he knows it.
His voice goes a deadly quiet. “Where’d you get the gun?”
I shake my head. I won’t tell him.
“You made Tomás do it, didn’t you? That was what he asked me to pick up for him. What Happy couldn’t find out about.”
I slap my hand over my mouth. The Walmart bag. Because Adrian is a good, loyal friend, he bought the gun that I almost killed him with.
I reach for him. “I’m so sorry. These things happened to me….”
He jumps back to avoid my hand. “No.”
That’s it. Probably the last word he will ever speak to me. He turns and leaves me standing in my frumpy dress under the dusty parking-lot lights.
Teddy jogs after him. “Son, we need to have a talk.”
A couple of guests approach them with worried looks on their faces. Teddy says something that makes them roll their eyes, shake their heads, and turn back to the party.
As soon as they’re all out of sight, I collapse to the asphalt. My brain can’t sort out everything that’s happened.
Everyone is alive. Even Jordan. A mixture of intense feelings swirls and twists through me. I can’t work out what they all are—relief, regret, love, hate. One thing I know for sure is I have no idea who I am right now.
Little feet in white patent-leather shoes click to a stop in front of me. “You didn’t come find me,” Rosie whines.
I wipe my eyes, sit up, and try to smile. “That’s because you did a great job hiding. A great job. I’m proud of you.”
She turns her head and purses her lips. “Who’s Kayla?”
My heart that had almost resumed a normal beat pounds again. If she saw any of what happened, I will never forgive myself. “Where did you hear that name?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
She holds Toxic Pink under my nose. “He wants to talk to Kayla.” She leans in close. “He’s kind of mean.”
I take the phone. “It’s probably a wrong number.” Despite it all, Rosie still has
her two flower baskets. I point to them. “I bet if you go find my mom, she’ll refill those for you.”
Rosie can’t resist renewing her flower girl duties. She bounces on her toes and skips off back to the party.
I place the phone to my ear. “Hello?” I whisper.
“I knew you would come in handy one day. Knew it the first time I saw you. Didn’t expect you to be as much trouble as you turned out to be, but what can you do?”
Hearing Weathers’s whiny little voice and imagining his weaselly face sets my teeth on edge and produces enough anger and adrenaline to propel me to my feet.
“You knew he was coming for me, and you didn’t try to stop him. You could have arrested him. Someone almost got killed.” Hot tears splash down my face.
Weathers sighs. “It’s not that easy. Do you know what would’ve happened if I’d arrested Jordan? He would have hired a fancy lawyer and made bail. Then he would have disappeared forever. You’d never be safe.
“I needed him to cooperate. To choose to turn on the Koi. And for that I needed you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Now he knows that I have you. I’ll tell him the same thing I told you: I’d happily put the Koi away for ordering the murder of a teenage girl. Your life will depend on his cooperation.”
“No!” I cry out. I won’t let him use me like this again.
Weathers laughs. “It’s a bluff, Kayla. One that will work. Jordan is oddly sentimental about you. He’ll be spilling his guts before we even get him in an interrogation room. It’s over. You’re free.”
“But what about the Koi?”
“I’ve been following Jordan since that funeral in Clairmont. I’m a hundred percent confident that the Koi thinks you’re dead. Keep that tattoo covered and no one will ever know.”
My head spins. After all that has happened, Jordan would give up everything for me?
“What’s going to happen to him?” It’s not anger in my voice now, it’s something else. Something soft. Something that makes me sick to my stomach.
Weathers hears it too. He clicks his tongue. “Oh, Kayla. Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental, too,” he mocks. “Jordan will be tried and convicted. He’ll cut a deal to avoid the death penalty. The Koi will go deep underground, now that we have his lieutenant. We’ll hold Jordan in a supermax until I find another way to ferret the Koi out.”
So many mixed-up emotions run through me that I don’t know what to say.
“Jordan will sign whatever statement I tell him to. You and your photos are not my problem anymore, Kayla,” he says with a definite finality.
“My name is Betsy.” I hang up.
“Betsy?” Mom calls from behind me. “What are you doing out here?”
I take a breath to compose myself and rub the tears out of my eyes.
I turn around. “I just needed to get away from people for a while.”
Concern crosses her face when she gets a good look at me, but then it resolves into satisfied exhaustion.
“It will be over soon.” She smiles. “It has to be. I’m almost out of flowers for Rosie.”
Teddy stands in the living room holding a bottle of sparkling cider and looking uncomfortable. This is his fake retirement party.
Mom smiles with pure happiness when she sees him. This party is real for her. It’s a party for us too. For Mom’s sake, Teddy sat us down the day after the wedding and gave us the formal news that the threat had been neutralized. We no longer needed protection and were free to do as we pleased with our lives.
He cringed when he said that last part, as if he expected Mom to pack up the car and take us back to Clairmont. She didn’t. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
Then Teddy dropped another bomb. He was “retiring” from the US Marshals Service. He looked at me meaningfully when he said it. I guessed that meant he fulfilled whatever his deal was with Weathers, and he too had been released and left by the side of the road.
Adrian won’t speak to me, but otherwise, things are good. Peaceful. Normal. Still, there’s a buzzing in the back of my brain. It’s been there since the wedding, humming in the background like a generator in my head, distracting me from class, making me absentminded and forgetful.
By the beginning of May, the buzzing consumes my every waking moment. I have to do something.
I text Happy that I’m sick and can’t see her after school. I go straight home. The house is quiet. Mom will be at the flower shop for another couple of hours.
Teddy got rid of the black monster. So I hold the beat-up stuffed bear in my lap and dial the number from the call Toxic Pink received the night Jordan was taken away.
As soon as he picks up, I start talking. “Who was Grace, really?” My question is greeted with silence.
“Who was she?’ I demand.
Silence.
“The Koi’s still out there. He’s still hurting children.”
A long, deep sigh.
—
School will be over in two weeks. The sweltering San Justo summer stretches out in front of us. Mom’s good work at Angie’s wedding has spread all over town. She’s in high demand. Her boss agreed they needed extra help, so soon, I will be joining the ranks of part-time florist-in-training. It will be nice. Mom and I are still getting to know each other and making up for all those years we missed.
I tie the trash bag in the kitchen. Buried at the bottom in a million pieces, under coffee grounds and apple cores, is the letter I had written to Marie, the one I didn’t send because Tomás showed up with my shoe. The ink on the address was too smeared to read. And anyway, it has to be over. I’m letting Marie go.
I convinced Teddy to take Mom out on a real date to a real restaurant in El Paso. He came to pick her up an hour ago. He was wearing a suit coat and holding a bunch of grocery store flowers. He didn’t get the irony, and Mom was polite and gracious as she fluffed them in a vase and filled it with water. I don’t expect them back anytime soon.
Happy and Tomás are visiting Happy’s dad. He adores little Manny. He’s even talked about buying a bigger house so they can all live together. Happy said her stepmother wrinkles her nose every time he mentions it.
I’m alone tonight. No one is going to randomly show up at the front door. It’s just me and my thoughts.
Even though it’s too warm for it, I’m wearing Finn’s sweatshirt. It feels soft and comforting against my skin. It makes me think of some of the nice but blurry memories I have of being little, when I was too young to know what was going on around me.
I lift the trash bag out and walk it to the side of the house. The trumpet vines on the neighbor’s fence are in their full glory, opening their big orange blooms to invite marauding bees and hummingbirds.
I lift the giant lid of the black trash can, and it thumps against the wall.
“You’re a lot of trouble, little girl.” A voice echoes off the stucco wall of the house.
I drop the bag onto the rocks and turn around.
The Koi has his shirtsleeves rolled up. Sweat beads on his forehead. An unlit cigarette rests between his lips.
My heart pounds like the bass in Tomás’s truck. “So I’ve been told,” I say.
He laughs and lifts a lighter to the cigarette. He blows a stream of smoke over me and runs his eyes up my body. He stops over my heart, shakes his head, and takes another drag, as if he can’t believe Jordan would be so stupid as to want me in their nasty club.
“Her name was Grace,” I say in a solid, clear voice. If I’m going down, I’m going to make him listen to me first.
He’s unmoved. His face stares blankly at mine. “The girl. Her name was Grace. She was six years old.” And no one ever reported her missing.
“That’s of no consequence,” he says. “Yes, I lost out on an investment, but she was in the way. Jordan should have known better than to be fooled by a cop.”
“You didn’t have to do it.”
He laughs. “I didn’t have to kill them, you me
an? Oh, little girl, you are so young. I’m a businessman. I had to kill them. They were a liability.”
His hand doesn’t move fast. It’s almost as if he wants me to run away, like chasing me would make it all the sweeter. I don’t run. I stand tall in front of him.
The gun points at my heart. At the carp. It has a silencer on the end like in the movies. “I don’t have liabilities.”
Pain spreads across my chest, almost before I hear the sound. It’s not loud. Just a quick pop-pop. As I fall backward, bees scatter from the trumpet vines and lift off into the clear, blue, evening sky. My head hits the ground. Pain shoots up my neck.
The sky goes black.
I crack one eye open. Everything aches. My chest, my head. My leg is asleep. I try to breathe. Inflating my lungs makes my whole upper body scream.
“Hurts like a mother, doesn’t it?”
I raise an eyebrow—just about the only motion that doesn’t hurt—at the figure leaning over me. I snort.
He laughs. “What? You’ve met me, right? You think no one has ever taken a shot at me?” Weathers pulls aside the neck of his shirt to expose the strap of a bulletproof vest. “Never leave home without it.”
I tentatively rub my head. “That is not my fault.” Weathers points. “My job was to keep you from getting killed. You hitting your head on the way down is not my fault.”
“Did you get him?” I rasp.
Weathers looks like a little kid who has been handed the keys to a magic candy shop. “Yep. Him, his men, his confession to killing Christiansen and the girl. We simultaneously raided his known associates. We’ve taken down the whole ring.”
“So it’s over for real this time?”
He pats my hand awkwardly, like someone who isn’t used to much human contact. “It’s over.”
“Where’s my stuff?”
He rolls his eyes but retrieves a large manila envelope from a briefcase in the corner.
“Social security cards and driver’s licenses for you and your mother. Totally legit and clean.”
I undo the clasp and peel it open. On top are transcripts. My real transcripts from Clairmont, but printed on the letterhead of a high school in Williston, North Dakota.
The Truth Beneath the Lies Page 24