The Con Code

by Shana Silver

  Colin’s flailing continues. A few more people jump into the water to try to help. We could do that, sure, but I worry they’ll take everyone in the water for questioning or maybe to an infirmary. We can’t risk that.

  Natalie and I maneuver over the seats in the empty boat and then climb into the next one, landing directly beside two people. They scoot over and look at me like I’m crazy. “Hey! What are you doing?”

  “Sorry!” I make my voice sound desperate. “My friend fell in the water!”

  They immediately scoot over to let us pass. The people in the row ahead of us do the same and even offer their hands to help us climb over the divider into their seat. We scale the next two rows, and when we reach the back, we jump over a foot of water to reach the next boat. The boat Colin jumped from.

  The boat Lakshmi’s in.

  I fall into her row, sinking onto the hard seat and crossing my arms over my chest while the backpack wobbles on my knees.

  Lakshmi screams in horror at the sight of us. “Where—where did you come from?”

  “We were a few rows in front!” I jut my thumb behind me and try to sound panicked. “I heard Colton’s screams. Is he okay?”

  “But—” Lakshmi opens her mouth and then snaps it shut, her brow furrowing in utter confusion. Then she shakes it off and tackle-hugs me. “I’m so scared for him!” Tears leak from her cheeks onto my lap.

  “Me too.” I allow myself to settle into her embrace, relaxing for the first time in hours. “Me too,” I whisper again, only this time I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

  I place my hand over my mouth and let out a sob just as the emergency door swings open and Amy shuffles through with an army of crew members. They manage to lift Colin out of the water and bring him to shore. He sprawls out on the rocky terrain, arms spread wide, chest pumping raggedly in a grand show of weakness.

  The lights switch on, harsh and bright, but the ride stays stopped. My eyes widen at Natalie.

  “Your nose,” I whisper in haste.

  She covers her nose with her hand as she digs into the bag to find the prosthetic. A pretend sneeze provides the cover she needs to fix it back on.

  The medical crew lead Colin out the emergency exit along with the rest of the people who jumped in the water.

  Amy stands at the edge of the scenery, her eyes sweeping over everyone. “Did anyone see where the security officer went?”

  “You’re the security officer!” someone shouts. Amy studies everyone, scrutinizing every face. Natalie and I paste on our best innocent, confused expressions.

  “Damn it,” Amy mumbles to another security officer. “She must have exited through one of the other doors. If she went all the way down to ten, she could have gotten out by the carpets.”

  “I’ll send a crew to look there,” he says, and Amy nods.

  “Folks, we’ll be starting up the ride in a second to get you all out of here. Sorry about the disturbance, but we’ll be handing out some free food vouchers as you exit, to make up for the mishap.”

  The security crew leaves. The lights dim. And somehow we’ve managed to make it out of here with the skull in hand and some free dinner.

  CHAPTER 17

  Natalie opens the bathroom door to shocked silence. Her fake dark curls drip small puddles of water onto the taupe carpet, and a white towel hides the curves she usually conceals with disguises. “No word yet?”

  Tig’s fingers fly fast across the keyboard, hacking into whatever systems she can to try to find any info about what happened to Colin. But the concerned look on her face and the way her tongue lolls out of her mouth in concentration provides all the updates she has: a big wad of nothing. His burner phone went kaput once it sank to the bottom of a six-foot-deep water ride. A pit of worry swims deep in my gut. What if they run his fingerprints and connect him to his past?

  I pace the hotel room, creating tread marks on the carpet with my heavy footfalls. When I convinced Colin to uproot his life and help me, I promised him the one thing I thought I could truly offer: protection. If he joined my crew, he’d become my family. I’d have his back, always. And yet I failed. I got him caught.

  Lakshmi reaches toward me but then snaps her hand back on second thought. She bites her lip and wrings her hands. After a moment, she holds her phone out to me. “Did you see this?”

  Technical malfunction shutters popular ride for hours.

  The article’s posted on a national media site. Embarrassment creeps into my veins. Oh God, if it’s posted here, anyone might see it. My dad might see it. If he knew how royally we screwed up that heist, he’d be so disappointed in me. Ugh.

  There’s a sharp knock on the door, and I jump in surprise, almost dropping Lakshmi’s phone. I shove it into her hands and race toward the door while everyone else springs to their feet.

  When I twist the knob, the smirk on Colin’s face offers me the first sense of relief I’ve felt in days. “Miss me?”

  We circle around him, but before he even has a chance to speak, Lakshmi’s cell phone buzzes. She frowns at the screen. “It’s my grandma. I have to take this. Don’t tell us anything until I get back. I want to hear it all!” She heads into the hallway to take the call. Clearly she doesn’t trust me not to eavesdrop. (Smart girl.)

  I dead-bolt the door against Lakshmi’s inevitable return and wheel on Colin. “What happened?”

  He shrugs. “Mandatory medical exam mostly. And then a shit ton of paperwork. And then Abby had to fill out a shit ton of paperwork. And then she spent hours trying to get in touch with my parents, but couldn’t, because Adam and Marsha Buttz technically don’t exist in real life. Though Marsha does have a lovely voice mail message.”

  Natalie clears her throat. “I’ll call Abby later and pretend to be Marsha.” She pats him on the shoulder. “Glad to hear my son’s okay.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Security didn’t suspect you at all?”

  He shakes his head. “Honestly, they were more worried about me suing them than anything else.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut as tension drains from my shoulders. He’s safe. We’re all safe.

  “So, what does the clue say?” He looks to each of us.

  “We haven’t even had a chance to look yet thanks to Clingy McGee.” I lift the skull from the backpack with greedy fingers and hold it high in the air as if I’m reenacting the opening scene of The Lion King. The rest of them huddle around the skull like it’s a holy grail about to grant us eternal life. The hazy light filtering in through the curtains blurs the surface of the skull. I flip on the nearest lamp and blink against the sharp pop of light exposing all the cracks in the clay … and all its secrets.

  You were my first and my last and my past. A melody and a felony and a tragedy in propensity. The second chance future is hidden within.

  I scan the carving again for any spark of familiarity, but it reads like all the other nonsense my mom spewed instead of relaying sage parental advice. My first instinct is to immediately pick up my phone and call Dad to tell him what I’ve found. So we can try to decipher it together. But the anvil in my gut drops to the floor at the realization that I can’t rely on him anymore. I shove the skull at Tig. Natalie leans in, too. For a brief moment, Natalie’s finger entwines with Tig’s before they both jerk away.

  A calming hand lands on my shoulder, and when I spin around, Colin’s staring at me with an intensity that makes me shiver. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I—” I swallow past my dry throat. “I need time to make sense of it.”

  He gives me a small, crooked smile. “Well, how much time do we have before the next heist?”

  This, I can focus on. “Eight days, and zero of that week includes alone time to crack the clue without the harshmellow crowding on me.”

  “We’ll find time.” Colin bites his lip. “But I think what’s more important right now is having the proper time to plan the next heist. So it, you know, goes halfway decently.” He glances up at me from beneath his eyelashes. “Which mea
ns telling me what the next heist is.”

  I nod. He’s right. “That guitar I’ve been carrying around? It’s a replica of the one Eric Clapton gave to George Harrison who used it to write ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps.’ It’s currently on special display at the Gibson Guitar Factory.”

  He snorts. “So the most famous guitar in the world?”

  My mom used to tell me tall tales about how the guitar—nicknamed Lucy—was stolen in the seventies and Harrison went to great lengths to retrieve it. He refused to put it on display or part with it until his death in 2001 when his estate inherited it. Or so they think, my mom used to say with a weird glint in her eye.

  “We’re going to get them to take the guitar off the wall and hand it to us.” I pull back to give him my widest grin.

  He sputters. “And how—”

  “By tricking them into thinking they were supposed to ship the guitar to another location. There’s a Gibson Brands showroom in LA. When the Nashville office discovers they messed up and LA needs Lucy that night thanks to backdated emails Tig’s already planting”—we glance at Tig, and she gives us a thumbs-up—“they won’t be able to take the usual precautions. They’ll have to put someone on a plane and hand deliver it. Then we distract that person outside long enough to switch the guitars.”

  Colin purses his lips. “But what if they call the LA office?”

  “We’re going to pretend to be the LA office and call them.”

  “Tig’s going to mask my number.” Natalie holds up her phone in demonstration. “When I dial the Nashville office, it’ll look like it’s coming from LA. I’ll impersonate the CEO and ream them out for not sending the guitar. I’ll insist one of the interns hand deliver it.” She lifts her nose in the air, affecting an air of snootiness.

  Colin nods. “I like it. And let me guess, I’m the one acting as the employee who will be hand delivering it?”

  I laugh. “It’s a small office. We’d never be able to convince them of that.” I pat his hand. “Once the intern exits the building, you just have to distract him or her long enough for me to perform a little switcheroo while the intern’s back is turned.”

  Sinking onto the bed, Colin taps his finger against his lip. “The plan’s okay except for all the holes and assumptions.”

  I splay a hand against my heart. “I think that’s the highest compliment you’ve ever given me.” I purse my lips. “But we need to be perfect this time. We were sloppy with the skull and barely got out of there without getting caught.”

  There’s a twist to the doorknob and then a sharp knock.

  “The Barnacle has returned.” I groan and shove the skull into my suitcase. Natalie sidles closer to Tig on the bed and leans in to whisper something. Tig digs her laptop from her bag, settling it on both their legs, their thighs pressed together.

  Colin glances at them for a beat too long. “I should go. My roommates probably think I died in a six-foot moat.” He heads toward the door, and I sink onto the desk chair.

  One step closer, but still so very far away.

  * * *

  The next morning, Natalie, Barnacle, Tig, and I are getting ready for breakfast when Natalie gasps so loudly while scrolling through her phone that Lakshmi drops her curling iron.

  We all look at her expectantly, and she widens her eyes at us while hiding her phone behind her back.

  My pulse spikes at whatever she must have seen on her screen.

  Lakshmi laughs and lunges for Natalie. “Let me see! Let me see it!”

  Natalie scrambles to her feet to back away, but all that does is give Lakshmi the opportunity to reach behind her and swipe the phone away. Her eyes widen when she glances at the screen, then back at me, then at the screen again. “Oh my God. That looks just like you and Colton!”

  She hits a few buttons, and the volume blasts on a video clip.

  I march over, trying not to let it show how much my hands are shaking, and snatch the phone from her. She’s already rewound the video to the beginning and leans over my shoulder to watch with me despite my protests.

  Colin’s mug shot graces the news segment. The photo shrinks to one side of the screen, and a new photo emerges, my high school yearbook photo, where I look entirely too much like a goody-goody in my pristine uniform, nude lips, and cheery smile. Remind me never to let Natalie give me a makeover when it might be immortalized in print.

  I freeze, panic climbing my spine. Until now, my story had only hit the police blotters and local San Fran and Reno news. The scroll on the bottom of the video flashes the words Be on the lookout: Colin O’Keefe and Fiona Spangler and also our heights and weights. Which they so got wrong. Both cameras and the FBI add ten pounds.

  Lakshmi increases the volume on the phone even more to drown out the laughter coming through the wall from the campers in the next room.

  “… escaped from house arrest…,” the news reporter says. A new image pops on the screen, this one of the empty box of black hair dye from the lost backpack. The yearbook photo reappears, now photoshopped to give me long black hair as the reporter explains my possible change in appearance. Colin’s hair has been darkened as well, even though it was dark to begin with. “Eyewitnesses believe the two may be traveling together in Southern California…” A new photo fills the screen, this one taken from the side, of a girl with long black hair standing in the shadows near the pirate ride. Right location, wrong person.

  Blood whooshes in my ears, and my fingers twist my necklace. I can still see the roller coasters from my hotel window.

  The FBI knows where we are … but maybe this means Dad does, too. Glass half-full and all that. I can’t get a message to him myself, but at least now he’ll realize I’m finishing the mission we both started.

  Lakshmi gasps at the screen. “That’s so weird how much those people look like you guys!”

  “Yeah, that’s why I gasped initially! Those criminals do look just like you.” Natalie lets out a hearty laugh, as if she finds this coincidence hilarious. “But clearly one has a different first name, and your last names are way different, too,” she points out, so Lakshmi won’t miss it.

  “Crazy!” I flop onto the bed as if I don’t have a care in the world, even though my heart is thumping faster than most marathon runners’. “But at least neither of us have a permanent record,” I joke. “Yet.” I punch the wall behind me. “These loud-ass girls in the next room might convince me to murder someone.”

  Lakshmi steals one last glance at the phone before letting out a laugh of her own and passing it back to Natalie. She buys it. For now.

  But the video is already going viral within my small circle of (mis)trust. A peek at my Facebook page shows all the concerned and worried messages from the people who never cared about me in high school until I may have run away with the guy everyone couldn’t wait for to return.

  Vance Whitford: Damn you two. I hope you’re not eating double doubles without me. Also, I’m assuming this means we have a clean slate and I don’t owe you any more favors?

  Olivia Rossdale: OMG. I hope you guys are okay. I’m not sure how I’ll get through school without you next year!

  Jessica Sanchez: You bitch! I trusted you! You ran away with MY boyfriend! He was going to come back to ME in the fall!

  Amelia Thomas: Jessica, you weren’t actually dating him so … might want to edit that comment there. Fiona, if you’re reading this, I’m very impressed. And a little concerned! Hope you’re YOLOing it up and all that.

  I snicker. Of course Vance only cares about the favors and the burgers, and Olivia’s freaking out about how she’s going to have to attend every single class next year like a model student and not a truant one. And Jessica appears to still be brainwashed by Colin’s magnanimous smile. At least Amelia is taking her role of president right and setting everyone straight.

  While Lakshmi heads down to breakfast early to talk Abby’s ear off about her thoughts on the tour so far, I alter my face with Natalie’s help: nose a little longer than usu
al, cheekbones shifted higher, severe winged eyeliner and excessive contouring. The changes shouldn’t be too jarring in person, but when you compare photos of the new me and the old me, there will be clear differences. She helps Colin, too, rushing to his room to give him a more prominent chin.

  By the time breakfast begins, Tig has erected a fake Facebook page for incognito me with photoshopped pics dated to place me at a scene far away from my past crimes. All Google searches for our fake names, Fiona Queen and Colton Buttz, lead to the curated sites she populates with random info: backdated newspaper articles about me winning school art awards, my grades accidentally leaked and better than I could ever achieve, an ex-girlfriend still hung up on Colton according to her fake Snapchat account, a blog Colton maintained to chronicle his Hearts for Vandals obsession.

  Natalie trails her finger down Tig’s arm in thanks, and Tig’s cheeks combust in a blush.

  Word of mouth fills in the rest as Natalie deflates any rumors of us looking like Colin and the other Fiona by regaling the rest of the campers with stories about fake me as if she’s drafting an entire novel of fan fiction starring her best friend. “This one time,” she tells James Kennedy while chewing a bite of maple French toast, “Colton broke his leg on a class trip to a horse stable. And he wasn’t even riding!”

  Colin turns bright red. “It was muddy. I slipped.”

  Natalie slaps her hand down on the table. “And oh my God. Remember the time that Fiona and her ex Travis rocked the homecoming dance by performing this amazing choreographed routine that involved crazy flips.” Natalie leans back, shaking her head fondly at the nonexistent memory. “Oh man, people are still talking about that.”

  “Oh yeah?” James raises a bushy eyebrow. “Let’s see.”

  I stow away my glare at Natalie and push my chair out from the table. In the thin aisle between the buffet stations and our long table, I stand up. The campers scoot their chairs in, each head turning to watch me expectantly. Colin wears an amused expression while Lakshmi claps in anticipation. Dancing is not one of my many talents, but the flips I can handle.