The Con Code

by Shana Silver

  I raise my arms in the air, point my toe, and perform an adequate back walkover back handspring step out. After I stand, I throw in a little shimmy and a twirl, which I hope satisfies the dancing part of Natalie’s requirement. Then I blow on my fingertips as if I’m cooling off a smoking gun.

  Lakshmi claps louder and squeals. Colin rolls his eyes and shakes his head at me.

  When I slide back into my seat next to Lakshmi, I say loudly, “Now let’s see if that other Fiona can do that.”

  The other campers laugh, and the scandal instantly shifts into a crazy coincidence of an inside joke. Still, with our faces plastered on the news and on social media, I worry we won’t be able to keep up this ruse for long.

  CHAPTER 18

  Over the next week, we perfect the roles of model campers to prevent anyone from getting suspicious, arriving five minutes early for each counselor check-in, staying snuggled in our beds when the Daves conduct room checks, acting as photographers for all the perky photos the other kids take at scenic overlooks by the Grand Canyon, where the most scenic things Natalie looks at are Tig’s eyes (sans glare). The two have been sitting together on the bus, trading giggles, while I play along with Lakshmi, squealing at all the camper gossip she tells me, like how Lexi and Anderson may or may not be hooking up in the back of the bus (spoiler alert: they definitely are). Lakshmi’s good side, here I come! The teen tour provides the best disguise of all as it glides right through the FBI checkpoints, and the agents only give a cursory glance at the camper roster.

  I haven’t been able to crack the skull clue, but only because I haven’t had a moment alone. I’ve tried to turn it over in my mind while lying in bed, but it’s too difficult to decipher a complicated clue without using a pen and paper to make cross outs and notes. I also haven’t had a moment to even start on the forgery of the ancient book after the one I spent weeks on was confiscated by the FBI. I can’t risk working on either on the bus, in the hotel room, or anywhere anyone could walk by and see. And by anyone, I mean Lakshmi.

  So I lay low.

  And wait.

  But all that does is give me ample time on the long drives to dwell on my dad, stuck in a jail cell, no way out. And my mom, waiting at the end of the rainbow, hoping one day I might find her.

  I rattle a heavy breath, and Colin glances over at me from the next seat. Bronze light from the caramel-colored sky filters in through the window and makes him look like he’s gilded in copper. Without a word, he plucks one of the earbuds from his ear and passes it to me over the walkway like an olive branch. When I take it, our fingers brush, and he wraps his around my hand for the briefest moment, squeezing tight, before pulling away.

  The small act of compassion almost breaks me completely.

  I settle his earbud into my ear and lean close to him, our heads nearly connecting across the aisle. I let the soft melody of the rock ballad lull me, eyes closing, breath evening out. But I can’t concentrate on the lyrics because I’m reciting my own mantra. I’m going to find my mom. And maybe, together, we can rescue my dad. Somehow.

  * * *

  I’m still playing the Model Camper role when we stop for the night at some campground in the backwoods of Oklahoma the next day. I grit my teeth against all the complaints that lodge in my throat—What? No bathrooms?—and lug one of the C2C-issued tents to a spot at the edge of the clearing. The tall trees that circle the campsite and cast my spot in shadow provide the protection to stay hidden. The wind rustles my hair, carrying the scent of pine, woods, and barbecue from a nearby campsite.

  I spread my arms out to the side and twirl in the open air. No security cameras that could identify me in an instant. No elaborate plans to deal with right now. No undercover FBI agents combing the woods. No internet service. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve actually felt free.

  Or at least like we might not get caught.

  It reminds me of the last trip I ever took with my mom, right before she disappeared, when the three of us pitched a tent near a lake in Washington State and I thought nothing would ever be better than that.

  I wish I hadn’t been correct.

  The counselors pass out plates of lukewarm pizza into our waiting palms, since the hot-dog delivery never showed. My stomach lurches at the sight, a reminder of the school election and the rivalry that used to exist between Colin and me.

  The weird part is I can’t pinpoint which day it stopped.

  “Sleep with me!” Lakshmi hops in front of my Bear Attraction Lodge—blocking my optimal exit. All at once the feeling of being trapped returns, crushing my lungs, and I hug my arms to my chest like a shield.

  From the red bandanna draped over her boxer braids and the hiking boots that cover her feet, it seems she takes camping as seriously as she takes every other excursion we’ve been on. Around us, campers work in tandem, sliding metal poles through the slits in the dirt-streaked tarps. A few of the girls shriek as their structures collapse on top of them. Within seconds, Colin’s tent stands proud and unwavering, and even a little cocky. He parades around the duos, dispensing advice as if he not only has to be the best at everything, he has to let everyone know it.

  Thankfully boys are on the other side of the campfire. Sometimes playing by the rules has its perks. It can repel mortal enemies.

  I skid my new sneakers along the ground (forever defying Natalie’s dress code of wedges and short skirts), sending up a cloud of dirt over my bare ankles. “I promised Natalie…”

  “I think she plans to sleep with someone else. Figuratively and literally.” Lakshmi giggles and jerks her arm to where Natalie aligns solar panels in a patch of sunlight to charge Tig’s electrical equipment. Once set up, Tig places her oversize headphones over Natalie’s ears and then presses her cheek against Nat’s to listen as well.

  They’re working on both of the next heists simultaneously. Although perhaps the “work” part is optional for Natalie. For the Gibson Guitar Factory heist, Tig has been hacking into their system and planting backdated emails between the LA office and the Nashville office, marking them as read so they go unnoticed.

  For now, anyway.

  For the Hesburgh Library heist in Notre Dame, Natalie’s been doing remote recon with the help of Tig hacking into security feeds. She won’t have time—or the opportunity in such a low-traffic place—to tail her mark and mimic her mannerisms on the day of, so she needs to do it in advance.

  “Oh my gosh! I just had the best idea,” Lakshmi exclaims. “You should get your guitar from the bus and serenade us all tonight! Your hand seems way better now!”

  I freeze. I can tell you exactly where the famous Lucy guitar got a slight dent in the back—from Eric Clapton—but I cannot for the life of me tell you what a G chord sounds like. “Um, it’s electric. And there’s no electricity out here…”

  “Tig has solar charging panels, though! Look!” She points right in Tig’s direction.

  “But they don’t work on…” My eyes shift at movement in my peripheral vision. Natalie’s waving me over excitedly, and I welcome the excuse. “Hold that thought,” I tell Lakshmi, and drop the tent just in time for my knight in shining handcuffs to swoop in and help her. I stomp toward the (soon-to-be) lovebirds’ setup. The two perch on a fallen log, Natalie bopping her head to Tig’s tunes and Tig engrossed in a textbook filled with complicated math equations and grids that form swooping parabolas.

  Natalie beams a smile at me and points at Tig.

  I groan. “Oh no, did she convince you to forgo speech, too?”

  Natalie pulls the headphones around her neck and nudges Tig with her hip. “Show her.”

  Tig tilts her textbook toward me and wiggles her hand over it.

  I squint at her. “You’re showing me that … you really like studying?”

  She traces over two letters she’s written on the open page. Ag. Then she leans back, crosses her arms, and delivers me the most obnoxious eyebrow raise I’ve ever seen.

  “Ag? As in, Ag! I have cramps?�
� It shames me that I have to use so many words to communicate with her, while she gets to trump me with a single gesture.

  She sighs, blowing her bangs out of her face, and shoves the heavy book at me.

  “Flip to the back,” Natalie tells me as she stares so lovingly at Tig. I feel like I’m invading a private moment.

  Markings and crossed-out words fill the white paper on the inside cover. 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. Taking guidance from the line about first and last, Tig circled the first and last letter of each word longer than two letters to get yuweftadltadptmyadfyadtypytesdcefehnwn. From there, she tried a few ciphers each with the key FIONA like I did with the last clue, but she crossed out all those attempts. Then she tried the word past as the key, because the first sentence indicates first, last, and past are all important and connected. The Bifid cipher and the PAST key decrypted the code to a few letter sets: YWCAHA PMAGAB BAADDL YUERDR DTYDRD RTQISQ PC.

  The line the second chance future is hidden within led her to the second set of decrypted letters, thanks to the blatant use of the word second. The rest of the phrase—is hidden within—made her locate the letters hidden within the second set. There are only two letters in the center. So PMAGAB reduced down to only AG.

  I straighten, a mix of excitement and disappointment warring in my body. Disappointment because I wasn’t the one to decipher this, that Tig found a way to be stealthier than me. And excitement because AG is the answer and because maybe I’m not alone without my dad to help me. Maybe I can do this without him. We can.

  Even if the very idea sends little volcanoes erupting through my body.

  Even if I can’t ever tell him what I found.

  AG … Ag … I rack my brain for what AG might refer to but come up blank.

  I drop the book at Tig’s feet, but she doesn’t even notice. She’s too busy finding excuses to touch Natalie: helping her readjust the headphones, pushing her hair out of her eyes, holding her hand. I whip my head to look away, heart thumping.

  Scrambling back to my tent, I stop short at the sight of it already set up. With someone inside. And Lakshmi’s across the way, helping Ugly Dave unpack marshmallows. At least I kept my promise to Colin about the s’mores.

  My heart beats faster.

  I kick the lump and earn a low-pitched groan. When I crawl inside, a musty scent attacks my nose. Colin rests on my inflatable pillow, hands clasped behind his head, legs outstretched. He waggles his finger toward his chest, coaxing me to lie down next to him.

  “Don’t tell me you want to sleep with me, too? Because Lakshmi has dibs.”

  “Been there, done that. I’m mostly in your tent now to piss you off.”

  “Mission accomplished!” I flop next to him, curling close, then stroke my fingers along his forearm to accomplish the same. Instead he stills at my touch. I snap my hand back, and he inches away from me.

  Awkwardness creeps into the space between our bodies like a wedge.

  I clear my throat. “Tig deciphered the second clue. A. G.”

  His head perks up, minty shampoo drowning out the scent of pine. “Any idea what it means?”

  I bite my lip. “An address, maybe?” But none of my previous addresses match. “A location we once hit?” I don’t say the worst guess of all: Combining AG with the rest of the clues might just equal nonsense. Like all my mother’s musings.

  “Hopefully, it will make sense once we find the next two clues,” he says.

  Hopefully.

  “Speaking of which … you still haven’t told me what the last heist is. I know the guitar’s in two days, but then what?”

  A few days ago, I hesitated when he asked for more info about the guitar, but this time I tell him without missing a beat. “It’s a book Christopher Columbus once owned. A book bound in human skin.” I purse my lips. “Or, well, a replica of a book bound in human skin. So not as creepy.”

  Colin leans in, and a shadow from the sun hitting the tent casts him in the perfect ratio of chiaroscuro. “First a skull, then a book bound in human skin. Are we sure this is a heist and not some sort of weird form of ancient human trafficking?” He laughs to himself. “Just to be clear. We’re not peeling any humans and turning their skin into leather to replicate the book, right? Though I do seem to have a good candidate sitting right next to me.” He pats my shoulder.

  “Hey, don’t look at me.” I shrug. “My mom chose these items. Besides, there’s a guitar! That’s not morbid.”

  My mind flashes on Mom’s weird collection of oddities. A pickled finger. A petrified rat king. My umbilical cord blood, stolen from the lab she’d paid to store it.

  He tilts his head. “You two are a lot alike, you know.”

  His words tear through my chest. They’re words I always wanted to hear, but they’re also words that scare the shit out of me. “H-how?”

  “You don’t do what anyone expects you to do.”

  My hand flies up to grip my necklace, clutching it tightly. His words swim through me, buoying me upward.

  “What about you?” My voice is quiet, barely a whisper. “And your mom?”

  He absentmindedly lifts the photo of her from his back pocket and studies it for a second. “I wish I knew.” He swallows hard. “I wish I got to know her.”

  We lock eyes for a long moment, the spell only broken when he rakes a hand over his shaved head.

  I clear my throat and fumble for something, anything, to cut the silence. “But here’s the thing about the third heist.” My words come out in a rush. “I’m not even sure there’s going to be one.” I bite my lip. “The FBI confiscated the forgery of the book I made. I need to re-create it, but I’ve had zero opportunity with Lakshmi wanting to braid my hair and make friendship bracelets every two seconds.”

  He taps his lips with his finger, and I try not to look at how plump they are. “Can you create it in one night?”

  “The previous one took me weeks…” I sigh. “But I guess I’ll take whatever I can get.”

  Rule #13: Always create forgeries that can’t be traced back to you. Hence the stolen pages. But I will smash rule #13 in the proverbial kisser. It’s more important to get the clue, get out of there, and find my mother before the FBI does. If that means I can’t use a stolen sheet of paper from the 1400s to create a better forgery, then I’ll just have to use artistic tricks to fool the library until we safely vacate the premises.

  “Tomorrow night, I’ll find a way to keep Lakshmi out of your hair.”

  My first instinct is to snark, and a million comebacks fight for proximity to my lips. But instead I let my voice go soft. “Thanks.” I meet his eyes. “I appreciate it.”

  Outside the tent, I hear shrieks as two of the girls claim they just spotted a bear when it was only a tree, based on a third girl’s claim.

  “Um, guys?” Natalie pokes her head in the tent, looking grave. She thrusts her phone at me, an article already loaded onto the screen despite her phone showing only one bar of cell service. Colin leans over my shoulder, placing his thumb over mine to shift the screen between our pressed-together faces. We read the headline in silence, save for the racing of our pulses.

  Search Expanded into East for Escaped Fugitives

  Authorities now suspect escaped convict Colin O’Keefe and his accomplice Fiona Spangler were spotted at an amusement park in Southern California following an incident that occurred at a popular ride. A warrant is now out for their arrest in connection with vandalism and trespassing. Authorities believe the two might be in Oklahoma but heading toward Tennessee. The search for the fugitives has been expanded.

  The hair on the back of my neck prickles. Tomorrow, the bus heads from Oklahoma to Tennessee, with the FBI hot on our tail.

  CHAPTER 19

  After a night of mosquito bites and a day of nature-trail hiking/tripping over fallen sticks, all I want to do is crawl into a real bed in our new hotel and curl up in flu
ffy blankets (sans bedspread this time). But Colin promised me the time I need to re-create the book forgery, and this might be the only time I get, so when there’s a pounding knock against my hotel door, I leap to my feet. Darkness filters in through the gauzy curtains, casting the entire room in shadow.

  Lakshmi rushes out of the bathroom. “It’s probably Abby. It’s almost lights-out.”

  Natalie places her palms on Lakshmi’s shoulders and pushes her down onto the bed. “Listen. We need you to act cool.”

  Lakshmi’s head darts around squirrel fast, from me hovering between the beds to Tig on the chair, innocently surfing the web … or so it seems. She’s currently hacking into the hotel system and remotely unlocking one of the rooms.

  “What? Why?”

  “Fiona has somewhere to be tonight, and we’re going to cover for her.” Natalie grins.

  I grab my backpack from the floor. It’s loaded with all my art supplies plus a few Diet Cokes to help me battle the night.

  “Fiona? Ready?” Colin’s voice calls from outside.

  Lakshmi’s eyes widen. “But I thought he cheated—”

  I look away, my cheeks heating. I hate having to play the role of woman scorned but dumb enough to go back to the douchebag who scorned her.

  “He wants to make it up to her.” Natalie tacks on a little swoony sigh. “They just need some time alone to work it out.”

  Lakshmi leaps off the bed and starts pacing. “Oh God. This is completely against the rules. If you guys get caught, we’re all getting in trouble.”

  My confidence level for her being capable of staying silent hovers around 0 percent.

  “By the time Abby checks on us, Fiona will be snuggled in bed fast asleep.” Natalie shoves a bunch of towels beneath the covers and tucks a black wig inside so a few strands peek out.