by Tess Sharpe
August 8, 10:20 a.m.
HT1: Do you have Frayn? Is he out there with you?
O’Malley: You know, this would go easier if I had something to call you.
HT1: Fifteen seconds, Deputy.
O’Malley: I’m not a deputy. Just putting that out there. I’m a civilian, like you. Unless . . . you weren’t always a civvy.
HT1: The words coming out of your mouth have nothing to do with Frayn.
O’Malley: Well, I do have a deputy here with me now. I’m sure you heard the sirens earlier. And the deputy informs me that Mr. Frayn was in a car accident this morning. He’s in the hospital.
HT1: You’re lying. Stalling.
O’Malley: No, I don’t do that.
HT1: Well, that’s unfortunate for everyone in this bank, then.
O’Malley: It does not have to be that way. I’m sure whatever you want from Mr. Frayn, I can get you.
HT1: We’re done here.
O’Malley: Let’s talk about—
[Call disconnected]
— 18 —
10:30 a.m. (78 minutes captive)
1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys
Plan #1: Scrapped
Plan #2: Work in progress
“Hurry, hurry,” Iris whispers as I lower myself out of the vent and back down into the office with them. “One of them keeps yelling out there. He’s pissed.”
I roll out of the way once I hit the floor, and Wes pushes a chair under the vent.
“Okay, we need to change our plans,” I say, standing as Wes scrambles up on the chair.
There’s no time for modesty. Casey’s turned her back politely, but Wes and Iris are busy, and honestly, the two of them have seen me in my bra, so I tear my shirt off, shake it free of as much dust as I can, and flip it back right side out.
“What happened?” Iris asks as she hands Wes the vent cover.
“I called Lee with the office phone while I was in there. They’ve barricaded the front,” I explain as I tear off my pants. Shake them, too. Back on they go, and then I’m grabbing my boots and flannel. “We can’t get out that way. The only way out is through the basement.”
“The sheriff—”
“Can’t make a move until SWAT shows up.”
“That’s gonna be hours!” Wes hisses, pushing the vent back into place and jumping down from the chair. I hand him the scissors.
“Is there dust in my hair?” I ask, bending down so Iris can look. She runs her fingers through it, getting rid of any fuzz.
“What are we going to do?” she asks.
“We need to separate them,” I say. “Sow distrust.”
“How?” Wes asks.
Before I can answer, I hear a loud “What the fuck?” from down the hall. And then “Check the rooms, now!”
They’ve discovered the open office door.
“Get in the corner,” Wes says, tucking the scissors into his jeans and under his shirt. He almost picks Casey up in his haste to get her out of the line of sight. We huddle together as the screech of their makeshift blockade being dragged away fills the room. There’s a pause, silence that stretches, unbearable, and then Gray Cap stalks inside, red crawling up his neck and eyes burning.
A vein pulses on his forehead. I can see it throb under the shadow of the cap. Wes breathes deep, like he’s trying to take up more space to shield us, and I can feel Casey shaking, her shoulder pressed up against the back of my arm.
Gray Cap slaps the sticky note on the wall in front of us, my You’re welcome adorned with a little star instead of an apostrophe for extra flair.
“Which one of you did this?” he demands.
No one looks at anyone. Wes and Iris don’t know what to do. Casey’s terrified.
I lift my chin, then I lift my hand.
And I smile.
— 19 —
Samantha: Dainty, Delicate, Demure
Being Samantha is the first time my mom pulls a long con since I was born. I’m old enough now, she tells me. I’ve learned enough.
I’m proud that she trusts me. I don’t understand the consequences. The differences between being someone for a few weeks or months versus being someone for years.
Samantha is eight, and she wears her hair in double French braids, because mothers in the rich suburb Abby’s moved us into have the time to French-braid their daughters’ hair each morning. She has a tea set in her playroom and a mountain of stuffed toys. Sometimes I slip one of them into my own room and sleep with it like it’s something secret and shameful. I edge away from comfort without understanding why, already drawing the line between them and me. Why would Samantha’s stuffed bear soothe me when I slip free of her after the lights go out, and then it’s just darkness and the girl no one is allowed to know?
She is hard to escape. She is hard to hold on to, in the dark or the day. So I hold on to the bear instead.
Samantha is a test. A soft rollout, if you will. Abby needs to make sure I can play the perfect daughter before she twists her way into the life of a man who wants one. So she doesn’t target a man. Abby’s mark is a woman—the woman who lives next door, a mother named Diana, who has a little girl the same age as me. Her husband died, and the money he left her is what Mom wants.
Mom is Gretchen this time, a widow like Diana, which is true, but also it’s not. So many things are true, but not.
She spins a tragic story of a man who loved her, who died too soon, before he could even meet his little girl. It tugs at the heartstrings, and we slide right into place in the cookie-cutter house in the beige neighborhood, into playdates and ballet classes and fresh-baked brownies on the counter each Friday.
I go to school for the first time, and it’s easier than I’d expected and more boring than I could have dreamed. I don’t like it. I read under my desk, but my teacher calls me back after class when she catches me, and I know not to cause ripples like that, so I stop.
Samantha can’t cause ripples. Samantha has to be perfect. Dainty, delicate, and demure.
Mom gives me three words for each girl I have to be. Rebecca had been sweet, silent, and smiling.
The quieter I am, the more they forget I’m around. And people—men, especially, I will find—say and do the most secret things out loud when they don’t think you’re important. When you’re sweet and you fetch beers and slice limes and are never a bother. I wasn’t real to any of them, and when you’re not real, the things you learn are endless.
But the men are not important yet. Samantha’s mark is. Because I have a bigger role to play in this con than I ever had before.
Diana has no idea what to do with her daughter and no interest in finding out how to. I walk into the house for the first playdate, and by the time I walk out, I understand why Mom dressed me in patent leather shoes and lace socks and a neat, prim dress that goes with the double French braids hanging down my back, tied with ribbons.
Diana wants a daughter like Samantha: frilly and lacy and very, very pink.
Her daughter is not like that. We spend most of our playdate bouncing on her trampoline, and she’s all about the double bounce, even though we’re not supposed to. Victoria is fearless and free in a way kids are supposed to be, and every second I spend around her, it sinks in how different we are. How different I am from Victoria and Samantha and any other kid who was raised to live childhood instead of fake it.
When Mom comes to pick me up, Diana sighs over how lovely my dress is and how she wishes she could get Victoria out of her jeans and into such a pretty dress, and Victoria rolls her eyes. I want to shoot her a smile, because I don’t like the dress much either, but Samantha likes the dress. Samantha is perfect. The perfect daughter. Always obedient and smiling. Playing quietly in her room with her stuffed toys and her tea set, her hair angelic gold down her back. She’s so sw
eet. What’s your secret, Gretchen?
Samantha has no needs or wants. She exists to serve someone else’s.
When we’re in the safety of our own home, the expensive curtains drawn and Mom finger-combing my hair free of the tight braids, she says, You did good, baby, and the hot glow of pride almost blots out the twist of guilt when I think about Victoria rolling her eyes.
I sink into the role of the delicate little doll-daughter that Diana wants easily. She loves me, and she spends so much time hovering in the doorway, watching Victoria and me play. You’re such a good influence, Samantha, she tells me, and I don’t understand it then, what she’s actually saying. I don’t understand what she’s afraid of.
I guess Diana would be surprised that the one dressed in frills turned out to be the one skipping down the rainbow path toward bisexual city. Though, who knows, maybe Victoria realized her mother’s worst fears. I kind of hope not, because looking back, Diana seemed like the disowning not in my house type. Back then, I didn’t know enough about it—or myself—to see the coded worry in her, but Mom does. Mom creates Samantha to stoke it. It’s sick. It’s twisted. It’s dangerous.
It’s my mother, in a nutshell.
Mom wiggles her way into Diana’s life so neatly; they have coffee together most mornings, dropping Victoria and me off at school while they go off to yoga and then errands, and then one day Mom is casually mentioning this business idea she has, a knitting store, and Diana is falling, hook, line, and sinker.
Mom is good; there are inventory lists, and they tour storefronts and talk supply chains and it’s so convincing and Mom’s the kind of support system that Diana needs and I’m so perfect. I’m the kind of daughter she wants, the kind she imagined she’d have, who’d be soft inside and out and sew her own doll clothes and not double-bounce on the trampoline or run gleefully through the greenbelt behind our houses until the burrs stick to her jeans and I have to bend and pick each one off Victoria’s cuffs because Samantha doesn’t like mess.
“Why can’t she just be happy?” I ask Mom, once. “Victoria’s nice. She doesn’t get into trouble. Why does she want someone different?”
“We’re hardly ever happy with what we have,” she tells me, one of her universal truths.
My stomach sinks. “Are you happy with me?”
Most mothers would rush to reassure. They wouldn’t pause and contemplate.
“You’re learning so fast,” she says. “Faster than your sister did. Faster than I did.” She leans over and smooths a hand over my hair. “You’re a natural. We’re gonna be something, baby.”
It’s not an answer, and she’s honed me enough, even this young, to see that. But I’m too young to play the game she’s shoved me in.
I won’t be for long.
— 20 —
10:36 a.m. (84 minutes captive)
1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys
Plan #1: Scrapped
Plan #2: Maybe working
He drags me down the hall by the back of my shirt. Iris screams my name, and the sound scrapes inside me worse than my knees against the carpet.
“Stay there and watch them,” he tells Red Cap, and the anger in his voice is enough to keep Red Cap from doing anything but obeying.
I go limp. I do not fight. I let him yank me like a doll across the floor and heave me into the lobby. Then I’m on the ground and my cheek’s pressed against the cold tile, and I roll away and up before he tries to kick me. They always try that. It’s like they can’t resist. Getting to my feet hurts, but so does getting kicked in the ribs.
I hadn’t expected this level of anger. What had Lee said to him? She would’ve known better than to antagonize him, so whatever she said, she hadn’t realized it was a land mine.
That was bad. What if I stepped on it, too?
We’re three feet apart, and I can see the front doors from here. They’ve moved the big cabinets from the back against them, blocking them completely, holing up for the long haul.
Whatever’s in that safe-deposit box is important.
“You think you’re smart?” he asks.
“I think I want to survive . . . and you wanted in that office.”
He lets out a breath that maybe is a humorless laugh in another reality. He doesn’t have the shotgun on him, I realize. There’s a gun at his hip, but the shotgun’s out of play.
Where is it? With Red Cap?
“I’ve gotta hand it to you, kid, you’ve got guts. No fucking sense. But guts.”
“Just lending a hand.”
“Mighty big of you, considering I’m gonna shoot you and your friends.”
It’s like a sucker punch, hearing him say that so casually. To confirm my worst fears. What I knew deep down the second I saw they weren’t wearing masks.
“I’d like to avoid that, if at all possible,” I say, and damn, does it come out steady.
He lets out another huff. I’ve snagged his interest. My gaze is unwavering. If you blink too much, they get nervous. If I show fear, he’ll feed off it. He likes it. But he’s interested in what doesn’t fear him, because he’s interested in making it fear him.
“Who are you?” he asks, and I know he’s not asking for my name. This question is something more.
This question is Why did you risk yourself and Why aren’t you crying and Why aren’t you shaking and all the questions that really boil down to What the fuck is your damage, Nora? And like, dude, you have no idea. You are not even the worst thing that has happened to me and it’s the only knowledge that’s keeping me upright.
I’ve survived worse. I’m not naive enough to think just because of that, I’ll survive this. But I can damn well try.
I glance over at the coffee table that still has all our purses and phones on it.
“I need my cell phone to answer that.”
He looks at me through narrowed eyes for a moment, then goes over to the table where our stuff is piled.
“It’s the one with the blue case.”
He grabs it and brings it back over.
I hold out my finger, and he presses the screen up to it to unlock the phone. I make no effort to reach for it, so he doesn’t think it’s a power grab or a trick, even though it’s absolutely a power grab.
“There’s a file, on the second menu page. Labeled Miscellaneous. Password is TR, dollar sign, 65.”
Breathing in and out, I’m praying that my heart isn’t pumping the blood into my face too fast. If I go red, he’ll notice.
I can see the exact moment the gallery loads. Because his brows snap together, and then his eyes snap up and then down again. Confirming that the blond girl in the pictures is the same as the dark-haired, older one in front of him.
“Yes, it’s me,” I say.
“And that’s . . .”
“Yes, that’s him,” I confirm. And then I wait for the question that comes next. The one Gray Cap has to ask, because everyone knows that man’s face, and no one knows mine. Lee made damn well sure I was far away, looking like another girl, before the tabloids and reporters even got wind of the FBI’s arrest and the whispers of a girl who may or may not exist started.
“Why do you have a gallery of pictures with you and Raymond Keane?”
I take a breath. Not a deep one, not an obvious one, but just a beat. In my mind, I picture a mirror. Ashley. My name is Ashley.
“Because I’m Ashley Keane. He’s my stepfather.”
— 21 —
The Butcher
What can I say about Raymond Keane?
The tabloids that latched on to the story called him the Butcher of the Bayou. You’d think that’d tell you everything you need to know, but it’s just the start.
He was untouchable. A businessman, a bank, a dealer—not just drugs, but secrets. He donated to the right charities, greased the rig
ht politicians’ palms, knew the dirt on the right people, and climbed from the swamp he came from all the way up to a McMansion in the Keys.
When Mom met Raymond, I was ten. By then, she was feeling her age even though she didn’t look it. But still, we’d had a rough time that year—she’d ditched the con on the car dealership owner—and we were both running ragged trying to get enough money to start over. I felt guilty all the time, because she’d left the last con halfway through because of me. It’d been the most motherly thing she’d ever done, and the glow of that made me weak instead of wary.
It should have made me wary. I knew better by then, but . . .
I needed a mom. But two years living with Raymond Keane drove that impulse straight out of me.
It wasn’t even a con. Maybe I could’ve handled it if she was conning him. Maybe my well-being would’ve mattered more, because it had once, before.
But no, Raymond was never a mark.
Raymond was love. True blue, toe-curling, I never thought I’d find him, baby love.
I didn’t have a chance. I was just the daughter. She’d already let go of one daughter with barely a thought.
They were married within six months.
Back then, it felt like it went bad in one night. But now I can see the signs of what was to come.
The first time he hurt me, it was my birthday. It came out of nowhere. He’d been building up to it for months. How can those two opposite things be true at once? I still don’t know. I just know that in the during—in the enduring—it was like I couldn’t get air, couldn’t even breathe deep, let alone zoom out enough to see it was his hands that had been strangling me the whole time.
I guess I hadn’t shown enough appreciation for the present he’d given me. He liked to make a show of things. Loved the idea of being the strong father figure. The strict father figure. Loved the idea of a picture-perfect, ready-made family. The beautiful wife, the pretty blond stepdaughter, both wrapped up in bows. But if you didn’t react exactly how he’d pictured it in his head, those bows went bloody.