by Tess Sharpe
I need my mother.
So I give him a puzzled half smile, tearing my focus from my phone completely. I let the smile hold: one count, two. And then, I let it snap off my face, quick as you please, and suddenly, we’re truly eye to eye for the first time.
“Yes,” I agree. “I am quite the asset. So maybe you should back off.”
“You two came into my house.” His head lifts again, scanning the room. He’s looking for her, wondering where she is. Where is she? Hasn’t she noticed how he’s looking at me? Hasn’t she realized he knows?
“Do you own the country club on top of all the gyms?” I ask innocently, even though I know what he means. This is his turf. We’ve trespassed. “That’s very impressive.”
“You’re quite the Addie Loggins, aren’t you?”
“I see Mom has competition with the dated references,” I say before I think it through, and when his eyes flare with delight and he laughs, I realize I’ve made a mistake.
I’ve made him even more interested.
He gets up from the table. “Tell your mother that I hope she likes my gift.”
Before I can do anything, he’s gone, and I’m just sitting there, blood thundering in my ears and my entire body screaming Run. So I do. I jolt out of the chair and I spin, intent on just going, anywhere but here, and I get one step before I’m colliding with her.
“What’s wrong?” She pushes me gently, guiding me back into the chair, and I don’t try to fight her.
“Mom, he knows,” I whisper. “He—” I stop. He made us because of me. This is my fault. Again. She’ll be so mad. “I don’t know how,” I continue, half breathless from the lie, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “But he knows.”
Her shoulders tense, and just like he did, she starts scanning the room. But just like her, he’s out of sight, if he’s watching.
“What did he say?” she asks. “Christ, drink some water. You’re white as a sheet. Remember what I taught you about controlling your face?”
“He knows. We have to go.” My hands shake around the water glass. Her eyes widen, and then her hands cover mine.
“Control yourself,” she orders under her breath.
But I can’t, and she ends up taking me back to the car and finally gets the story out of me in halting bursts as we drive back to the hotel.
I’m too shaken to notice the glint in her eye, or maybe I think it’s anger. But when we get to the front desk and there’s a bouquet waiting for her, I see what he meant by his gift.
He knows where we’re staying. It’s a threat. Run. Run. There are no knitting needles this time, you need to run.
She strokes one of the flowers. “When did these arrive?” she asks the concierge.
“Around eleven thirty,” she says.
“Hmm.” Mom plucks the envelope off the marble counter and flicks it open, pulling out the little card. I peer around her shoulder to read it.
One word: Dinner?
“Would you like me to have someone bring the flowers up to your suite?”
Mom shakes her head. “My daughter will take them. Thank you.”
I don’t want to touch them, but I do as I’m told. She’s still holding the card as we get to the elevator, rubbing it between her fingers like it’s something soft and secret. I press the button, waiting until the doors swish closed to turn to her.
“Why are you smiling?” I demand.
She looks over to the flowers in my hands and presses the fingers with the card still clutched in it to her lips. “They’re foxgloves,” she says.
Heat crawls in my face because I feel like she’s laughing at a joke I don’t know. A joke they know.
“They mean deception.” She plucks one of the flowers out of the vase. Then she laughs. And it’s not a fake laugh. It’s her real laugh, surprised and little wry. Like she can’t believe it.
The elevator doors slide open. She sweeps forward. I stay stuck in place.
She doesn’t notice she’s left me behind.
— 45 —
12:02 p.m. (170 minutes captive)
1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys, 1 hunting knife
Plan #1: Scrapped
Plan #2: On hold
Plan #3: Stab
Plan #4: Get gun. Get Iris and Wes. Get out.
Plan #5: Iris’s plan
The contents of Iris’s purse: 1 wallet with 23 dollars and a driver’s license, 1 nylon scarf, 1 cotton handkerchief, 1 bottle hairspray, 1 plastic water bottle, 2 tampons, 1 celluloid brooch, 6 lipsticks, a packet of bobby pins, 2 hair ties, 1 brownie wrapped in tinfoil, 3 bottles of pills
Iris tries the bathroom door, and he’s definitely blocked it. It won’t budge. I push the two stall doors open, but there aren’t any windows. We’re stuck.
“I don’t think he’s out there,” she whispers, pressing her ear against the door.
He’s probably gone to check on Duane, hoping to wake him up. We need to move fast.
“Did he have you down there in the basement the whole time? Does he have Wes too?”
She shakes her head. “Just me. Wes is still in the office as far as I know.”
“Are you okay?”
She nods. “He just made me sit there while he melted through the bars.”
“They got through the bars? Did he get the box?”
“He got through, but didn’t even go inside.”
“Why wouldn’t he try to get the box open?”
“I don’t think he knows what box they’re looking for,” Iris says. “Either the one in gray didn’t tell him, or . . .”
“Neither of them knows,” I finish.
“Another reason why the manager not being here messed everything up.”
“The more I find out about their plan, the shittier it gets,” I say.
“Yet they’re still winning,” Iris says. She sets her purse on the sink. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I need to empty my cup.” She pushes past me and goes into one of the stalls.
“Look in the cupboard below the sink,” she tells me from the stall, and I bend down, yanking it open.
“We’ve got toilet paper, a refill bag of hand soap, toilet brushes, plunger.” I reach farther into the cabinet, dragging out the big bottle in the back. “Gallon bottle of hand sanitizer.”
“That,” she says, coming out to rinse her cup and then going back inside the stall.
“Okay.” I set it to the side. “Um . . . bleach spray, two bottles of air freshener, and a bottle of Drano.”
“Perfect. All of that.” The stall door opens with a click and she wipes her hands on a paper towel before pumping hand sanitizer from her own purse all over them. “Sorry for being gross and not flushing the toilet. I don’t want him to hear and think we’re done.”
“Lucky for you I’m not terrified of menstrual blood like the asshole out there.”
“Oh, God, don’t make me laugh right now,” she hisses. “I need to concentrate.” Then she grabs the big trash can near the door and carries it over to the sink, pulling the top off and assessing the contents with a glance. Getting on her knees next to me in front of the cabinet, she sets her purse down with us and pulls out a shiny square from it, unwrapping the tinfoil to reveal a brownie. She sets the pastry to the side and tosses the foil at me.
“I need little balls, marble sized.”
She unwinds the toilet paper with the efficiency of a seasoned TP-er, which I can’t imagine is the case. She dumps the loose paper into the garbage can in layers, squirting hand sanitizer and the vodka that she’d found earlier onto the mess. By the time I’m done with the balls of foil, she’s filled the can.
I glance at the door and then back at her as she feeds the balls of foil into the now-empty bottle of hand sanitizer and adds the bobby pins from her purse. Then she uns
crews the bottle of Drano and, with the steady hands of a girl who can victory-roll her hair, pours the liquid into the bottle, over the foil balls.
“What are you doing exactly?”
She lets out a long breath, screwing the top of the bottle tight. We kneel there, the bottle between us, and there is nothing but fear in her face when she answers.
“Building a bomb.”
— 46 —
Abby: How He Hooks Her
She goes to dinner with Raymond. She dates him. She falls in love with him.
She does everything he wants, because it’s the same things she wants, and what I want . . .
Well, it doesn’t matter.
“I’m tired of the game, baby,” she tells me one night when I’m helping her get ready. “I’ve been doing this a long time. And I’m not getting any younger.”
She hasn’t been getting any younger all my life, it seems. She’s always fretted in front of the mirror, looking for lines that aren’t there because Botox, and complains about flaws that have never existed in her almost-too-beautiful face.
“You’re perfect,” I tell her, because that’s what I’m supposed to say.
I hand her the diamond earrings Raymond gave her on their third date and she fixes them in her ears. He gave her a pair for me at the same time—little studs, a rich girl’s first diamonds—and Mom cooed for days about how thoughtful it was and I wondered how I’d ever thought she was smart, because this was just basic love bombing. She taught me this.
It’s all wrong. It’s been wrong since Katie, but I thought it’d get better once I proved that I could do better. And now I have no way to prove that, because I have no one to con.
I get a brush to stroke through her hair, trying to lose myself in the rhythm of it as she dabs perfume on her pulse points.
“I think . . .” She looks down, staring at her hands. She strokes her ring finger, starting at the top of her French tip and ending where a ring would lie. “I think this could be good for us.”
“This?”
“Raymond.”
“How?” It comes out of me in a disbelieving huff.
“He wants to take care of us.”
“You taught me to take care of myself.”
“And look where that got you,” she snaps.
My hands drop from her head, my fingers curling around the brush handle.
“You need a father,” she says. “Clearly.”
I don’t know want to think about what she means. So much lately, I’m half guessing, half hoping there’s another meaning than the obvious—that she’s mad at me for Katie. That she thinks it’s my fault.
It makes me feel like something hot and heavy’s pressing into my head, my neck buckling under the weight of it.
“And just think,” she continues. “You’ve spent all this time playing at being an amazing daughter. So being one for real will be a piece of cake.”
I stare, unable to wrap my head around what she’s saying. “I’m already a daughter,” I remind her. “I’m your daughter.”
“Oh, baby, you know what I mean.” She laughs, getting up, her focus slipping back toward her reflection in the mirror. “Be a good girl,” she says, air-kissing my cheek as she whisks past me. “Don’t wait up.”
I don’t wait up. I also don’t wait in the room for her.
I walk down to the nearest store and I use the gift cards I’ve been saving up to buy three prepaid cell phones, a screwdriver, and duct tape.
When I get back to the room, I don’t call the number that I’ve had memorized for years. I stash one of the phones in the air vent and another in the mess that is my tennis bag, and the third I leave sealed in its plastic and tape to the top of the toilet tank.
Just in case, I tell myself.
Just in case.
— 47 —
12:07 p.m. (175 minutes captive)
1 lighter, 3 bottles 1 bottle of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys, 1 hunting knife, 1 chemical bomb, giant fire starter, the contents of Iris’s purse
Plan #1: Scrapped
Plan #2: On hold
Plan #3: Stab
Plan #4: Get gun. Get Iris and Wes. Get out.
Plan #5: Iris’s plan: Boom!
“Don’t touch it,” Iris warns as I stare at the bottle—the bomb—she’s made.
My eyes widen. “Of course I’m not gonna touch it!” I say as quietly as I can. My eyes skitter back to the door. “How do you even know how to do this? Don’t say the internet!”
“And make my search engine history all interesting to the NSA or whatever?” she scoffs. “I want to investigate arson, not be investigated for it. Give me my purse.”
I hand it to her and she roots around, pulling out her makeup bag and digging inside that, coming up with a plastic pin with two little hearts. It’s old, like almost everything she owns. From the time people actually wore brooches. The words Kiss Timer are written on the hearts, an hourglass sand timer set between them. She flips the hourglass, making glittery sand trickle through it. “We need at least ten minutes for the chemicals to strip the wax off the foil,” she says. “I need you to pull out all the paper towels from the dispenser and start twisting them together for a fuse.”
“So how does this work?” I pry open the paper towel holder and pull the stack of them out as she keeps an eye on the timer.
“Chemical reaction. The Drano reacts with the aluminum and builds pressure. When you disrupt the bottle . . .” She flicks her fingers not holding the brooch in a sort of pow! movement.
“And the bobby pins?”
“Shrapnel,” she says grimly. “Just in case it explodes before it hits him. There’s a very short window before detonation. You can blast your fingers off.”
She’s staring at me with a bomb and her brilliance between us, and I’m twisting a paper towel fuse with the kind of trust I didn’t think I could give another person.
“And the trash can?”
She turns the hourglass. Nine minutes to go.
“The trash can’s a fire starter. We need to get out of here,” she says. “We need to force them out of this building. The smoke will be terrible with how we’ve packed it.”
My fingers tighten on the paper towels I’m twisting. “Fire forces everyone out,” I say, falling into her line of thinking so easily, like it’s mine.
Her mouth twitches . . . an almost-smile. “Basic human instinct is to drop everything when you’re on fire.”
“We use the smoke as a distraction when he opens the door and nail the one in red with the Drano bomb.”
She nods. “If the one in gray is still unconscious, we can get everyone out. But if he’s awake, the smoke will make it harder to shoot.”
She flips the pin. Another minute down. I look toward the door. No movement, still.
“So what do you want to do for the next eight minutes?” she asks.
I don’t know how to answer that. Any minute, Red Cap could be coming in here too early and we’ll be dead for sure. The longer Duane stays unconscious, the riskier things get.
Iris’s plan is risky. Destructive. Dangerous. Maybe deadly.
That’s where we are, and it makes my heart thump. Is this it? With Wes all alone and these last minutes with her?
“Truth for Truth?” I suggest, and the tightness in her mouth eases.
“Truth for Truth,” she agrees, her thumb rubbing over the heart pin’s point.
“I’m scared,” I say softly.
Her free hand squeezes my thigh. “Me too.”
“I don’t know if we can get out of this,” she tells me.
“We can. I’ve gotten out of worse.”
She’s quiet. The hourglass is almost empty.
“I’ve read about him. And about you,” she says.
“You’ve read
about Ashley.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
That’s the question, isn’t it?
“What do you want to know?” I ask.
I expect her to ask prying questions. Searching, digging, uncomfortable ones. Maybe she’ll even ask the same thing Duane did: Did you really do the things they say you did?
But Iris does the thing she always does: She surprises me.
“Are you okay? After everything you had to . . . are you all right?”
Such a simple question—and it has a simple answer. It breaks me open all the same, that she asks that first. Like I come first.
She flips the heart pin. Seven minutes.
“No,” I say, because she deserves the truth. “I’m not.”
Maybe someday I will be.
— 48 —
Ashley: How I Choose
She marries Raymond, and I can’t stop her. He moves us to his big house in the Keys, and I’ve got no choice but to go where they tell me.
I’ve gone from a partner in my mother’s schemes to a bit player in her romance. I’ve got nothing to do. Nowhere to go. I’m not supposed to know the details of Raymond’s operation—that it’s a lot bigger than running a con or laundering money through the gyms and it’s a lot more complicated and wide-reaching—I’m suddenly supposed to just be. Be a daughter. Be a normal girl. Be okay.
I’m not any of those things. Not in the way they want me to be.
He’s your father now. She tears up when she tells me this, after the wedding. Like it’s beautiful. It tells me how bad it is, that she thinks that’ll be something comforting, instead of terrifying.
I know about being a mixed-up handful of traits designed to lure a man in. My job is to learn how each mark works: what makes him smile, which tells me about his happiness; what makes him frown, which tells me about his fears; and what he approves of, which tells me about how much control he wants.
That’s what fatherhood’s about, as far as I can see: control. Not just of my mind, but of my body. That’s what Elijah wanted when I was Haley, with his endless cooing about keeping sweet. That’s what Joseph took when I was Katie, before I made him stop.