How to Disappear (29 page)

“Sweet girl, I’ll tear it out. I’ll gut the whole room.”

I pictured him hacking away at the bloodied cabinets with a sledgehammer, tearing up his left arm even worse. “No! I’ll do it!”

He laughed. “Nicky, I don’t need you pulling out the stove. You pick the colors.”

I don’t want to think about it in color.

Bloodred.

Meanwhile, my guards don’t want me having visitors. No point asking them why. They don’t answer questions. They say to sit tight. Buck up. Ratchet it back.

Meaning shut up.

They have semi-control of me. I get it. But Olivia’s in the front hall, yelling. “Is she here or not? People saw her at St. Francis. What did you do with her? Where is she? Niiiiick!!!”

I want to make a break for it and squeeze her so hard, no one can pry us apart.

She yells, “I’m not ratcheting anything back! It’s a free country!”

I yell, “Olivia!”

Two guys block like I’m the QB, and Liv is a blitzing linebacker.

They want everything but her birth certificate.

Steve doesn’t get out of the hospital for three more days.
He’ll
let me see my friends. Even if they don’t bring two forms of government-issued photo ID. In three days, maybe he’ll forget he ever said Jack Manx can’t live in the same universe as I do.

Olivia keeps craning her neck, looking past the crime scene tape on the kitchen door, down the hall to where I’m blocked by guys trying to protect me.

She calls, “Niiiiick! Hey! It’s not like she’s invisible. She’s
right there
.”

I start chanting “please” while she yells at them. They think this is hilarious, but they let her come upstairs.

We close the door to my room and hug for a half hour while she cries into my hair.

Everything we want to say is so cheesy, we can’t actually say it. I missed you. I love you. Thank you.

Promise you’ll still be my best friend when we get old.

Promise you won’t get shot.

Promise Summer’s not your new best friend.

“Promise you didn’t do any idiotic thing with that Jack.”

Uh.

“Oh sweet Lord, promise you didn’t!”

I nod and try to look as not-guilty as possible about the fact that I did. It’s not that challenging given that I don’t feel at all guilty. At least not about that.

“Don’t get snot in my part.”

“Shut up. Did you see that girl get stabbed? You could have told me.”

“Does everyone know?”

“No murders in Cotter’s Mill for twenty years, then
two
murders. What do you think?” She’s walking around me. “You want me to help put your hair back?”

“It has
layers
. It’s going to take years to grow back.”

“We could make it really short, like Keira Knightley in that commercial.”

“I’ll look like a nine-year-old boy.”

Liv shakes her head. “Not anymore. You going to keep it?”

“Is there a way a person can keep the T but not the A?”

“It’s not a bad A.”

“That’s what Jack thought.”

This is what I wanted. My friend who’d do anything for me, who’d risk having thugs track down her burner phone but still cares if my hair looks good. Being (quasi-secretly) less than the purest girl in cheer. Having a family. Living where I belong.

I would have done anything to get this back.

I did.

I’ve spent the night in what might be solitary confinement. There’s no one else around, and the lights don’t go all the way out. They still think I killed Karl Yeager’s kid, Alex, on purpose, that I was gunning for Mendes, and that Nicolette was next.

Yet again, I’m scared shitless.

Then I get to the interview room on no sleep, and there’s my mother in a black suit and a look on her face that says that she’s about to blow.

“Where’s my lawyer?”

She says, “I’m on a leave of absence from work.
I’m
one of your lawyers. Do you understand what that means?”

“I don’t think you should be my lawyer.”

“It means you can talk to me, and I can’t testify against you.”

I don’t understand where she’s going with this.

I say, “Is Mendes all right?”

She reaches into her briefcase for a yellow legal pad, which she holds up like a shield. “What were you thinking? Do you value your freedom this little?”

Don’t ask someone who just spent his first night in prison if he values freedom.

“I was thinking that if I didn’t make Nicolette Holland disappear, I could visit you in the Manx crypt.” It comes out as a snarl, but at least I don’t call her a name.

The pad drops to the metal table. “We might be talking about two different things,” she says slowly, back in overly calm control. “Was someone threatening me?”

“Your laundry room went up in flames, someone tripped the alarm inside the house when the security cameras weren’t working, and then they messed with the brakes on your car. You do the math.”

“Watch your tone, Jackson!”

I’m sitting in lockup, and my mom wants me to watch my tone.

“Sorry.”

Then I tell her what Don said I had to do; what I thought I had to do; what I thought I had a plan to get out of doing—only everything backfired, and I ended up in Cotter’s Mill, Ohio, holding what turned out to be a murder weapon.

She’s clutching me and sobbing hard, despite all the signs prohibiting physical contact, and no one’s doing anything about it.

If they’d just laid it out sooner, I could have fixed it sooner.

“Jack didn’t kidnap me. Why would I say he didn’t if he did?”

My lawyer, the good cop who thinks I’m a porcelain teacup, and the bad cop who thinks I’m the devil, don’t believe a word I say.

They’re talking among themselves about Stockholm syndrome. This is when a hostage starts thinking her captor is Mr. Dreamy. It’s caused by mental collapse due to the stress of being a hostage.

Not me.

I’d act like he was Mr. Dreamy. I’d peer into his eyes with pseudo-adoration. Then I’d cut his heart out with my nail file.

I say, “I can’t have Stockholm syndrome.
Nobody kidnapped me.
I was nobody’s
hostage
.”

Bad Cop says, “Where did he hold you?”

Clearly, this is bad.

They don’t believe the truth.

Not that I plan to tell them that much of it. But there are critical bits of the truth that should (if there’s any fairness in the world) keep Jack out of jail.

I mean, Alex was coming at me with a knife. Isn’t that classic self-defense? (I looked it up.)

I’m not letting Jack go to jail. The whole point was for us to be safe. Not dead and
not
in prison.

My lawyer hooks her hand onto my arm, all boney and tight. She says, “Could we take a break?”

Bad Cop won’t stop glaring at me.

I say, “I know I screwed up.” My lawyer’s hand tightens like a vise. I say, “I believed the wrong thing. I’m sorry.”

My lawyer’s hand is cutting off the circulation to my arm. I don’t know if this is maximum sympathy or another signal to shut up.

Good Cop says, “Nobody thinks what happened is your fault.”

I’ve watched enough
Law & Order
reruns to know they mostly say this when they’re trying to get killers to confess.

I’m not confessing. I’m assessing my target. Like Jack kept saying to do.

“It
is
my fault. Kind of. I thought Steve was going to kill me! So stupid. But he
said
.”

Bad Cop says, “Is that why your boyfriend shot him?”

I have to fix this.

I have to fix this fast.

My lawyer says, “We’re leaving, Nicolette.”

I’m done with leaving.

“He isn’t my boyfriend! I’m not even allowed to talk to him. I said I was running straight into the house to get Gertie. Jack kept going, ‘No, Mendes is going to kill you! Don’t do it!’ ”

Blankness and incredulity.

I say, “Gertie is my
dog
. I just wanted to get my dog back and not be killed. Why don’t you get it? Jack was there just in case. The gun was totally my afterthought.”

Even Good Cop isn’t buying this. “Um, that’s not what Mr. Manx says. Miss Holland, if you could walk us through it.”

“Of course that’s not what he says! Like he wants people to know he’s in jail over a cockapoo? He was trying to save me. I was going in to get Gertie, and then he was going to help me leave the country. He had the cash in his trunk.”

“That’s where you found the gun?”

“I told you! It was wrapped up in his fishing gear.” I look up. Three blank faces. I can’t tell which one of them snorted. “I mean, it was a gun. I wasn’t going to leave it lying there. Somebody could get hurt.”

My lawyer sighs.

“So I stuck it in my bag.”

Bad Cop mashes his pen into his notebook.

“Out of the country where?”

“I didn’t care where. It was some kind of a plantation. Somewhere like Costa Rica? Does that sound right? Argentina, maybe.”

The stupider I sound, the more they like it.

I’m bailed out, cleaned up, and living in a hotel in Cincinnati, a cop posted at my door. He makes a big show of frisking the room service waitress every time she brings a burger. We’re waiting on Don. Everybody knows he’s going to finger everyone in sight, after which he’ll get a deal and I can get out of here.

I’ve gone from being criminal conspirator to being the clean-cut dupe, according to everyone but Agent Birdwell. I’m back to being trusted with Wi-Fi, my phone, and sharp objects.

Calvin, who gets that the phone (which my lawyer says to use with caution) might not be entirely private, clears his throat. “My only question would be, who else is bankrolling your lawyer? Because obviously
you’re
not going to be giving him any more business.”

I’ve got the same lawyer who represented my dad the time he
got indicted for selling something to someone in Angola. My mom gave Mr. Ferro to me and not to Don presumably because I’m the horse to bet on if you want one kid who’s not behind bars.

“Have you no respect for organized crime?”

Calvin says, “Don’t dick around. This isn’t funny.”

“Calm down. I’m on the bus straight back to Boy Scout camp as soon as Don testifies.”

There’s a long pause. “Nobody’s so stupid that they think you did anything, are they? They know you were just trying to warn her?”

It occurs to me that if this goes much further, I could be turning him into an accomplice. I say, “Have fun with your Mermaid Ninjas,” and hang up while he’s still groaning.

My attorney says, “Talk to your lawyer and only your lawyer,” but he acts pained when I do.

I say, “To be honest, there were times when I didn’t know what I was going to do. It was like being on autopilot, but you don’t know where you’re going to land.”

“You won’t be sharing that unless somebody asks you under oath.”

“Asks me what, specifically?”

“If trying to save your
mother
was like being on autopilot and not knowing where you were going to land. In those words,” Mr. Ferro says. “Then you can say yes.”

“Got it.”

Mr. Ferro paces around the hotel room, adjusting his tie. “I don’t think you’ve got it. You’re a lucky kid. Don’t screw it up.”

I’m the lucky kid whose brother wanted to become the Yeager
clan’s right-hand man by doing Alex Yeager a favor: getting me to kill Nicolette. This would prove how useful Don could be to the Yeagers, a chip off the old block—except that Karl Yeager had no idea what his kid, Alex, was up to, and Alex Yeager wanted to keep it that way.

When they asked Don to explain how it was that his mother got threatened in three different ways, he whined that it was Alex Yeager’s fault so many times, he sounded like a parrot with a limited supply of sentences. And Alex Yeager was such a piece of work, even if he could tell his side of the story from the grave, it would be a case of dueling liars.

I’m left not knowing the magnitude of what Don put over on me or how much I get to hate him—if I hunted down America’s sweetheart to save my mom and Don and myself from Alex Yeager’s machinations, or if the whole thing was a Donald Manx production. It’s like having a scab you can never tear off completely.

Damn fucking Don.

What I do know is I shot down a man in cold blood.

Mr. Ferro says, “That man was charging a sixteen-year-old girl with a knife.”

“A bread knife.”

“Did you have time to process that fact?
No you did not!
Two experts say so. And who knows what Alex Yeager would have done with that knife? His girlfriend was close to decapitated when he got done with her.”

This image starts to bring up lunch.

“Wait. Was Alex Yeager
seeing
Connie?”

Mr. Ferro rolls his eyes. “Alex Yeager was a buffoon. Who goes running to his father’s accountant with his girlfriend’s body?”

“Accountant to thugs, right? Mendes must have loved my father’s spreadsheets.”

“Your father was a legitimate businessman!” Mr. Ferro roars at me. “Esteban Mendes is a legitimate accountant!” He stops to catch his breath. “Anybody asks about your father, you wait for me to object. Then you stop speaking.”

“It would be a lot easier if someone would tell me what’s happening. Why can’t I talk to Nicolette?”

With the hundreds of dollars an hour of Manx money he’s getting for defending me, it would be nice if Mr. Ferro could disguise his annoyance. “Nicolette Holland is sixteen years old. She’s got a stepfather who doesn’t want her talking to you. Ergo, no conversation.”

“She’s not the most obedient daughter on earth.”

“She is now. And I don’t want you pissing her off. She’s told her story, and we don’t want it to change.”

“What story?”

“I’m telling you this, and all you do is nod and listen. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

He smiles. “Cute girl. She says you got to California, frantic to warn her that people were after her. That was her word, ‘frantic.’ To quote her”—he digs around in the files he wheeled in here—“ ‘Like I didn’t already know people were after me? Why did he think I was hiding, for fun?