Pretty Sly (18 page)

Meanwhile, Chris hopped on his skateboard and started carving along the blacktop, swooping in and out by the entrance. I pulled a train of carts, one by one, clinking them together so that they fit in a neat succession, never taking my eyes off Chris and the cars coming into the lot.

A black SUV pulled in. Then a pickup. Shoppers moved toward me, sending new carts my way, and I received them, adding them to the stack.

An elderly woman bundled up in a wool coat came over to me just then.

Not now, lady.
I tried to send her a signal with my body language that I was not available.

She was undeterred. She raised a gloved hand to touch my shoulder and her pocketbook, hooked around her wrist, dangled tantalizingly close.
I could just grab it,
I thought.

She’s an old lady. Are you going to mug an old lady now? Seriously, Willa. Get your head in the game.

“Excuse me, sir, can you help me with my groceries?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to think fast and speak low. “I’m not authorized to do that. You have to ask a bag boy.”

Just then, I spotted the Nissan coming around the corner. Chris saw it, too, because he gave me the signal
we’d agreed on—a heelflip—and I gave him mine, pulling the brim of my cap down.

“But you’re right here.”

“I’m—busy.”

The woman began shuffling away. “Some job you’re doing.”

As the Nissan pulled into the lot, Chris skated over, flinging himself onto the hood, hitting it with a thump. Corbin’s brakes squealed the car to a halt, but it was too late. Chris had already rolled over the front and—a bit dramatically, I thought—he’d flailed himself onto the pavement, landing chest first and crying out in imaginary pain.

Watching him, I let out an
oof.
That’s how bad it looked. But it was beautiful, really—an elegant ballet of wits and deceit, unfolding in slow motion. We’d taken a page out of the pickpocketer’s handbook—one of the oldest tricks in the game. And Chris pulled it off perfectly.

Now it was my turn.

Corbin got out of the car and walked over to where Chris was lying and tried to talk to him. Chris played unconscious. A few other shoppers were working their way over, forming a huddle.

A young woman at the scene held up her cell phone. “I’ll call 911.”

There was a general buzz of chatter and medical advice, a man kneeling down beside Chris and taking
his pulse. The crowd was reaching critical mass, about twelve people now.

This was my cue. I pushed the carts back into the trolley. With Corbin’s back to me and everyone looking at Chris, I made a dash for the car and snuck up to the backseat. I opened the door and squeezed in, ducking down to the floor.

I could see his briefcase on the front seat.

Payday.

I grabbed its leather handles and dragged the bag through the space between the driver’s and passenger’s sides. I fumbled to open the latch and then unzip the main pocket. Inside was a laptop and several file folders. I made a quick calculation. There was no time to go through it all and there was no way to get the laptop. That was a disappointment—I knew we’d have everything if we could only take that computer. I had room under my clothes for just a few folders, so I grabbed the two thickest and stuffed them into my waistband, pulling my shirt and the red vest over it.

In front of me I could see Corbin still talking to Chris. Chris was showing signs of life and starting to wiggle his extremities. The supermarket manager had stepped out to help them. Corbin’s arms were raised, hands upstretched to the sky, and I didn’t have to actually hear him to know that whatever he was saying was something like,
I just didn’t see him. I wasn’t even going that fast. He came out of nowhere.

Damn straight. That’s exactly the way we planned it.

Behind me, Aidan pulled up in the Land Rover. I scrambled out of the Nissan and got into the passenger seat with my stolen goods.

“Got it?” Aidan asked.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Corbin was just turning around to notice us as Aidan put the car in drive. I pulled off Chris’s baseball cap, letting my hair fall loose around my shoulders. I rolled down the window and threw the hat out, watching it sail across the pavement and land at Corbin’s feet. He looked up and I could see recognition suddenly flare in his eyes. But by the time he probably put it together we were well on the road.

“That hat thing was a little much,” Aidan said.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

FOURTEEN

WE FELL INTO
silence as we sped away from the strip mall. We were headed toward the casinos. A sign said
STATELINE, NEVADA
. We were crossing another state line.

Words felt impossible. My heart was beating in a primal rhythm of fear and elation, my head spinning and weightless. I felt like I could fly out into the layers of white—snow-covered ground, snow-dusted trees, snowcapped mountains—and over the turquoise swirl of lake water.

Forget Nikki’s wallet. Drew’s watch. This was the biggest job I’d ever pulled by far. And it had
worked.

Slowly, the world returned to me. The leather smell of the car. The sound of the radio. Aidan’s presence a few inches away.

“So what’s in there?”

I got down to business, digging through the contents
of the files. The top folder was fat with pages covered in jargon and abbreviations. Might as well have been in another language—I needed a glossary to understand any of it.

“Crap,” I said out loud as I impatiently thumbed through stapled packs of forms and letters. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly, but I figured I’d know when I saw it. Now I wondered.

“Anything?” Aidan asked.

“A whole lot of nothing.” My bottom lip caught under my front teeth. “Generic stuff.”

Please let there be something in here. All that work, all that risk, our brilliant plan—please let that not have been for nothing.
It would be beyond ridiculous. It would be embarrassing.

Then my eye caught on a dark corner sticking out of the rest of the paper—a black-and-white picture. I pulled it out from the other pages.

It appeared to be taken from a distance, but there was no mistaking the frame of my mom’s body, hunched over her purse like she was looking for her keys. It was something I’d probably seen her do hundreds of times in my life. Behind her I could make out the shape of the Subaru.

“Hang on.” I paged back to the beginning of the file and looked at the top document more closely.

PROFILE: Leslie Siebert aka Joanne Fox

My hands instantly went cold, my fingertips numb.

“This must be her real name.” My voice dragged into a hoarse whisper. “Leslie.”

“Your mom? Her real name is Leslie?”

“Leslie Siebert.” I frowned, trying it out again.

It just felt wrong. She didn’t even look like a Leslie. And yet there it was. Typed out on an official FBI document with official letterhead. It had to be true then, didn’t it? How did I not know this?

“What else does it say?” Aidan asked.

I squinted at the page. There were some cryptic letters and numbers underneath—FD-204, UFAP—more FBI code. But there were enough regular words that I could make out the gist of it. “It’s an email from the head office, establishing permission for surveillance.”

I flipped back to the photo. On the reverse side there was a date: September 26. That was last fall, right after we moved to Paradise Valley. Which meant I was probably there with her, maybe even sitting in the part of the car that was cut off by the left side of the frame.

Beneath it there were other photos, too, from October and November. It was like a slide show of our lives, albeit a creepy one. “They’ve been watching her for a while,” I said.

“But why? Does it say anything about an offense?”

“If she was wanted for a crime and they’d tracked her for all these years, they would have taken her in by now, wouldn’t they?”

“So why else would they watch her?”

“Maybe she’s an informant,” I said, my pulse speeding with the onrush of thoughts. “Like, part of the witness protection program.”

Aidan nodded. “That would explain the name change.”

“And the moves. And the secret meetings with Corbin.” It did hang together. Enough that I could fill in the rest of the details in my head. She’d said all those moves were for artistic inspiration. Well, it made more sense now. Apparently she’d been trying to keep us hidden.

I swallowed hard. She’d left Paradise Valley abruptly. After I was on TV. Of course. They’d found her. And it was my fault. No wonder she’d been so angry with me. I understood now why she’d gotten rid of the phones, too.

But the file, as far as I could see, didn’t say anything about where she was now. We needed a better lead. “Let’s find another computer. You can check in on the E-ZPass.”

“Right now? In broad daylight?”

“We have to act quickly before she gets too far.”

Aidan rubbed at his hairline. “We’re really pushing it, Willa.”

I looked at him, pleading. I knew we were being wild and sloppy, but that’s the thing about being a criminal. Once you start giving into that urge, you find it hard to stop. We just needed one more chance. One more clue. We’d put our skills together—my ability to break in, Aidan’s ability to track her online—one last time. That’s all we needed. But I couldn’t do this part alone. Besides, we were on a roll. We were in a
gambling town and I was feeling lucky.

I pointed to the view through our windshield. “Look, there’s a big condo complex up there on the hill. They’re probably time-shares. A quick check—fifteen minutes is all we need—and then we’re out of there.”

Aidan put the fleshy part of his hand on the wheel and looked ahead at the asphalt. I could see his doubt— it was in the slight arch of his eyebrow, the tiny twist of his mouth. But he did what I asked.

The skylight fit me nicely. For Aidan, who was a good thirty pounds heavier, it was a tighter squeeze and involved some self-squashing.

“I don’t like this,” he was muttering. “Not at all.”

After a prolonged push, he landed with a muffled thump on the carpeted floor. We looked around to find ourselves in a kid’s room, outfitted with a lime-green race-car bed.

“Is this your room?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a place in Tahoe?”

“Why didn’t you tell me I was going to lose three layers of skin?” He pushed past me, rubbing his chest. He wasn’t smiling. “Let’s just find the computer, okay?”

The condo was comfortable but basic. The rooms were cluttered with stuff, piles of clothes, and papers and books and knickknacks. The layer of dust over everything suggested that there was no maid in this home. The more I looked around, the more I knew this wasn’t a house I would break into to steal anything. In
fact, I felt really bad being in there.

There was a laptop in the master bedroom, on the floor by the dust ruffle on top of a heap of laundry.

Aidan turned it on and dove in. I sat down on the bed and opened up my schoolbag, where I’d stored the stolen papers. I spread them out in front of me like a deck of cards. There was another folder tucked inside the folder that I hadn’t noticed before, labeled with the name Chet Tompkins.

CRIMINAL RECORD

FBI No. 356B290D

4/17/1994

Criminal trespass, private home

St. Louis, MO

Arrest Precinct: 2nd

Arrest Number: 9823

Prosecution Charge(s): CTTL, CTTP, SOL

Disposition/Sentence: Found guilty, issued a citation.

1/3/1997

Suspected robbery, First Federal Bank

St. Louis, MO

Arrest Precinct: 2nd

Arrest Number: 781

Prosecution Charge(s): None; not enough evidence.

On the page there was a pink Post-it, with a hand-written note.

10/22/1997

Suspected murder, Brianna Siebert

St. Louis, MO

Suspect was questioned in his home. No arrests made. Case still open.

Murder?
Goose bumps broke out on my arms.

Then I saw the mug shots. A thickset man with a beard staring angrily into the camera. In another he was clean-shaven, a tattoo of a flying bird tracing the length of his neck. My eye traveled up to his face and then down again.

I’d only seen his back before. Still, I knew it in my bones. Flannel shirt guy.

Oh my God.

Before I could show Aidan, he turned around, his face taut with disappointment. “We lost her,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘lost her’?”

He peered at me from under his brow. “I mean the car’s gone. No record. Poof.”

“We just saw her, though. She must be in there somewhere.”

He shook his head. “Willa, I’ve checked all available records in California and Nevada.”

“So maybe she switched cars?”

“That, or she could have taken back roads. Or, I don’t
know, maybe she’s walking. There are a thousand possibilities.”

I wasn’t going to just let this drop. “Aren’t there cameras on those tollbooths? Is there a way to hack into those?”

“I thought of that, but it means sorting through hundreds of thousands of records—maybe millions. We don’t have the time or the resources for that.”

“But we have to. We can’t just—”

I was interrupted by a sound coming from downstairs. A sound like metal clinking.