The Safest Lies (20 page)

Annika let out a low laugh. “This isn’t just
a couple grand.
Try
twenty.
”

My shoulders stiffened as all eyes turned to me.

I shrugged. “My mother doesn’t trust anything online,” I said, hoping it was true.

Cole narrowed his eyes, coughed, winced. “Your mother is batshit.”

“My mother is
gone
!” I said, my hand to my mouth. Everything trembling, everything wrong. I pointed at the door. “They—”

“Okay,” Ryan said, placing a hand on my own, pushing it back down. “It’s okay.”

I stared back at him. Shook my head. No, it wasn’t, and he knew it, too.

He knelt beside Cole again. “Enough,” he said. “You need to stay calm. You need to stay
still.
Keep pressure on this.”

Cole moved his hand to his side, pressing down, and flinched. “I’m just saying, that’s a lot of money to have just sitting in your floor. Maybe not for you guys,” he said, looking between Annika and me. “But for me and Baker here…”

I didn’t think they really knew each other. They were both seniors in my school, but they ran in different crowds. But now that I thought of it, they must’ve overlapped at parties or classes. Now I wondered how much they really knew about each other. Cole’s house wasn’t small by any stretch of the imagination. It was bigger than this one, probably. But his wasn’t turned into a fortress. It was typical, a middle-America two-story cookie-cutter house, on a street of similar homes that reminded me of the neighborhood my mother was taken from, years earlier. I had no idea where Ryan lived. The article in the paper said Pine View, but I’d never heard of it. All I knew of his upbringing was that he came from a long line of firefighters. It was in his blood, he’d said.

They were both eyeing the money. Even Annika was staring at it, appreciatively.

“You really think they’re here for this?” Annika asked.

Ryan was watching, and I didn’t answer.

“Offer it,” Cole said. “Either way, offer it.”

I tilted my head to the side, looked to Ryan—waiting for him to come up with a better idea. Trying to read the expression on his face.

He leaned his head back against the wall as he sat beside Cole. Seemed to concede something, either to me or to them. He did not say a word.

“He’s right,” Annika said. “That’s a lot of money. Even if they’re not here for it, maybe it will change their mind.” She held the pouches out to me.

Did this amount of money have the power to do that? To change someone’s plans? It must, if they were all looking at it like this. I took the money from Annika. “Okay, right. And how exactly am I supposed to do that?” I asked. “Slip a note under the door?
Dear Intruders: Take this and leave us alone. Signed, the people stuck inside the safe room.
”

Ryan choked on a laugh.

Annika gasped, and I thought she was close to tears again. “It’s not
funny.
Kelsey, really?” She looked at me as if she wasn’t sure exactly who I was.

Ryan shook his head back and forth, his eyes now focused on me, his lips curling into a grin. “She is really funny, though.”

“There’s something wrong with the both of you,” Cole said. “Snap the hell out of it. Look where we are! Someone
shot
me!”

I bit the inside of my cheek, couldn’t help myself. Folded in two, clutching twenty thousand dollars and trying not to cry all over it. My mother was gone, and we were trapped in a room, and her nightmare was literally standing on the other side of this wall.

I thought of Ryan’s face when he noticed the bullet lodged in the window. And me laughing when he brought out the harness in the car. Because something cracks inside you, short-circuits your emotional grid, your body saying
Enough, enough.

Turned out there had been nothing wrong with us. With my mother. With me. Turned out we had reason to live the way we were living. All the fears: legitimate. Everything had been for a reason.

You’re not paranoid if they’re really after you.

Ryan and I were forgetting the room we were in now, and I could see how my mother could forget her entire captivity, too. You disconnect. You go somewhere else.

I drifted across the room, reached my hand down for Ryan. He used me for leverage and stood up beside me, and I stopped thinking of the walls, the blood, the men.

Enough, enough.

I wanted to make Ryan smile again. Even if it was because I was being completely ridiculous. I felt the delirious laughter bubbling up and over, urging me on.

I depressed the key on the walkie-talkie again, listened to it beep, and said, “Hello, intruders,” and Ryan tipped his head down, grinning with half his mouth. We were somewhere else. Anywhere else. Sending text messages to each other, captions of moments frozen in time, meaning layered under meaning. “I’d like to make you an offer you cannot refuse.”

I let go of the button, dropped my arm beside me, Ryan smiling in a way that made my heart squeeze, shaking his head at me. He wasn’t trapped in a room with no escape. I wasn’t responsible for the lives of three other people.

He took a step closer—and the walkie-talkie beeped in my hand, cutting through the static.

“We’re listening,” a low voice replied.

I
t was suddenly so quiet I was sure I could make out four distinct heartbeats fluttering through the room. My hands tingled. The room sparked. Shadows and fears, come to life.

A chill ran through the room, and I expected to see the cold puffs of breath from everyone else as they stared at the device in my hand. Ryan placed a hand on my elbow, like he was offering to take the walkie-talkie from me. But this was
my
house.

I raised the phone to my mouth, pressed the button. “Hello,” I said. Not quite a question. Not quite a statement.

A pause of static filled the room, and then, “What’s the offer?” The words were clipped and deliberate, emotionless.

I stared at Ryan, at Annika, at Cole.

“Do it,” Cole said.

“And then what?” Ryan asked. “We give it to them, and trust they’re going to walk away? Leave us alone?”

“And how do we just
give
it to them,” I asked, “without opening the door?”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Cole asked. There was a small puddle of blood forming below him, but he didn’t seem to notice. I wondered if he’d gone numb, into shock.

Annika was chewing on her thumbnail, staring at the door.

I did not, as it turned out, have any better ideas.

I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed the button on the phone. “We have money,” I said. “Around twenty thousand. It’s yours, if you leave. We’ll leave it outside the door, but you have to wait upstairs. We have to see you on the cameras. Outside. Before we open the door.”

The static continued as we waited. No response. The silence stretched out, becoming something real, filling up the empty crevices, turning my muscles tense and putting my nerves on edge.

“Maybe they’re deciding,” Annika said, shifting from foot to foot, scraping her heel against the concrete as she did. “Maybe they’re talking about the split.”

Ryan shook his head. “No, this was a stupid idea. This isn’t how things work—”

“Oh yeah?” Cole said. “Then how do
things
work, Baker? Enlighten us. Please.”

“Okay,” Ryan said, his voice rising. “For one thing, you don’t get to bribe intruders out of your house. Because they have so much honor, right?
Fair trade,
they’ll say.
Let’s shake on it.
”

I didn’t like seeing this version of Ryan, who wasn’t hoping for the best anymore. He’d moved past it, into reality: There were men outside, and we were inside, and Cole was bleeding, and they weren’t leaving. They had guns, and we had nothing.

“Right, you know what’s stupid?” Cole said, staring at me. “Telling them they had to wait outside, Kelsey. They probably think we’re planning how to escape. You don’t get to make demands when we’re the ones trapped!” I could feel the desperation in his voice. He was starting to panic. His breath coming too fast, his arm shaking, pressed against his side.

“He’s right,” Annika said. “We’re stuck in a cellar. I don’t see how we have that many options.”

“It’s not a cellar,” Cole said, trying to twist in her direction. “You know what this is? This is the
panic
room. My mom told me about this.”

“Stop it,” I said. And his gaze:
I know, I know, I know what you are.

Annika tilted her head. Picked at the polish on her nails, which I knew was a nervous twitch. Looked at Cole from under the mess of hair that had fallen in her face. Looked my way again, as if she were seeing me for the first time. There was a look she gave to people she didn’t know: slightly pursed mouth, eyes roaming, as if she wanted them to know she was mentally assessing them. It used to make me smile, make me feel like I was on the inside of her world. But now that look was turned on me, and I didn’t know what she would see.

The walkie-talkie chirped, interrupting the argument. “We have a counter-offer.”

That voice again. Low, deliberate. I pictured his mouth moving, the way he began to say my name….

“Say something,” Cole said.

I waited for someone to agree or disagree. I wanted to be sure, but there was only the silence and the waiting and the phone in my hand. Everyone’s faces flickered from the glare of the screens and the solitary flashlight. I raised the device to my mouth. “What is it?” I answered.

There was a long gap of silence again, and I was halfway to repeating the question when the receiver beeped once.

“Give us the money. And give us Kelsey Thomas. Then we’ll leave.”

My name sounded like poison in his voice. I felt everyone’s eyes on me, even as the room filtered and narrowed to a point—
me,
they wanted
me
—because now they all knew what Ryan must’ve already suspected. They weren’t here for the money, or a burglary at all. Someone spoke my name at the front door because they were looking for me. All of this was because of me.

Ryan was on his feet in the middle of the room, like he was waiting for a fire about to ignite, but wasn’t sure which corner it would spring from. But my focus was on Cole—staring at me, staring at the device, now fizzling with static in my hand.

“No,” Ryan said. “Tell them no.”

Annika shook her head too fast. “No way, Kelsey. No way. If we open that door, they’ll kill us. Look at him,” she said, pointing to Cole.

But I was already staring at him. At the blood soaking through the makeshift bandage and his shirt. At the life dripping onto the cold basement floor.

His eyes were locked onto mine, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

“One life for three,” I said.

“No,” Ryan repeated, and Annika was still shaking her head.

I pulled Ryan into the corner, turned so I couldn’t see Cole and Cole couldn’t see me, lowered my voice. “Is he going to die?” I asked.

He closed his eyes. Didn’t answer at first. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not a medic.”

“Best guess then.”

He set his jaw. “I really don’t know. Eventually, if he doesn’t stop bleeding, I guess.”

“Can you stop the bleeding?”

“I’m
trying,
” he said.

I touched his arm. “Look at him.” But he didn’t. He looked at me instead.

Cole raised his voice from across the room. “We can get help, Kelsey. If they let us go, we can get help.”

“No,” Ryan said. Hands up. “Final answer.”

“I’m sorry,” Cole said, “I didn’t realize this was a dictatorship.” And for a moment, I was surprised that Cole even knew the term.

“No, it
is
stupid,” Ryan said, and I saw the calm facade crumbling down. His voice rose; the air filled with tension. “You think they’re not going to hurt her? That we’ll have time to get help? You don’t
trade people’s lives
!”

“Except you already are.” Cole lifted his hand to Ryan, palm out, and even in the dark, we could see it covered in blood.

Annika was looking from the door, to me, to Cole. She seemed on the verge of speaking, and I was scared. Scared because I had thought Emma was my best friend too, and I had thought Cole had liked me, and they both had traded me in for nothing, in a heartbeat.

And now we were bargaining with people’s lives. We were inside a panic room. We were panicking.

Will you trade money? Your word?

Will you trade another person?

Turned out I didn’t want to see. Like looking down when you’re already hanging from a cliff.

Her breath hitched. Her hands shook. Annika was unraveling, and I pictured her hopping down from the stone wall into the tall weeds even though
there might be snakes, darling,
then pulling me close and making sure I was okay.

I placed a hand on her shoulder, and everything inside of her stiffened.

“It’s okay,” I said. And I meant it. It was okay to want to be safe. To be willing to do anything for it. I understood how my mother would start with safety and go from there. At the sacrifice of everything else. I wanted her to know, I, of all people, understood:
it was okay.