The Safest Lies (30 page)

To be sure, I circled the house on foot, tracing a path between the stone wall and black iron gates.

I wrapped my hands around the bars of the gate around back, but heard a noise in the woods—a snapping of a branch, like a footstep—and I froze. I stared into the woods until a small animal darted out of sight. The hinges cried in the breeze, unlocked and unlatched, as I pushed them open.

The house beyond was dark, but the web of cracks where the bullet had lodged stood out in the otherwise smooth surface. I cupped my hands over my eyes and leaned in close, but the curtains were pulled shut. I held my ear to the glass instead, listening for movement. I didn’t let myself in through the back door until I was convinced I was alone.

The scent overwhelmed me as soon as I stepped inside the kitchen. The hazy smoke was gone—the house had been cleaned. Instead, the scent of industrial cleanser filled the room, and my stomach rolled with nausea. An instinct. Nothing more. Or maybe it was something else: that I was standing in the kitchen of what had been my house just a few days earlier, and now we had been stripped from its surface.

All I felt was the emptiness.

I understood that this was what we both feared. Not the scent of the chemicals, a burn that would scar but eventually heal. We feared the thing that could erase all evidence that we had ever existed. We feared that the people we were had never been real. That we would be reduced to nothing more than a story.

Nothing inside was quite as I’d left it. The police must’ve been through all of our things, searching for evidence that my mother was not who she claimed to be, that she was someone other than the person I’d known my entire life. I heard Detective Conrad’s voice in my ear, saw the house as he might instead: cameras to see if the police were coming; a go-bag with stolen money and forged passports to take as we ran; an alarm system that told us someone was near, but did not call for help; walls and gates, marble and steel—all to hide behind.

I had been taught the protocol.
If the alarm sounds, get into the safe room.
But now I wondered whether it was supposed to keep me safe, or whether it was supposed to be the start of an escape. And I wanted to know exactly what we were trying to get away from.

And yet, when it came down to it, my mother had not followed protocol at all. I imagined what must’ve happened that night:
It’s nighttime, and the gates are locked. The lights are on, the alarm is armed. There’s a noise at the back gate, men in hoods trying to force entry. She picks up the phone, but the line is dead. She runs to my room, but it’s empty. She notices the open window, pushes at the grate. She sees my phone, but I am gone. Maybe she tries to make a call with it, but it won’t go through.

She was supposed to get to the safe room, but she hadn’t. Instead, she disarmed the alarm and pressed the button opening the gate….

And suddenly, I got a glimpse of someone new. Her, but not her.
Your mother is very strong. She’s capable of more,
Jan had said. I had seen glimpses of this person before: the little lies she told for our protection, the moment when social services came to take me away and she froze, wavering. I saw the moment in a new light: the decision to run or stay. Escape, or take the risk.

She let them take me not because she saw no other choice, but because this
was
the choice. The long game. The risk that she would get me back.

Or this: That I would make my way back to her.

And I did. Over and over, I did.

The stories I told to, and kept from, Jan. Hanging from the car, with nothing but the strength in my fingers and some hope.

My mother knew. She knew I’d find my way back to her. I always did.

I started rummaging through drawers, tearing through her things. She had to have left me something here. She had to have left me a way.

I checked her bedroom, the bathroom, the bedside table. I ran my fingers between the mattress and box spring. But there was no place to hide.

I went to her office, where she spent most of her time—but her computer was missing. My heart sank as I imagined the police digging through her history instead, looking for the wrong thing. Her emails, her searches, the things she feared…All those times she’d read up on stories of missing children, acts of violence—I wondered if all along, she’d been looking for
them.

I opened her filing cabinet, thumbed through her labeled folders, each of her clients in alphabetical order. From the haphazard way they were lined up, I knew the police had been through here, too.

Where, Mom?
Hidden. It would have to be hidden. There was no rug to peel back, or ceiling tiles to remove. I ran my fingers over her desk, looking for hidden compartments—but nothing. Only the walls remained. I took our pictures off the hooks, but the wall was smooth behind them. Even the finger-painting artwork, which had been here forever, for reasons I could never understand, in a frame too big for its paper.

My fingers tingled as I held the shadow box in my hand. I shook it gently, heard a faint rattling inside. I dropped to my knees, pried open the back, and saw a small piece of paper, folded over and yellowing at the edges.

I flattened it against the floor. It was a car registration. For the state of Georgia, issued eighteen years earlier, and held in the name of a man I’d never heard of before: Samuel Lyter.

And there was an address.

I stood, tucking the paper into my back pocket, my hands shaking, my entire body on edge. The name, and all it might represent. The man she had escaped. A name to the nightmare. But a name my mother
had always known.

Why had she kept this, if not for me? Trace back my blood, trace it to him. Trace it to her,
right now.
In case of emergency, I could find her.

I’d take this to the police, and we’d have a lead. I could give them a name and the car registration, see the face pulled up with the driver’s license, tell them if it was a match to the man I’d seen in my house.

I could bring the shadows to life.

I stood too fast, my mind spinning—and I heard it. A muffled voice, a shuffling of steps, a pause. I pulled my phone out, held it in my shaking hand, quickly dialed 911 and waited for it to connect.

No service.

My stomach dropped. Everything within me went on high alert. Goose bumps rising to the surface of my skin, a slow sickness making its way through my stomach, my vision narrowing to a point.

Fight or flight, Kelsey.

The sound was coming from the front, but the back door was within range. I could make it. Maybe run straight for the wall, maybe make it over before anyone saw. Maybe make it back to Cole’s car and out of the development, to where I had a signal. And maybe then the police would get here in time.

But then I heard something higher, more familiar. Not words, not anything so clear. But a voice that I knew. My mother. My mother was on the other side of that door, and I had found her.

I crept behind the open office door, trying to make myself small. Heard the front door creak open, the footsteps in the foyer, a grunt. My shoulders tensed as I imagined all the possible things that could be happening on the other side of the wall: my mother, forced inside the house, being hurt, being terrified.

Careful.

I held my breath, held my body perfectly still.

“Show us, Amanda.” It was the voice from the walkie-talkie, now too personal, too close. I pictured the down-turned mouth that had begun to say my name. And the name on the car registration in my back pocket.
Samuel.

But then, a second voice. “Make it quick.” Not the voice of someone my age, not Eli—someone older.

“Relax, Martin. The kid’s keeping watch.”

So, there were three. Martin. Samuel. Eli outside somewhere, watching.

“The basement,” my mother said. The breath rushed from me at the sound of her voice. Just a few steps away. So close I could reach through the wall and touch her.

I heard them moving down the hall, the familiar sound of the basement door opening, my mother’s voice pleading “Don’t”—and then a door swinging closed.

The person I knew was real—the one who could not manage the thought of being trapped inside a basement with these men. No matter what the police said, she was real.

I eased out from my hiding spot behind the door and tiptoed toward the top of the stairs, just to listen. I pressed my ear to the closed wooden door.

Voices came through in snippets—“No,” “Here,” “I didn’t”—half of it lost to the dark. But then I got some clarity. They must’ve been standing right at the base of the steps now.

“She told us she buried it. What the hell are we even listening to her for?” That was the more unfamiliar voice. Martin, I assumed.

“I
did,
” my mom said. “But then I went back for it.”

“You’re getting sloppy with your lies, Amanda,” Samuel said.

“Listen, Samuel, please. She doesn’t know. Call off the kid.”

The hairs raised on the back of my neck. Me. They were talking about me.

“She doesn’t know
what
?” Samuel asked.

“Anything. She can’t hurt you. She doesn’t even know who you are. I’ll give you anything. Anything you want. Just. Don’t do this.”

His voice rose. “How could you
possibly
give me what I want now?”

“I’ll get you the money—”

“Money! That might work for my brother, for the kid, but me and you have a little more history to work through, sweetheart.”

His brother.
Martin was his brother. The same blood running through them, and me. As if the thing that turned them dark was not a quirk of fate, but something deeper, something I could feel simmering within my bones, too….

I had to get out. I had to get
help.
They weren’t just here for money. Samuel wanted something more, and he was still using me to get it. I had to run. I had to
try.
Had to get to the road and make a call, and then come back for her.

Front door, back door. I checked out the window of the dining room, looking for Eli’s shadow, out in the trees. Saw no sign of him at the gates. The fog might be hiding him deeper in the trees, but it could hide me, too, if I made it that far.
Front or back, Kelsey.
A fifty-fifty shot, but I had to
try….

I turned the front door knob slowly, slowly, trying not to make a sound. Pulled the door inward, and gasped. There, standing in the open doorway, facing me, was a boy about my age.

“Hello,” he said. Eli, with his deep-set eyes, mismatched parts, and now a crooked smile, blocking the front door.

I backpedaled until I was in the middle of the living room. Eli closed the door behind him, stepped closer, walking toward me like I was an animal he didn’t want to spook.

The entire room hummed. I stood frozen in the middle of the living room, moved my arm slowly to my back pocket for my cell, but Eli shook his head.

“Won’t work,” he said. “It’s useless.”

All the hairs rose on my arms, the back of my neck, and the room narrowed into focus.

Everything I thought I wanted—answers, my mother—was replaced instead with the simple basic instinct:
Run.

The back door. The bedroom windows. The hole in the safe room floor.

The back door was closest. I still had the phone in my hand—
useless,
he’d said. But it wasn’t. I hurled it at his head, and as he ducked, I spun around, sprinting for the back door. Three strides, four, my hand on the knob, pulling it back—and then a hand was flat on the door beside me, slamming it shut. Slamming my body against it at the same time. My front was pressed up against the wood, and Eli was pressed up against my back.

I felt him breathing against the side of my face. “Not this time,” he whispered. He smelled of sweat and stale cigarettes, and I fought back a gag.

He wrenched one of my arms behind my back, still using his weight to pin me to the door. I stomped on his instep in a move that was second nature, and he released his grip enough for me to spin around and grab the handle again. But I couldn’t get it open in time. He backed me against the door again, jamming his forearm into my neck. I couldn’t breathe. I started clawing at the skin of his forearm, drawing blood, the world turning hazy, and then he suddenly released me, breathing heavily.

I slumped to the floor, preparing to kick him in the knee as he came closer.

But then I heard her again.

The high-pitched voice. The word
no.
All the tension, transferring from her to me. I twisted my head toward the hall, toward the basement, and in that moment of distraction, I didn’t notice the fist coming for the side of my face until it was too late.

A sharp sting, my head ricocheting off hardwood, and the world gone black.

—

It must’ve only lasted a moment or two, because I opened my eyes to see Eli crouching in front of me, his face contorted into panic. I was slouched against the back wall, but this time he was holding me up.

“Come on,” he mumbled. Then he glanced over his shoulder, and I fought for clarity.

He must’ve felt the tension come back to my body, because he hauled me up to my feet.

“Who are…where are…”

But I didn’t fight him as he walked us toward the basement, floating on my feet. I didn’t fight him, because I knew where we were going. I was still falling—only now I was doing it willingly. I was doing it to find the person at the bottom.