Scotty sighed. “We’ll try it out tomorrow.” He met my eyes, his voice turning stern. “But Grace, I’m not kidding about this: You stay out of sight. If you even think you see him, you text Marcus or me, got it?”
“I promise.”
Scotty nodded, but he didn’t look happy about the idea.
An hour later we were at dinner when my cell phone rang. The number was blocked, which meant it could only be one person.
“I have to take this,” I said to Scotty and Marcus. “I’ll be right back.”
I slid out of the booth and walked to the front of the restaurant, then pressed the button to accept the call. “Hey.”
“Hey, Gracie,” Renee said on the other end of the phone.
I cringed at the nickname but didn’t correct her. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Just checking on you,” she said. “Have you thought about everything? About what I said?”
I kicked my foot against the side of the restaurant, leaving black scuff marks on the toe of my tennis shoes. “I can’t.”
I hadn’t been aware of making the decision, but as soon as I said it, I knew it was the right one. Too much had changed. I had changed. Renee and I might be able to build something new, but we’d only be tacking something pretty on top of an already-fractured foundation. Nothing we built together would ever be solid.
“Grace . . .” She spoke softly, her voice full of sadness. “What else will you do? Where else will you go?”
I swallowed against the fear that rose in my throat. “I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I only knew that the way forward wasn’t reliving the mistakes from my past. I’d have to take a chance on a fresh start, have some faith that whatever the path ahead, moving forward was better than trying to go back.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because I might not be able to risk surfacing again.”
I hesitated. We were close to Cormac. I could feel it. If we lost him, there wouldn’t be time to create a sting to bring in Renee before Parker’s trial date. That’s what I told myself, anyway, all the while avoiding what I suspected was the real reason: in some secret part of my twisted brain I still cared about Renee. All that mother-daughter bonding time might have been fake, but I hadn’t known it at the time, and it had left its mark on me whether I liked it or not.
“I know.”
She didn’t say anything for so long that I was beginning to think we’d been disconnected when she finally spoke again. “I’ll . . . Well, I’ll miss you, Gracie.”
I thought her voice sounded thick and heavy, and I wondered if she could be crying. I’d never seen her cry. Not once in all the years I’d known her. I wanted to say it back, to tell her I’d miss her too, but only because that was what people said in this kind of situation. The truth was, I’d miss what I’d thought she was, what I’d thought we were together. I didn’t know her well enough to miss the real her.
“Good-bye, Renee.” I said the words softly into the phone and hung up. Then I leaned against the restaurant, trying to get used to the idea that I would never see her again.
Thirty-Nine
Detective Ling picked Scotty up before breakfast the next day. Marcus and I drove down to the waterfront and ate muffins on a bench near the water. When we were done, I opened my phone to call Detective Castillo in Playa Hermosa.
“Keep it short,” Marcus instructed as I dialed.
I nodded. I’d practiced what I wanted to say in my head. It was less than a minute. Allowing for some response from Castillo, I’d still be off the phone in under two minutes, and Marcus and I would leave right afterward.
“Hello?”
“It’s Grace.”
“Grace . . .” He exhaled into the phone and I wondered if it was the sound of relief or annoyance. “It’s been a while.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m getting close to that thing we talked about, and I need to know if you’ll still vouch for Parker and me if I can make it happen.”
“Well, you know I can’t guarantee anything, but I think you have a good shot.” He paused. “Where are you? Maybe I can round up resources, come help you out.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m doing it my way. I just need to know if you’ll be there when I call with the news . . . if you’ll be there when it’s time to help Parker and me.”
“I’ll be there, Grace.” His voice was firm. “You have my word.”
I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t see it. “Good. I’ll call you back soon.”
I disconnected the call and looked at the timer on my phone. One minute twenty-nine seconds.
“Good job,” Marcus said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
He dropped me at El Tapatio, the little Mexican food place across the street from the gas station where I’d spotted Cormac.
“I’ll be within a two-mile radius. Text if you see him. Text if you even think you see him.” He seemed to hesitate.
“I will, I promise.” I hurried inside before he could change his mind about leaving me there.
The restaurant was a tiny hole-in-the-wall with linoleum floor and Formica tables. I ordered a soda from a beautiful brown-skinned girl with a perfect smile and curly brown hair. She reminded me of Selena, and I suddenly regretted not saying good-bye to her. I wondered if I’d see her again before she went to Nicaragua. We were operating in different spheres now, two planets orbiting different suns.
I took my soda to a booth against the front window. It gave me a perfect view of the gas station. It looked even worse in person: small and dirty and neglected. I opened my book for show, trained my eyes on the building across the street, and settled in to wait.
The station didn’t get a lot of customers. A trickle of cars stopped for gas, a few of the people going inside for one reason or another. More than one person entered the minimart on foot. They emerged shaking packs of cigarettes against their hands or carrying gallons of milk or a handful of lottery tickets. It was after one in the afternoon when Marcus called.
“Hey, kid. How you holding up?”
“Nothing’s happening here,” I said. “How about you?”
“These places are ghost towns,” he said.
I sighed. “Well, it’s only the first day.”
“Don’t tell me; you’re a glass-half-full kind of girl?” he said wryly.
I laughed. “Not usually.” Maybe Scotty was rubbing off on me. It definitely wasn’t Marcus’s influence.
“Call if you need me.” He hung up before I could respond.
The girl at the counter was starting to glance suspiciously my way, so I ordered two tacos and another soda and made small talk while she put my lunch together. I told her I was on a business trip with my dad and needed a place to escape the hotel, someplace quiet where I could read without my dad asking me a million questions. It was thin, but she laughed and seemed to understand.
I took my food back to the table by the window and pretended to read, but by the time Marcus pulled up in the Range Rover at four thirty in the afternoon, I still hadn’t seen any sign of Cormac.
“This sucks,” I said as I climbed into the front seat.
“Totally blows,” he agreed.
I laughed at his terminology and he drove us back to the hotel. Scotty hadn’t made progress either. None of the used-car lots in the area had recognized Cormac’s pictures, and we assumed that he’d given up after trying to buy an under-the-table car from Ron Lysinsky.
We were all quiet at dinner, and I was relieved to fall into the hotel bed at the end of the night. I turned out the light and grabbed my phone from where it was charging on the nightstand. Pulling up the calendar, I counted the days until June twenty-ninth. There were only twelve of them. Twelve days standing between Parker and prison.
Forty
The days morphed together in a loop of continental breakfasts, conversation with Marisa (the counter girl and cook at El Tapatio), and hour upon hour staring at the tiny gas station. Wilson Ling’s chief had granted Ling permission
to continue working with Scotty, and they had been running down the few leads that trickled in from the APB, supposed sightings of Cormac that never came to anything solid. In between, Scotty worked the Seattle and Tacoma police databases, looking through lists of parking tickets and moving violations (both were long shots if Cormac didn’t have a car, but we were getting desperate), drunk-and-disorderlies, anything that might lead us to Cormac.
Marcus was slowly crossing motels off his list. His MO was simple: take Cormac’s picture to the hotel manager, ask if he or she had seen the man in the photograph, then case the place for a couple of days in case the manager was lying or mistaken.
In the meantime, I worked the gas station. I’d had one false alarm—a man who stopped for gas looked enough like Cormac that I actually texted Marcus—but he was just a middle-aged guy in a baggy suit.
Cormac hadn’t surfaced.
“Hola, Sarah!” Marisa called out when I entered El Tapatio a week after we’d started our stakeout.
I’d told her my parents were divorced and I was forced to spend the summer with my dad. I tried to keep the details fuzzy—our estranged relationship, my dad’s obsessive attention to work, the necessity of following him to conferences in crappy towns all over the United States during our summers together—to avoid lying more than I had to. But I still felt shitty. I was lying. It was something I’d hoped not to do anymore, and I had to remind myself that the lies weren’t designed to hurt anyone or steal from anyone, that they were just to free Parker, who didn’t deserve what had happened to him. But it didn’t really help. I wanted out of this kind of life, and sometimes it felt like I would never be free of it. Like it had its claws in me so deep, the only thing I could do was keep moving forward, dragging it behind me like an animal trap clamped to my leg. Sometimes I even wished for my former obliviousness, for the days when I was so naive, so entrenched in Cormac and Renee’s propaganda, that I could rationalize anything. But that Grace was gone forever, and as Marcus would say, the new one didn’t blow sunshine up my ass.
“Hola! Did you watch the next episode of Buffy last night?” I’d been watching the show with Marcus when Scotty was busy with Detective Ling in the evenings and had managed to convince Marisa to give it a try.
She shook her head and poured my soda. “I had too much work around the house. Did you?”
I nodded.
“Don’t tell me!” she said before I could say anything.
I laughed and pressed my lips together. We talked for a few more minutes and I took the soda to my seat near the window. I grimaced as I sat down. My capris had gotten a little tight in the past few weeks—too many good Scotty meals in Playa Hermosa, continental breakfasts with Marcus, tacos and enchiladas made by Marisa. I’d needed to gain the weight, but now I was uncomfortable, and I didn’t dare say anything to Scotty, who would force me to go clothes shopping and leave the gas station unattended.
I looked at the calendar on my phone and was surprised to realize that it was June twenty-fifth. I’d known there were only four days to the start of Parker’s trial, but I hadn’t been keeping track of the actual date; tonight, the fate of Playa Hermosa’s peacocks would be determined by the town’s residents. I hoped they’d be allowed to stay.
I opened my book and looked across the street. The cloudy sky cast everything in shades of gray, but at least it wasn’t raining. I’d spent a couple of tough days peering out at the gas station through the rain-streaked window of El Tapatio before I’d become desperate and gone outside. The first time, I’d gotten drenched leaning against the building. I got smarter after that and had started tucking a pocket umbrella into my bag, just in case. Still, rain wasn’t ideal for the work I was doing, and I hoped the stormy sky wasn’t a portent of worse things to come.
The gas station was business as usual. The place would have looked deserted if not for a woman filling her older-model Toyota Corolla at one of the pumps. I took a drink of my soda as I scanned the surrounding area. A few seconds later, a teenager wearing baggy cargo shorts and a shapeless polo shirt came into view. It wasn’t until he came closer that I realized he wasn’t a teenager, but a grown man.
He was wearing a bucket hat not unlike the ones Marcus wore when he was out in the sun, but it was still obvious that the guy was bald or almost bald, and I could see glasses perched on his nose under the brim of the hat. But his shoulders hung a little too low for the man to be Cormac. He didn’t walk with Cormac’s purpose, with the right blend of arrogance and dynamism that somehow made people both revere and like the man I had thought of as my father.
I watched him anyway. Parker’s swiftly approaching trial date and my own frustration were making me desperate. I was seeing things where they didn’t exist, as if my wanting something to be true could alter the course of the universe, conjure progress out of thin air. The man was almost to the gas station, his body angled slightly toward it, away from my vantage point, as he aimed for the minimart. I watched as he approached the door and disappeared inside.
I took another drink of my soda. A couple of minutes later, the man emerged, carrying a carton of cigarettes. I strained to get a look at the box tucked under his arm. He shifted a little as the door closed behind him, stepping out of the way as the woman with the Corolla reached for it, and then I saw the carton more clearly. The black-and-white footage on the security camera made it impossible to match the colors, but the font on the box was the same, tall and a little blocky.
Marlboro. The same brand purchased by Cormac on the original footage from the gas station.
Leaning forward in my seat, I kept my eyes on his face, shadowed under the brim of the hat. He stopped and opened the carton of cigarettes, withdrawing one of the packs and shaking it against the palm of his hand. A moment later he bent to the trash can to throw the wrapping away. His hat slid off his head, falling to the pavement at his feet and revealing the top of a nearly bald head. He squatted down to retrieve the hat, then stood, reaching a hand up to scratch the top of his scalp.
Cormac’s voice echoed through my memory: These things itch like a son of a bitch.
He’d spoken the words during some long-ago con, scratching his head while he’d been wearing a silver wig. In any other situation, it might have been a coincidence, but now I saw it—the familiar set of his mouth, the lines, now deeper, around his eyes.
It was him. It was Cormac.
I spent an indeterminate time just staring at him, debating whether I could be wrong. Then he was on the move, heading back the way he’d come. It mobilized me, and I jumped up, nearly spilling my soda, and headed for the door.
“See you later, Sarah?” Marisa called after me.
I didn’t have time to answer. I was out the door and crossing the street. I was tailing him when I realized I hadn’t called Marcus or Scotty. Afraid to alert Cormac to my presence, I turned off my ringer and dialed Scotty’s number, then slipped my phone back into my pocket. He had been a cop. I hoped he’d get the idea.
Cormac walked to the end of the next block and turned right at an abandoned factory building. Still moving, he bent his head, and a moment later the smell of tobacco drifted in his wake. I was gaining on him, too worried about losing sight of him to even think about what I’d do once I caught up. My heart pounded harder and faster as we got farther away from the main road. If I lost him now, I might never see him again, and prison time for Parker would be all but guaranteed.
We made a left and crossed the street to another block lined with crumbling Victorians that may or may not have been occupied. Across the street was a vacant lot, the grass dead and knee-high. I had no weapons, nothing to defend myself with, and no way to keep Cormac here until help arrived. All I could do was keep my eyes on him.
There was only twenty feet between us when his footsteps started to slow. By the time he stopped walking, we were less than ten feet apart. I stopped when he did, waiting to see what he’d do next, getting ready to run, hoping Scotty was on his way. We were only a couple
of blocks from the gas station, and the neighborhood was almost entirely deserted. It wouldn’t take Scotty long to find me if he started at the station.
The man in front of me turned slowly around, the carton of cigarettes still in his hand. And then we were face-to-face.
“Grace.” He didn’t even look surprised.
“Cormac.” I wondered if Scotty was listening, if he knew where I was.
The prosthetics confused my already-freaked-out brain. It was both Cormac and not Cormac. There was Cormac’s mouth, Cormac’s eyes, Cormac’s hands. But his features were twisted, his nose bulbous, his eyes big and watery behind the thick glasses.
“How did you find me?” he finally asked.
“Does it matter?” And then, because I needed to keep him talking: “You promised to go back for Parker.”
Every nerve in my body was coiled like a viper. When he dropped his cigarette butt to the ground and reached for his pocket, I jumped a little, prepared for him to take off. Instead he pulled out the pack of cigarettes he’d opened at the gas station and lit another.
“I wasn’t in a position to go back for Parker,” he said. “We were still getting set up with Miranda.”
“Miranda. Another victim,” I said bitterly.
His eyes hardened. “People make themselves victims, Grace. You should know that by now.”
I swallowed the complex storm of emotion that rose in my chest. “I don’t buy your bullshit anymore, Cormac. Nobody asks to be made a victim. Trusting people and being nice and believing that people are good . . . that’s not the problem. We were. You are. All of those people we hurt and lied to and stole from? They didn’t deserve what happened to them. That’s just a bedtime story you tell yourself. Only you’ve been telling it for so long you actually believe it.”
He took a drag on the cigarette. “And what about you, Gracie? What bedtime stories do you tell yourself?”
“I don’t,” I say. “I’m not doing that anymore.”