I used a proxy server to search online for recent news about Parker while I ate my dinner. A VPN would have been better—some of them didn’t keep logs—but I needed a credit card to access them. I made a mental note to pick up a prepaid card somewhere along the way.
Nothing new had developed in Parker’s case since the last time I’d combed the internet for information about him. He was being held in Los Angeles County Jail. The judge had cited flight risk as a reason to refuse bail, and Parker had been assigned a public defender named Robin Mannheim and charged with three counts of felony fraud and one count of grand theft. I knew that the guard from Allied Security had died following a gunshot to his chest. The prosecutor had tried to pin it on Parker but couldn’t for lack of evidence, which made perfect sense given the blood on Cormac’s shirt the night we stole Warren’s gold. Cormac hadn’t admitted it, but I knew he’d been the one to shoot the guard. Parker was already on the run by then. Still, the state expected more charges against him pending their investigation. None of it was a surprise, but I had to fight against despair as I closed my computer. How was I supposed to help Parker? I couldn’t even visit him in jail without being taken into custody, and then we’d both be screwed. Because one thing I now knew for sure: Cormac and Renee weren’t going to lift a finger to help either of us.
I spent a fitful night drifting in the ether between wakefulness and sleep. A sliver of light from the walkway outside sneaked in between the polyester curtains, and I could hear people talking as they passed by my room. At one point, two people stopped outside the door, throwing shadows under it, and I sat up in bed in a panic, listening as they engaged in murmured conversation. When they didn’t move on, I jumped out of bed, stuffing my feet into my shoes and grabbing my backpack and laptop, wondering how long it would be before whoever it was broke down the door and came in after me. I felt stupid when their voices faded away a few minutes later, but I wasn’t able to go back to sleep afterward. I turned on the TV instead and watched reruns of Full House while the hours ticked by.
I left the room just after nine a.m. and headed to the train station. I held my breath as I slid my driver’s license under the ticket window, glad the birth date on Julie Montrose’s ID made me eighteen on the Washington State driver’s license. A moment later, the gray-haired ticket attendant passed back my change along with my ticket to LA.
I avoided eye contact with the other passengers as I followed the signs to my platform, but I kept my head up. If you act guilty of something, people will remember you, think you are guilty of something. Another lesson from Cormac and Renee. I tried to maintain an expression of boredom as I climbed onto the train and looked for a seat, surprised to find that they all swiveled to face the windows. It wasn’t nearly as private as I’d expected, and I chose a seat at the end of an empty row, hoping it would stay that way. Then I put in my headphones as a deterrent against conversation.
I kept my eyes on the concrete platform, half expecting someone official-looking to come running for the train at the last minute, holding a flyer with my face plastered all over it. The thought made my heart beat too fast and my skin prickle with nervousness. I’d never been afraid when traveling with Cormac and Renee, even as we changed names and hair colors, addresses and IDs. Somehow they always made me feel like we had every right to be wherever we were. Now I didn’t know if it had been a gift or a curse. The safety had been nice, but they had been wrong. We were thieves and liars. We didn’t have any rights at all.
I watched a bearded guy on the platform clasp an older man’s hand, then draw him into an embrace. A moment later he bent to a slight woman with shining eyes and enveloped her in his arms. When they parted, he grabbed an overstuffed backpack and gave the couple a final wave before disappearing into one of the cars at the front of the train. I watched the couple walk away, arms around each other’s waists.
A crackly voice came over the loudspeaker welcoming us aboard the train from Seattle to Los Angeles. I scanned the aisle while I listened to the emergency instructions and was relieved when no one took the seat next to me. I wasn’t up to polite conversation, and I didn’t want to spend the next thirty-five hours wondering if the person next to me would have a sudden epiphany and recognize my face.
The loudspeaker grew silent, and a few minutes later the train shifted and began to move.
The rocking motion was unsettling at first. The train was moving forward, but it also swayed slightly under my body. I had the odd sensation of being on a boat and in a car at the same time. Then we broke free of the station, and everything smoothed out as we picked up speed.
We moved through the city and past Tacoma, the waters of the Puget Sound glimmering dark under the rising sun. It made me think of Playa Hermosa, of the Cove and the feel of Logan’s hand in mine, the way Selena smiled when she made some wry observation, like it was a secret just between us. I was homesick for all of it, which didn’t make any sense. We’d only lived there for three months. How was it possible that it felt like home?
I grew drowsy, the rhythmic sway of the train lulling me into a pleasant fog, and I finally fell asleep with my backpack in my lap, the morning sun warming my body through the big east-facing windows. Every time the train stopped to let passengers on or off, I jerked awake, fear winding sharp and fast through my body. Had Cormac sent someone to find me after all? Had the police somehow subverted my use of a proxy on the internet? I had no idea what kind of resources were used to catch a criminal like me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on borrowed time, that my freedom would be short-lived outside of Cormac’s protection.
By the time we reached Portland, Oregon, I’d settled into a routine: waking up when we stopped, keeping my stuff close in case I had to run, eating something from my stash, dozing off when we were safely in motion. I took everything with me when I had to use the restroom and made a point of finding a new place to sit when I was done. People came and went in the seats next to me. Old people, young people. Men, women, and once a small girl traveling with her mother, clutching a coloring book and a plastic bag full of crayons. I gave each of them a polite smile and turned back to the book in my hands, rereading the same ten pages across eleven hundred miles. Time was my enemy. There were endless amounts of it, hour upon hour when there was nothing to do but think of Logan. I still felt a hitch in my breath at the thought of him, still felt the hollow place throb in my chest when I remembered his arms around me. I noticed his absence constantly, like those people you hear about who lose a limb but still feel it ache when it rains. I tried to focus instead on coming up with a plan to rescue Parker, but my mind drew a blank. I never got past the point where I arrived in LA with no place to sleep and no one to call for help.
We pulled into Union Station just after one a.m., a little over twenty-four hours after we’d left Seattle. My body was stiff and a little sore as I grabbed my stuff and disembarked the train, and my footsteps echoed across the cavernous rooms as I made my way through the old building. The stained-glass windows were dark overhead, the ceiling rising so high that I almost couldn’t see it beyond the shadows. The station was nearly deserted, but I stayed alert anyway, my gaze skimming over the few people who sat on benches or leaned against the wall. Now was not the time to be sloppy.
I stepped out into a cool California night. It was mid-May, and the heat of summer hadn’t yet settled into the concrete. I felt a pang of fear when I realized there were no cabs outside the station, no buses, no people. Just a big empty parking lot sporadically lit with streetlamps and a neighborhood that looked like it had seen better days.
I walked to the sidewalk and headed for the corner, looking around for a hotel. I hadn’t gone a block when I passed a group of men leaning in the shadows of a crumbling brick building. They called softly to me as I passed.
“Hey, pretty mama . . .”
“All alone?”
“Oye, muchacha bonita.”
I was suddenly aware of how alone I was, how vulnerable. No one
in the world knew where I was. No one cared. I’d left my cell phone in Bellevue in case Cormac tried to track me with it. I could disappear off the face of the earth and no one would even notice.
I turned and headed back for the station, remembering a bank of pay phones near the exit. I couldn’t afford to get mugged in some back alley. Who would help Parker then?
I located the phones and was reading the directions to dial information (who knew you could dial 411 for information? Would it be the kind of information that would find me a cab? A motel?) when I noticed a sticker advertising a taxi service. It was half peeled off, but I could still make out the number. I dug in my pocket for some change and dialed.
The dispatcher said it would be twenty minutes, so I waited inside the station, watching out the window until fifteen minutes had passed. Then I ventured outside, careful to stay under one of the streetlights near the parking lot. A couple of minutes later a yellow taxi came to a stop at the curb.
I slid into the backseat, tugging my backpack in after me. The driver was a middle-aged woman, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She held one hand near the cracked window, a swirl of smoke rising from a cigarette in her long fingers.
“Where we headed, honey?” she asked.
“Torrance.” I said it almost without thinking, but then I realized it was the perfect place. Only fifteen minutes from Playa Hermosa, Torrance was clean and suburban, big enough to get lost in but not too big for comfort. I didn’t know what I’d do once I got there, but it was close enough to Playa Hermosa that I could move quickly once I figured it out.
“You got it,” the driver said, pulling out of the parking lot. “I’m Meg. You just get into town?”
“Yep.” It was best to say as little as possible when you were on the run. It was too easy to babble when you were scared or nervous, too easy to let something slip. Even something small could be your ruin on the grift.
“Where you from?” She met my gaze in the rearview mirror, and I tried to see myself through her eyes: a tough girl with eyes that told too many sad stories.
“Chicago,” I said.
“Got family out here?” I sensed a little desperation in her voice as she realized small talk wasn’t exactly my forte.
I shook my head. “I’m meeting up with friends. We’re going to Mexico.” The lie came easily.
“Ah, Mexico.” I heard the smile in her voice. “What I wouldn’t give to be young and in Mexico again.”
I smiled politely and put in my earbuds, then turned my face to the window. My survival depended on making as few connections as possible now that I was close to the scene of our crime. And so did Parker’s.
We wound our way through the city and got onto one of LA’s freeways. It was nearly two, and the roads were strangely deserted, the streetlamps casting yellow orbs onto the pavement. The lights on the skyscrapers downtown faded away in favor of concrete that seemed to stretch in every direction, crammed tightly with houses and asphalt, minimalls, and fast-food restaurants, a few palm trees dotting the streets like candles on an otherwise bland birthday cake. It was hard to believe that Playa Hermosa was less than an hour away. That the tropical refuge filled with wild parrots and peacocks, the sea crashing against the cliff at the base of the peninsula, could exist hand in hand with the concrete jungle that was Los Angeles and its surrounding suburbs.
The taxi driver put on her blinker and looked at me in the rearview mirror as she prepared to exit the freeway. “So where exactly am I dropping you?”
I hesitated for a split second. “I think I’m the first one here. If you could get me to a cheap hotel in the area, I’ll text my friends and let them know where I am.”
She nodded. “You looking for something by the mall? Or closer to the beach?”
I had a flash of the Cove in Playa Hermosa, the water rushing up the sand, the rise and fall of it, the softest of sighs.
“The mall is fine.” I didn’t need the memories of the ocean, and I didn’t want to risk running into Logan or any of the guys. They usually surfed at the Cove, but I’d heard them mention moving north to Torrance or Redondo Beach when the swells were better there.
We continued up Hawthorne Boulevard, past the Galleria mall, where Selena and I went shopping on the day we really became friends. Other than Parker, she was the only person I’d ever gotten close to, the only person I’d really let in. I wondered what she had done with my betrayal. If she replayed our time together, searching for clues, blaming herself for not seeing it sooner. I hoped not. It wasn’t her fault. No one ever saw us coming. That was why Cormac and Renee needed Parker and me so much. We made them look normal, allowed them to hide behind the façade of a picture-perfect family.
“How’s that?” the driver said, tipping her head at an Econo Lodge on the corner. “Close to everything, probably cheap.”
“Great, thanks,” I said.
The car dipped as she pulled into the hotel parking lot. I looked at the meter and dug in my bag for money, then passed it over the seat with an extra five dollars when she stopped in front of the lobby. Five dollars was on the low end of fair for a tip, but perfectly appropriate for someone my age. I didn’t want to stand out as some kind of teenage high roller.
“Have a great time in Mexico,” Meg said as I opened the door. “But keep your wits about you. It can be as dangerous as it is beautiful.”
I watched her go, the words ringing in my ears.
Three
I walked about a half a mile before I saw a Motel 6. I could have stayed at the Econo Lodge, but I didn’t want to risk some kind of belated recognition on the part of the taxi driver. The streets were empty except for the traffic whizzing past in both directions, but I wasn’t afraid here. I could smell the ocean even from Hawthorne Boulevard, feel the briny weight of it, and I felt safe against all reason.
The hotel was comfortingly nondescript, the white tile floors polished to an antiseptic shine, the walls filled with generic prints of the ocean. It was after three in the morning, and the only person in the lobby was a guy in his twenties, clean-cut and wearing a name tag that read Brad, who was manning the front desk. I told him I was a light sleeper and requested a room at the end of the hall. Then I handed over my Seattle ID and paid for two nights.
I took an elevator to the second floor and followed the brass placards pointing toward my room number. Being at the end of the hall would serve more than one purpose: I would be able to get out fast if the situation called for it, and I could use the stairwell instead of the elevator without having to walk past a bunch of different rooms. All of which meant less exposure, fewer people who could identity me if things went bad.
I used my key card to enter the room and locked the door, finishing with the brass bar at the top. Turning on the lights, I scanned the room. Closet just outside the bathroom on my immediate left, dresser with TV and mini coffeemaker, bed, two nightstands, small table and chairs by the window.
I dropped my backpack on the bed and crossed the room. Pulling back the curtain, I wasn’t surprised to see that the window didn’t open. That was standard for hotel rooms, whose parent companies didn’t want to be sued when people got drunk or careless. The same was true for balconies, which Cormac had told me most hotels used to have but which were now all but obsolete.
I looked past the parking lot at the sparse traffic moving below, the ocean a blank space beyond the city. Exhaustion, heavy and suffocating, fell over me like a wet blanket. I hadn’t slept well on the train, and the last time I’d been in a bed had been at the crappy motel in Seattle two nights ago. There were things I needed to do, but I wouldn’t be able to deal with any of them if I didn’t get some sleep.
I pulled the curtains closed and headed for the bathroom, where I took a long, hot shower. I threw on the only pajamas I’d brought, a pair of loose boxer shorts and a tank top, and stared at my face in the mirror as I combed through my short, choppy hair. Usually, my blue eyes were the one thing that brought me back to myself. I might c
hange my hair for the con, and I often changed the kind of clothes I wore to fit in with our mark. But my eyes were the one thing that always stayed the same. Now I hardly recognized myself in them. They were still blue, but there was a deadness there I hadn’t seen before. Or maybe, like so many things, I’d just never looked hard enough to notice.
I turned away from the mirror. Then I shut off the light and fell into bed.
Four
The curtains in the hotel room blocked out everything so that I was only dimly aware of the passing of time. I woke up to go to the bathroom, and once to guzzle from one of the water bottles I still had in my backpack. The room was always dark, although at some point I woke to find a sliver of gold shining through a crack in the curtains, the only indication of daylight outside the room. My limbs felt heavy, like I was moving underwater, and while I knew I needed to wake up, to do something, I could never do more than fall back into the pillowy hotel bed. For a while, nothing seemed to exist outside of the bland room, and I twice turned away knocks for housekeeping. I didn’t want to leave my sleep-fueled delirium. Everything was so much easier when all you had to worry about was going to the bathroom or getting a drink of water.
Finally I opened my eyes and knew that I was awake, really awake, for the first time in days. Hunger gnawed at my stomach, and my lips were chapped from the air conditioner.
I picked up the complimentary newspaper outside my door and looked at the date. May thirteenth. I’d been asleep for two whole days. Two days that Parker had been in jail. Two days when I’d done nothing to get him out.
The thought mobilized me. I took another shower and put on cargo capris and a tank top. They had once been part of my uniform in Playa Hermosa, but I’d had to ditch them for the black jeans and dark sweaters that became part of my Seattle persona. I felt exposed in my California clothes, the antithesis of the rocker hair and dark eyeliner I’d been wearing since Christmas, but I didn’t want to stand out too much while I was here.