You Can't Catch Me

by Catherine McKenzie

  “They won’t do anything.”

  “Perhaps not, but what are you going to do if you find her?”

  “Get my money back.”

  “And if she refuses?”

  “Then I’ll turn her in.”

  “So simple, huh?”

  “That’s right. Keep it simple. You taught me that. And I know how to protect myself. How to fight.” That was part of Todd’s lessons too. Hand-to-hand combat. Liam added in the self-defense portion; he believed in walking away from the fight in an honorable way, but I knew how to do both.

  He lets me go and turns away. “I tried to teach you a lot of things. Maybe I was wrong to get involved in the first place.”

  My stomach drops. The last thing I want to do is make Liam question his role in my life. “Why do you think that?”

  “A lot of you are struggling. Think of Daisy. Look at where you are right now. Aaron. Maybe you would’ve been better off if I left well enough alone.”

  I’ve never seen him like this, full of doubts. “Hey.” I reach out and repeat his move, my finger under his chin so he’s looking me right in the eye. “Of course you shouldn’t have done that. Think of what would have happened to me if I’d stayed where I was.”

  His eyes shift away. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Definitely. Plus, why are you so worried? You don’t even think I’m going to find her.”

  “You probably will.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Come on, what’s up?”

  He raises his hands to grip the steering wheel. His fingers are strong, capable. “I’ve got a bad feeling, that’s all.”

  “You don’t believe in bad feelings. You believe in checking. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “You’re right.”

  Jessie opens her car door and steps out. She’s wearing a purple Patagonia puffy jacket and dark jeans. She looks tiny and vulnerable.

  I lean in and kiss Liam on his cheek. His stubble is rough against my lips, but he smells warm and clean and inviting.

  I pull myself away. “I’ve got to go. Drive safe. And thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Stay in touch.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  And maybe this time I’m telling the truth.

  Jessie and I pay separately for our tickets and listen to a short lecture about how part of the trail is closed for repairs and to follow the signs. We go through the doors and walk over a small bridge that crosses the Ausable River. The water is rushing by fast and loud, dark and cold.

  “Why did you want to meet here?” I ask Jessie as we turn right down the path once we’ve crossed the bridge.

  “You want to take the easy path or the regular one?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “One brings you to the falls, and there’s stairs and these glass-bottomed landings, which are kind of terrifying. The other is just a path in the woods.”

  “The terrifying path, for sure.”

  She laughs gently. “I get the sense that you’re a bit reckless.”

  “Sometimes. Liam thinks so.”

  She glances at me, then shifts away. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  I shove my hands into the pockets of my fleece. It’s even colder in the woods, without the sun. The air smells like the river and melting snow and that undercurrent of granite I smelled in the car yesterday. New York is a state made of gravestones.

  “No.”

  “But you want him to be?”

  “I . . .”

  “It’s complicated?”

  “Definitely.”

  “He likes you,” she says.

  “We’ve known each other a long time, but it’s never been like that between us.”

  She looks skeptical. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “No, it’s fine. Liam works as a private investigator, and he rescued me from a bad family situation when I was eighteen and helped me set up my new life.”

  “That’s cool.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, Liam is pretty cool.”

  There’s a rustling up ahead. An Amish family emerges on the path—father, mother, and a passel of children. The buggy in the parking lot suddenly makes sense.

  We pass them and nod politely. It’s difficult not to stare even though I’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of attention. Once they’re out of earshot, I ask Jessie, “Is that usual?”

  “First time for me, though I’ve heard there’s some in the area. I’ll never understand it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How someone could belong to a cult like that.”

  “They’re not a cult. They’re a sect.”

  “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”

  “No, I—” I cut myself off. I don’t tell people about the Land of Todd. It tends to elicit odd reactions. “I’m a journalist and I wrote a long piece about cults. There are important distinctions.”

  I’d investigated several small cults, but it was the segment on the LOT that went viral. “Williams has a way of climbing inside the mind of a charismatic leader and exposing them for what they are—sociopathic, narcissistic, opportunistic.” That was in the New York Times after my article got turned into a six-episode podcast that I narrated. I never told anyone, not even my editor, how I got that insight, and The Twists and Liam kept my secret.

  “If you say so,” Jessie says.

  We reach the first set of stairs. They’re steep, metal, and look like they’ve been here longer than I’ve been alive. The roar of the falls is deafening.

  “You up to this?” she asks, pointing down.

  “Sure.”

  I take a first tentative step. I’m not usually afraid of heights, but this is not the sort of height you normally encounter. My heart speeds up and my palms feel slick against the cool railing. When we get to the bottom, we stand on the glass-bottomed platform and watch the water rush over the side of the cliff. I feel dizzy and disoriented. Jessie stands next to me.

  “That’s amazing,” I say.

  “I couldn’t believe it the first time I came in here.”

  “You’d never know it was here from the road.”

  “I thought that too.”

  She walks closer to the railing overlooking the water. I take a step closer, pressing my body up against the railing. I feel shaky, and there are unstable thoughts in my mind. “Let’s go back up.”

  I turn and start up the stairs in front of her. Two steps in, she stumbles into me, almost knocking me off my feet. I reach out and grab the stairs, the sharp metal cutting at my fingers. She puts a firm hand on my back as a family appears at the top of the stairs.

  “You okay?” the mother asks. She’s blonde and tall, her husband wearing a dark scowl behind her.

  I push myself up. “I’m fine,” I say, holding up my hands, which are stinging but not cut. I turn to check on Jessie. She loops her arm around me quickly, the other holding on to the railing tightly.

  “Everything’s okay!” she calls up to the family, looking worried, then turns to me. “You all right?”

  “Yes.”

  I turn and we climb the stairs and past the family waiting for us at the top.

  “Be careful down there,” I say, eyeing her rambunctious children. She nods, and Jessie and I walk away from the roar of the falls.

  “That wasn’t fun,” I say.

  Jessie looks down at her feet. They’re in white tennis shoes, tied up neatly. “I’m not sure what happened.”

  “I felt dizzy down there.”

  “I guess that’s it.” She sits on a bench under a tree and wraps her arms around herself. “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do it on purpose.”

  She bites her lip. “Were those pictures helpful?”

  “The ones you left at the motel? Yes, a bit, but not as much as we would’ve liked.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. That’s not why I wanted to meet you. Another Jessica reached out.”

  “What?”

&
nbsp; “Jessica Four. She goes by JJ.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She asked me not to say.”

  “So why are you telling me, then?”

  “Because she’s agreed to meet me, and I’d like you to come.”

  I sit down next to her. The bench is cold, under a canopy of trees and next to the side of a hill. There’s a small patch of snow up the side of it, and I can still hear the rush of the river.

  “Where?”

  “Philly.”

  “Is that where it happened?”

  “Not sure. She didn’t say where Jessica Two caught up to her.” I stand up and stamp my feet on the ground to warm them up. I’m getting colder by the minute. “Will you do it?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “I think we’re getting close.”

  “What could possibly give you that idea?”

  I pause. I’m not sure what the right move is here. “She texted me yesterday. Jessica Two.”

  “What?”

  Jessie stands quickly and starts to march down the path away from me. I rush after her.

  “Wait up.”

  We arrive at another bridge. We cross it and stop in the middle. It feels like we’re only a few feet above the river. I take out my phone and take a picture. I’ll send it to Liam later. He likes nature.

  “What did the text say?” Jessie asks loudly over the roar.

  “I’d texted her a couple times, stupid stuff about how I was going to find her, and she told me I couldn’t catch her.”

  “She’s probably right.”

  “Don’t you see? If she texted me back, then it means something I’m doing is getting to her. Maybe she saw my message on Facebook and all the people who were tagged there.”

  “Saw me, you mean?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Jessie lets out a long, slow breath. “I don’t like this.”

  “I get it, I do. But JJ, she also told me to be careful. It seemed like she was worried about Jessica Two, and doesn’t that make you mad?”

  “Why would that make me mad?”

  “Because she’s getting away with it. She took our money, and she’s going to do it again, and she’s done it to others, and then she has the gall to make us scared about it as well. I don’t want to live my life like that, do you?”

  “Doesn’t feel like I have much choice.”

  “But you do. You do. We do. If we work together, go talk to JJ and find out what she knows, I think we’re going to be able to figure out how to solve this thing. Maybe get our money back, and get her out of our lives once and for all.”

  “She’s not in my life.”

  “Isn’t she, though? You’re stuck in this town that you hate living in because you can’t leave. You’re too scared to tell that bully, Leanne, to cut it out. She did that to you.”

  “Don’t lecture me.”

  “Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry. I just . . . I’m worried about what she might do next if we don’t stop her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I’ll be okay no matter what happens. And you’ll be okay too. I don’t know about JJ, but maybe she will as well. But what if her next victim is someone vulnerable? Someone who can’t take being duped? I’ve seen what can happen to someone when they’re betrayed. It’s not something everyone can stand.”

  I look away so Jessie won’t see my tears, but I can’t hide my shaking hands.

  “Are you talking about someone in your family?” Jessie asks.

  “My best friend.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” I wipe my eyes quickly and turn back to her. “But if there was something I could’ve done to stop that from happening, I would have, you know?”

  “It’s not our job to save her victims.”

  “Our job? No. But our responsibility? I kind of think it is.”

  A couple and their dog appear on the path. The dog is small and energetic, bounding happily on its leash.

  I look at Jessie. She’s watching the dog, a bit fearful.

  “I’m going to do this with or without you,” I say. “And I’m not going to stop until I find her, I can promise you that. But I’d rather have your help.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re in this together. You, me, the Jessica in Philly. We’re connected.”

  “You sound like Shakespeare. The Saint Crispin’s Day speech. You know it?”

  “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . .”

  “For he today that sheds his blood with me . . .”

  “Shall be my brother,” we say together. “Be he ne’er so vile.”

  The couple passes us, giving us a look like you might expect if you came upon two women randomly reciting Shakespeare in the woods.

  I hold out my hand. “We in this together?”

  She still looks unsure, but she reaches out her hand just the same.

  Chapter 12

  Waiting Room

  Jessie agrees to drive us to Philly in her car, though I offer to rent a vehicle. Taking her car is better on the cash flow. Like a good Liam disciple, I have some money stashed away for emergencies that wasn’t in the account Jessica Two got to, but it’s not going to last forever.

  I have a few minutes to look around Jessie’s place while she packs. There isn’t much personal about it. No family photographs. No photographs at all. The cupboards contain only the essentials, not even a complete set of plates. I have this feeling that if I look in her closet, I’d find three or four outfits and that would be it. As if she were living her life ready to pack up at any moment, nothing she’d regret to leave behind.

  But have I been living my life any differently? Would someone who went through my room think I was there for the long haul? A whole benefit of living with jerky Josh and his former frat buddies is that it’s temporary and doesn’t require any investment or ties. I could pack up in an hour and owe them nothing.

  “You checking up on me?” Jessie asks, startling me as I close the kitchen-cupboard door.

  I glance over my shoulder, keeping my voice calm. “What? Oh no, I was looking for a glass for some water.”

  “One cupboard over.”

  “Thanks.” I go through the motions of getting a glass out, filling it from the tap, and drinking it down. I can sense Jessie’s eyes on me as I do so. I turn around. She hasn’t moved. There’s a small bag at her feet, and she’s scraped her hair back into a ponytail, revealing a distinctive widow’s peak.

  “Should we bring some snacks?” I ask, trying to breach the tension.

  She takes a beat. “Snacks?”

  “You know, for the drive. It’s a long one. And I left my snack bag in Liam’s car, unfortunately.”

  “About five hours and forty-nine minutes, according to Google, if we observe speed limits and take the toll roads,” she says, frowning as she speaks. I can tell that she’s questioning the choice she made at the gorge. I shouldn’t have let my curiosity loose. Whatever trust I’d built up on our walk has been drained away, like the water I just chugged down.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  “Looking around a bit. My curiosity got the better of me. When you work with Liam for too long, it kind of becomes part of your DNA.”

  “Suspicion?”

  “More like the need for information. Get all the information.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a Liamism. That’s what The Twists call these sayings he has.”

  “That a musical group?”

  “What? Oh, ha. No. There’s . . .” I should shut up. How can I explain us? “I mentioned before that Liam saved me from a bad situation? Well, I’m not the only one. There’s about a half dozen of us, and that’s what we call ourselves, after Oliver Twist. But he’s not like that Fagin guy. It’s an ironic name. Liam’s scrupulously honest.”

  “That right?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Hmm.”<
br />
  I put the glass down on the counter. “Hey, I know we just met, and you have no reason to believe anything I’m saying, but I’m trying to do something good here, I promise.”

  “Don’t do that,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Forget it. Are we going or what?”

  “You still want to?”

  “I never wanted to, but I said I would, so let’s go and get this over with.”

  We don’t get snacks. And we don’t talk much in the car either. Jessie hands me a map and tells me to navigate because she doesn’t believe in GPS, so I spend my time figuring out the map and give her updates now and then on our progress.

  Familiar names flash by on the road as we retrace the drive Liam and I did the day before all the way back to Albany. We stay on I-87 rather than switching to the 95, and then we’re out of my known universe, driving by places I never paid any attention to on the map that was on the wall in the Gathering Place. My eyes used to be drawn to farther-away places—London, Paris, Budapest. I’ve never been to any of them. Instead, I ended up five hours away in New York. The trip I took to Mexico a few weeks ago was the first time I’d ever left the country, my newly minted passport still fresh, the pages stiff.

  We stop for lunch at a diner near Newburgh, a town on the Hudson River. It has a lot of fried fish on the menu, but also sandwiches and pasta. There’s a blue strip of neon running around a recess in the ceiling, which makes everything and everyone in the place look slightly alien.

  “Fresh jumbo shrimp cocktail,” I say to Jessie once we’ve had a few minutes to peruse the menu. “You think that’s a good choice?”

  She makes a face. “I’d stick to things that don’t go bad so quickly, personally.”

  “You make a good point.”

  I order a corned beef sandwich and a Diet Coke. She orders the turkey on whole wheat and sticks to water.

  “It’s my one vice,” I say, as she eyes my drink with a bit of distaste. “Well, maybe not my only one, but one a day can’t hurt, can it?”

  “Eat what you want,” she says. “I don’t care.”

  “Did she have any weird eating habits?”

  “We didn’t eat together.”

  “Just drank.”

  “That’s right.”

  I take a sip of my Diet Coke. It’s refreshing, especially after the long drive. “And you haven’t flown since?”