Lies I Told

by Michelle Zink

  “I don’t know, Grace. But this job is bigger than any of the others. There’s more at stake. Just take it.” She thrust it into my hands.

  I was still in shock, still making note of the cold weight of it, when she headed down the stairs into the bunker. It took me a minute to move, to resign myself to the fact that I’d have to hold the gun until she came back. I held it away from my body, careful to keep my finger off the trigger, as I moved to the carriage house door.

  It was dark outside, but the almost-full moon still threw a little light around, and I stood in the shadows offered by the eaves, scanning the driveway for movement. There was nothing, and I turned my attention to the house, barely visible through the trees. I thought of Logan, asleep in the media room where I’d left him. I hoped he wouldn’t be sick from the Valium. That he’d feel okay in the morning in the moments before he realized what I’d done.

  I looked down at the gun in my hands, wondering when everything had gone so wrong. When we had become the kind of people who carried guns and stole from someone like Warren Fairchild. Had all our marks been as human as Warren? Had they all had fears and weaknesses hidden beneath a veneer of money and power? And what did it say about me that I was only now asking that question?

  A thump from inside the carriage house pulled me away from my thoughts, and I turned around just as my dad’s head came into view at the top of the stairs.

  “Give it a push, for fuck’s sake,” he growled, tugging on the ends of what looked like one of the tarps from the bunker.

  The load seemed to lighten, and a moment later he stepped onto the carriage house floor and yanked on the tarp. The rest of it spilled out with a clatter. My mom appeared a second later, breathing heavily, her hair askew.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “Not all of it,” he said. “It’s going to take a while to get it all up, but this is the fastest method we could devise with what we have.”

  I looked at the tarp, its contents bulging from the gathered middle tied with rope. They’d loaded gold onto the tarp and tied it off, using the ends as a handle like a Santa’s sack of toys. Clearly my dad had been the one to pull while my mom had pushed from the bottom.

  “How much did you get in there?” I asked.

  “Not enough,” my mom said, still panting. “Only seven. They’re heavier than they look.”

  I was trying to think of a way I could help, if only to get us out of there faster, to get to Parker faster, when sirens wailed in the distance. We froze, looking at one another with wide eyes as we listened.

  They weren’t close. Not at first. But a few seconds later I couldn’t deny it. They were getting closer. Louder.

  “What do we do?” I hissed.

  “Shhh,” my dad said, holding up a finger. “Wait.”

  We stood perfectly still, like that would somehow stop the cops from finding us, when the truth is, if they were on their way to the Fairchild estate, we were done. My heart was pounding, a roar in my ears, as I listened.

  The sirens got louder, then louder still. Just when I was sure the police were going to come barreling down the driveway, lights blazing, guns drawn, they seemed to get a little farther away.

  “Are they—”

  “Quiet!” my dad ordered.

  I swallowed hard, tuning back into the sound. But I was right: they were getting farther away now, fading into the distance. I only had a second to be relieved before I realized why they were there to begin with.

  “Parker . . . ,” I said softly. “They’re still after Parker.”

  Cormac’s eyes turned flinty. “It doesn’t matter, Grace. Not right now. We proceed as planned and go back for Parker later.”

  I swallowed my dread and turned my attention back to the gold, still bundled in the tarp on the floor. If loading the gold was the only way to Parker, I wanted it done as soon as possible. “What can we do to move it up faster?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. They’re heavy. We’ll have to do the best we can with what we have.”

  My mom threw a bunch of canvas bags my way. “Why don’t you unload them into the bags and put them in the truck while we bring them up?”

  I nodded. Whatever it took.

  My dad untied the rope on the tarp and hurriedly unloaded the bars. Then he and my mom disappeared into the bunker to get the next load.

  I set the gun aside and went over to the gold, loading all seven bars in one bag. I couldn’t lift it. My mom was right; they were heavier than they looked. I took two of the bars out and tried again. Still heavy, but at least now I could half drag, half carry it to the truck.

  I took a quick look around outside to make sure we were in the clear, then returned to the carriage house. I’d just put the last two bars into a new bag when I heard the thud of footsteps on the stairs in the bunker. They were coming up with the next load.

  It took me two hours to realize we wouldn’t make it by sunrise. We had averaged six trips in that hour, with seven bars in each trip. That was only forty-two gold bars. With over seven hundred to load, it would take us fifteen more hours to get it all up the stairs.

  And that was time we just didn’t have.

  After a quick conference and a few different ideas, we decided we’d each have to carry our own load. My mom and I wouldn’t be able to carry as much as my dad, but we’d still average more bars per trip, which would translate into less time.

  “Whatever’s left at sunrise, we leave behind,” I said, when we’d finally agreed on the strategy.

  My mom shook her head. “We can’t do that. The buyers are expecting seven hundred bars.”

  “They’ll get zero bars if we get caught,” I snapped.

  She looked surprised, but my dad nodded. I thought I saw admiration in his eyes. “She’s right, Renee. Let’s get what we can and get out of here.”

  I followed them down the stairs. We were leaving ourselves unguarded up top, but it couldn’t be helped. I grabbed a tarp and made my way to the metal cabinet, loading what I could carry. Then I started back up the stairs behind my dad.

  Time seemed both to stand still and speed up. I lost count of the trips we made up and down the stairs, afraid if I kept track I’d just sit down and cry. It was the last place I wanted to be, the last thing I wanted to be doing. Parker was alone and in trouble, but this was my only way back to him. I kept moving.

  There were fourteen bars left in the cabinet when I noticed the blue-gray light seeping into the carriage house. The sun was coming up.

  “Two more trips,” my dad said. “We can do it.”

  We made the last two trips and hurried to the truck, my mom organizing the bags in the back while my dad and I hurried down to the bunker. We closed the cabinet and replaced the broken padlock, leaving everything as close as possible to the way it was when we found it. If anyone really came searching, they’d see that the lock had been cut, but we might buy some time if everything looked the same from a distance.

  We closed the big double doors at the top of the stairs and replaced the padlocks there, too. Then we dragged the mat over the top of the bunker and put our masks back on, just in case the camera outside the carriage house was back in operation.

  I was heading for the truck when I noticed the gun, still on the floor where I’d left it. I picked it up and slipped it in my pocket. It gave me the creeps, but leaving it on the floor of the carriage house would be like handing evidence to the people who would eventually investigate our crime.

  My mom, back in her mask, was lowering the rear door of the truck when I got outside. My dad got into the driver’s seat and we slid in next to him. I took the passenger side door so I could get out, open the gate, and reset the Fairchilds’ alarm on our way off the property.

  Cormac started the truck and headed back down the driveway. The sky was turning a paler shade of indigo, the sea becoming visible again as the sun climbed out of sight in the east. I checked my phone. Six thirty in the morning.

  Something thudded under th
e truck, and my mom braced herself against the dash. My dad put it in park and climbed down, circling the truck to the passenger side.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, too loud.

  “What is it?” my mom asked.

  His sigh was muffled through his mask. “We have a flat.”

  Fifty-Six

  I raced to the house to open the gates and rearm the alarm while my mom and dad changed the flat. We were already running late, pushing the boundaries of the darkness that had been our ally while loading the gold. With no idea what had happened to Parker or how much heat it had brought down on the peninsula, we needed to find him and get out of Playa Hermosa as quickly as possible.

  I entered through the kitchen door and hurried to the keypad in the foyer. For one brief moment I hesitated, my finger hovering over the Gate Entry button. Then I pushed the button, rearmed the alarm, and walked out the door.

  When I got to the truck, my dad was rolling out the spare while my mom paced nearby. The truck was jacked up, the front passenger side sporting an empty wheel well.

  “Can I do anything?” I asked, my breath warm and moist inside my mask.

  “Just keep watch,” my dad said, positioning the tire.

  “Everything okay in the house?” my mom asked.

  Okay wasn’t the word I’d use for the fact that Logan was drugged upstairs, oblivious to the fact that we’d just stolen twenty million dollars from his family. But what was the point in saying it?

  “Everything’s quiet. Gate’s open. Alarm is back on.”

  She looked up at one of the cameras near the driveway. “I hope to God the cameras are still on a loop.”

  “If they weren’t, we’d be done already,” I said. It was weird talking to her through our masks. Without her face and smile, she was like a stranger.

  Her nod was tight.

  The breeze was frigid, a fine fog blowing in off the water. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and glanced up at the sky. It was more orange and pink than blue, and I wondered how long the Valium I’d given Logan would hold out. Getting caught with the gold wouldn’t be the worst thing. It would be having to face Logan. Having to look in his eyes when he realized what I’d done would be the thing to break me.

  I paced the driveway as my dad tightened the lug nuts on the tire. I felt exposed without the carriage house to shield us on one side, the dense strip of woods on the other. Now there was just the open expanse of lawn leading to the house, the cliffs beyond opening up to the sea, the rising sun casting more light by the second.

  I thought of Parker, on the run from the police or maybe even already in custody, being questioned about his motive for baiting the guard at Allied. How long would it be before they realized the monitoring equipment had been tampered with? How long after that before they figured out it was only the Fairchilds’ video feed? And why had the police been called to handle a simple vandal? Why tonight, after weeks of Parker baiting the guard?

  I couldn’t even think about the other thing. About the blood on my dad’s shirt and the guard who must have been hurt—or worse—when Cormac had gone to Allied. There wasn’t room in my already overcrowded head to consider the possibilities.

  I tasted copper and realized I’d bitten my lip hard enough to make it bleed. I had to stop. I was running in circles. It wasn’t doing us any good. Most important, it wasn’t doing Parker any good. I needed to focus. Concentrate on getting off the Fairchild property. On finding Parker.

  “How much longer?” I asked.

  “Almost . . . there . . . ,” Cormac said, steam puffing out around his mouth. He gave the wrench a couple more turns, tightening the lug nuts on the new tire. “Let’s go.”

  He had the truck in gear before I’d even shut the passenger side door.

  We continued down the driveway, past the house. Everything looked the same. Logan’s BMW was still in front of the garage, as if nothing had changed since I’d arrived the night before. I took one last look as we entered the winding, tree-lined drive.

  Cormac eased off the accelerator as he came to the open gates. Hitting the road at an excessive speed would only draw attention. If we were careful, anyone who happened to be watching would think we were one of what were probably many trucks that made deliveries to the Fairchild house.

  He pulled out into the street and headed for the stop sign at the corner. We were halfway there when something wandered in front of the truck, a splash of blue-green against the asphalt, barely visible in the gray light of early morning.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  Cormac accelerated. “We don’t have time to stop.”

  A dull thud sounded under the truck as we hit the animal at full speed. Cormac kept going until we came to the stop sign. I pulled off my mask and opened my door.

  “Grace!” he yelled after me. “Get back in the car, Grace!”

  I ran back to the peacock lying in the middle of the road. It didn’t look dead, but I knew it was. It was perfectly still, its magnificent blue and green feathers fanned out against the asphalt, one glassy brown eye staring unblinkingly into mine.

  A wave of grief hit me like a battering ram, and I stumbled backward, stifling a sob.

  “Grace!” Cormac was half out of the truck, his mask still on. “We have to go. Now.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly, taking a step backward toward the truck. “I’m sorry.”

  Fifty-Seven

  “Where are you going? We have to go back for Parker!”

  My dad was making his way down the peninsula, careful to keep the truck under the speed limit on the winding roads.

  “We can’t do that,” he said. “Not right now. We have no idea where he is, and he ditched his cell phone. We need to get off the peninsula. Then we’ll figure out what to do about Parker. We’ll keep our cell phones for a few more hours. See if he makes contact from a landline.”

  Panic welled up inside me until I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to contain it. Afraid it would escape in a scream that might never stop.

  “We can’t just leave him!”

  My mom pulled off her mask and turned to me. “Keep it together, Grace. What do you expect us to do? Wander around Playa Hermosa with a truck full of gold looking for Parker? The police may already have him in custody. If they do, we need to get somewhere safe so we can find a way to help him. If they don’t, we have to wait until we know where to find him.”

  I clutched at the armrest, scrambling for a response that would allow us to go back for Parker now. But she was right. I don’t know what I expected. Back at the Fairchild estate, all I’d been able to think about was loading the gold so we could get to Parker. I hadn’t had time to think through the how of it.

  I stared out the window, watching the ocean turn silver as the sunlight threw diamonds across its surface. Parker was farther away then ever, as unreachable to me as Logan and Selena and the sham of a life I’d built in Playa Hermosa.

  “See anything?” my dad asked softly as we approached the turnoff for the road that would take us off the peninsula.

  “Nothing,” my mom said.

  She was right. There were no cops. No checkpoints.

  “They must not have him.” I heard the note of hope in my own voice. “He’s probably hiding out somewhere, waiting until it’s safe to contact us.”

  My mom grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Maybe.”

  I had no idea where we were going as we wound our way through a series of backstreets to the freeway. Now it was all about following the plan for our escape, carefully laid out in advance by my mom and dad. It was a system that had served us well, and I sat back, trying to make my breathing even and calm, telling myself that we’d get Parker back, that everything would be okay.

  We took the freeway into downtown Los Angeles and spent ten minutes navigating a clutch of one-way streets until my dad finally pulled next to the curb in front of a parking garage. He turned to my mom.

  “You all set?”

  She nodded. “I’ll see you at the s
afe house. You and Grace get out of town if I’m not there by four. I’ll contact you through the online portal if I get sidelined.”

  He touched his lips to hers in a quick kiss. “Take every precaution.”

  “Will do.” She slid over to the driver’s seat as my dad climbed out of the truck.

  “Let’s go, Gracie,” he said.

  I reached over and gave my mom a hug. “Be careful, Mom.”

  She hugged me tight, held on a little longer than usual. Then she pulled back, smoothing my hair, looking at me with tenderness. “I love you, Grace. You know that, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “I love you, too.”

  She smiled. “Go with your dad. I’ll see you soon.”

  Cormac got out of the truck and zipped up his jacket to hide the blood on his shirt. I followed him into the parking garage as my mom pulled away from the curb.

  We walked up to the window and he reached into his pocket, withdrawing a ticket. He slid it through a hole in the glass to the mustached man behind on the other side.

  “One moment, sir.”

  He removed a set of keys from one of the hooks on the wall inside his little cubicle and stepped outside, disappearing into the shadows of the garage.

  My dad put an arm around me, squeezed my shoulders. “You okay?”

  I wasn’t, but I knew he wasn’t really asking. I nodded.

  A couple of minutes later the attendant pulled up in a nondescript Ford Taurus. My dad tipped him and climbed into the driver’s seat while I got in the other side.

  It was Saturday morning, and traffic was light as we headed back to the freeway. A few minutes later we were heading north, leaving the skyscrapers and grit of the city behind, putting more miles between us and Parker. Between me and Logan.

  “Where to now?” I asked, trying to distract myself.

  Cormac didn’t take his eyes off the road. “The Valley,” he said, referring to the San Fernando Valley. “We have another switch to make.”

  I wasn’t surprised. We usually only switched cars once when we needed to get out clean, but this wasn’t just any job. With luck, the Fairchilds wouldn’t know what had happened for a while. Logan would wake up wondering why he’d passed out. He’d try to call me, assuming I got a ride home from Parker. It would be hours before anyone knew something was wrong, before they realized we were gone or that the gold was missing.