Hidden

by Karen E. Olson

  I move through my kitchen and then into the living room. I don’t want to linger; I can’t afford to. The bedroom is only steps away, and I am struck by the bare mattress on the frame. I have not gotten new sheets, a new comforter. I have not gotten anything to replace everything that has been damaged.

  The closet door is closed. I push it open and stoop down. It is dark in here, but I don’t need any light. I feel around on the floor until I touch the edge of the hiding place. With little effort, I lift up the floorboard and reach inside, the duffel bag ready to be filled.

  The overhead light suddenly switches on, and I yank my hand out as if it’s on fire. I spin around and see Ian behind me. I stand up quickly and face him.

  ‘That’s mine.’ He indicates the cash inside the floor.

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Yes, I think it’s mine. You lied to me. You had it all along.’ He is glaring at me.

  ‘I never lied. I get paid in cash. This is money I’ve earned. I told you that.’

  The concept seems to surprise him, but he recovers quickly. ‘No matter. It’s still mine.’

  I want to argue. I want to scream that I need this money, that without it I cannot get my new identity, I cannot pay for the documents Tracker has arranged. But if I say any of that, Ian will know what I’m doing and I might not be able to get away. I am crazy to even have that thought, though. Will I even be able to get out of my house alive now that he is standing there, greedily looking at my stash? He is wearing a jacket, and I can see the outline of his gun underneath.

  ‘Where are your friends?’ I ask, expecting the two men to come out from behind him. After realizing I am not in the gallery, they could easily come up here to check out my house.

  ‘What friends?’ Ian has never been very good at lying. His eyes shift around behind me.

  ‘The friends you sent to meet me at the Painted Rock.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Again, he cannot meet my eyes.

  I glance out the bedroom window. Anyone passing the house could see us standing here.

  ‘The shades aren’t pulled down; people can see us,’ I say. ‘They’re looking for both of us, Ian.’

  ‘No, Tina. They’re looking for you.’ His hand is on my cheek, his fingers tickling my ear.

  I am wound so tight, every muscle ready to leap, and yet I stay where I am. ‘Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll take care of it. Give me till tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight again.’ His other hand now grips my waist. ‘Let’s put this money in your bag and go see what you can do with that computer of yours. Where is it, anyway?’

  ‘I’ve got it in a safe place,’ I say. ‘So what happens after? Will you kill me?’

  He kisses me then, and for the first time I am not aroused. I am ashamed that it took this long, that even Zeke didn’t make my passion for him fade. Zeke was a good man, an honest man, who loved me despite who I was, despite everything he believed in. I am sorry that I couldn’t love him back the way he wanted me to. And now it’s too late.

  I let Ian kiss me until he lets go of me. ‘So that’s the way you’re playing it.’

  ‘I’m not playing anything, Ian. I just want my life back.’ I am aware that my voice sounds tired, that I am tired.

  ‘Then do what I say, and I’ll be out of your way.’

  ‘And your friends?’

  ‘They’re not my friends, and this is none of their business. This is between you and me.’

  I wonder if I can run, if I can duck past him and out the door and down the hill. I could lose him using my shortcuts; he would never find me at Hydrangea House. But he is one step ahead of me. He reaches into his jacket, and I feel the hard steel against my chest.

  ‘If you try anything, I will not hesitate.’ I have never heard this tone from him before. He has never threatened me like this, and I can only trust that he is telling the truth. ‘Now fill up that bag.’

  I turn and stoop down, unzipping the bag and lifting up the floorboard. I shove the rest of the cash inside and think about the backpack under my bed at Hydrangea House. He doesn’t know I have it, but the laptop is next to it. Will I be able to slide it out without him noticing the backpack? I have no choice but to try.

  Of course, we may not even make it there, between the FBI agents and Frank Cooper.

  I hand him the bag, and he waves the gun around. ‘Let’s go get that computer.’

  He follows me so closely out of the bedroom and into the living room that I can almost hear his heart beating. I take a look around. This is not the way I wanted to say goodbye.

  But I am not sure that this is going to be goodbye. At least not yet. I had hoped to come here under the veil of darkness, but since my plans were thwarted, it is still bright outside. The ball cap isn’t really going to disguise me, and Ian can’t possibly keep the gun on me as we walk. The quickest and most direct route to Hydrangea House is through Old Harbor, but we can’t go that way because of the FBI agents. If we take the roundabout way, we will be going past the Bluffs, and while it’s been a few hours since Carmine’s body was found, the police are probably still there or at least spreading out in the general vicinity, looking for clues.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Ian demands.

  I tell him my thoughts. ‘We can’t get there from here. At least not easily,’ I finish. ‘It would be better at night. The island is pretty dark – there aren’t a lot of street lights.’

  Ian frowns as he glances out the window. ‘But it’s still a couple of hours at least until dark.’

  I nod.

  ‘So you’re proposing holding off until then?’

  I cannot think of any other way, and I say so. ‘Unless you don’t care.’

  But I see in his expression that he does care. That he is no more willing to get caught than I am, yet he is eager for me to do the job for him and he will sacrifice a couple of hours for it.

  ‘But we can’t stay here, either,’ I say.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They found Carmine’s body. They will think that I did it, or you did it, and they’ll come here looking for me. Put someone outside, waiting for me. Right now we can get away, but the longer we stay here the riskier it is.’

  ‘So where do you propose we go?’

  I have an idea, and it may be an uncomfortable couple of hours, but we have no choice. ‘Follow me,’ I say as I go into the kitchen and push open the door.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asks. ‘I thought we couldn’t go outside.’

  But we are not going far. Despite his protests, he follows me, both of us jogging down the hill. I smell the llamas, see them in their pen. When we reach it, I unlatch the lock from the outside and we slip inside and around into the small barn that houses the llamas.

  Ian sneezes.

  I put my finger to my lips. ‘Shush,’ I say, looking around for the best place to hide. There are individual pens in here for each of the llamas; hay is scattered on the floor. I count the pens and realize there are two more than the number of llamas. I tug on Ian’s arm and pull him into the furthest pen from the door and we sink into a pile of hay.

  ‘What about the owners?’ Ian whispers.

  ‘They’ve gone to the mainland,’ I say. Today is their son’s birthday and they’ve gone to New London for the day. ‘They won’t be back until after dark, and by then we’ll be gone.’

  ‘They leave those outside when they leave?’ Ian cocks his head toward the llamas.

  ‘They won’t hurt us, and they can come inside if they want.’ I indicate the pen we’re in, with the shut gate. ‘They can’t get in here with us.’ Although I am not sure if they will be upset about our presence. I don’t spend a lot of time with the animals.

  ‘It stinks in here.’ Ian wrinkles his nose. I am just as bothered by the smell, but there is no choice. I say so.

  ‘Unless you want someone to find us, then you’ll never get what you want.’


  I have him there. He leans back on the hay, but he still grips the gun.

  I am wondering now what I’d seen in him, beyond that day when he sauntered into the Rathskeller and we saw each other for the first time and I felt as though my world had turned upside down. While in bed we were as well matched as we were before, I know he is curious about me, about how I’ve changed, but at the same time he knows that deep down I have not changed at all. I still opened that laptop. I still ran my fingers across its keys as if it were a sacred thing. I am still telling him that I will help him because I need to show him that I can.

  Is that all it is? Or is it just so much a part of who I am that I can never shed it as easily as those skins on the onion rings Steve and I eat every Friday night at Club Soda?

  I am afraid of the answer. Afraid that I will always be tempted, that a twelve-step program for computer hackers wouldn’t work for me. I lived one day at a time, and as long as I didn’t have my own computer, I managed to live like a real person who does not have an addiction. But I still sometimes wake up in the night, source codes and passwords and firewalls taunting me in my head.

  I came here to hide, but I realize now there is nowhere for me to hide. I cannot escape it.

  Ian sneezes again.

  ‘I didn’t know you were allergic to animals,’ I taunt him.

  He waves the gun at me. ‘Don’t get all smart with me, bike girl.’

  I think about my chat-room nickname and smile to myself, but then I remember. ‘What happened to my bike? I mean, it looked like it was thrown down the steps at the Bluffs.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ He looks at me warily.

  ‘I found it. And Carmine. Last night. I was there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I was on the beach. I didn’t hear anything. The wind is so loud there. It whips through the Bluffs like a freight train. So what happened between you and Carmine?’

  Ian’s eyes wander around the small barn for a second before he answers. ‘I rode the bike out there because I thought maybe that’s where you were. I left it at the top, but he was behind me and threw it at me. I deflected it and it got tossed and all fucked up.’ He glances at me. ‘I’ve never felt a bike so light.’

  ‘Aerodynamic. So how did Carmine end up dead?’

  Again he waves the gun. ‘He didn’t know I had this. He came after me. He actually fired at me, but I was faster than he was. He got a little fat in his old age. Maybe he thought since he was after you it wouldn’t matter so much.’ He chuckles. ‘He would’ve been surprised, with you all athletic and everything now. Bet you would’ve given him a run for his money, too.’

  ‘Who trashed my house, then? You or Carmine?’

  ‘Carmine. I was looking for you, going up to your house and saw him go in there. I hung around a little while, waited till he left and went in, worried that I’d find you there.’

  ‘Worried that you’d find my body, you mean,’ I say softly. And then something clicks and it is as though the breath has been knocked out of me. ‘What happened while I was gone?’

  He shrugs. ‘It’s been fifteen years, Tina. A lot has happened. To all of us.’

  ‘How did you end up driving Tony DeMarco’s car?’

  He stares at me. ‘How do you know that?’

  I chuckle. ‘Oh, come on, Ian. The DMV was a piece of cake. So how did you get the car?’

  ‘That’s not something you need to worry about.’

  ‘I’m not worried about it, Ian. I just want to know. I think you owe it to me to tell me what happened. I mean, how did you see the postcard I sent my father? You couldn’t have just walked into my father’s hospital room in a federal prison. You’re dead, Ian. What would everyone have said?’

  ‘You have been busy on that computer, haven’t you?’

  ‘You gave it to me. You knew what I could do. Do you really think I’d forgotten? You came here so I could do a job and get you back all that money that you think I’m responsible for taking from you, so you must have figured I was still hacking. But that job was the last one I ever did, and I wish like hell I’d never gone along with it.’

  ‘Don’t get a conscience on me here. You didn’t have one before.’

  ‘We stole from people we didn’t know. Well, not everyone. We knew Tony, and of course, there’s Paul Michaels.’

  I see panic in his eyes.

  ‘That’s right, Ian. You made such a big deal about coming up with your fake name, but you knew Paul Michaels was one of the account owners we were stealing from. Who is he?’ I pause, waiting for an answer, but he doesn’t say anything, so I continue. ‘And what about Amelie Renaud. Who is she, Ian?’ I ask him in such a way that he knows, knows that I know she’s real.

  He sighs and sticks the gun in his waistband. I don’t think anyone outside of the movies ever does that, but maybe that’s where he’s gotten the idea. I wait as he mulls over how to answer.

  Finally, he tells me.

  ‘She’s my wife.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  His wife. It throws me off center, mentally and physically, and I slump against the back of the pen. His wife? But I cannot ask the question. I cannot speak. The words are caught in my throat, strangling me. I hear myself make a sound that is merely garble.

  ‘I should have told you,’ he says, but not as contritely as I’d expect.

  I swallow hard, several times. My head is spinning. Finally, I find my voice.

  ‘How long?’ I am thinking back to that day in Miami, the day we fell in love. ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘Fourteen years.’

  After. But just.

  He does not give me a chance to even formulate another question. ‘I didn’t know it would be the same. You know, between us.’ He takes my silence as permission to continue. ‘But when I saw you, that day at the spa, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. How I still—’

  I put my hand up to stop him from saying anything more. ‘You gave me her name. She’s on the list. The list of account owners. You knew her, didn’t you, before?’ I ask. I want to hear him admit it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I met her in France. My semester abroad.’

  Before we met. Right before we met.

  ‘Did you see her when we were in Paris?’

  ‘You left me.’ Anger laces his words.

  ‘I’m surprised you could even touch me at all,’ I say bitterly. ‘You must really want me to do this job. What is so important about it? Is it just because you think I owe you for what happened back then, or is there more to it?’ I don’t give him a chance to answer, though, because I have another thought. ‘What about how you’re dead? Who did Amelie Renaud marry? She couldn’t marry Ian Cartwright, because he committed suicide in a houseboat in Paris. Who are you these days? Are you Paul Michaels?’

  He shakes his head, staring at the hay next to him. I wait. I’m good at waiting. I’ve been waiting for fifteen years.

  ‘Does she know? Does she know anything?’ I ask when it’s clear he won’t tell me.

  Ian looks at me then, with an expression full of hate and anger. ‘You think you’re so smart. But you didn’t find out everything, did you, with that precious computer of yours? You haven’t been looking in the right place.’

  He is talking in riddles.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You found Amelie, but you didn’t find out everything, did you?’

  I am beginning to wonder what I have missed, something so critical that he is smiling so wickedly, as if he has something over me. He does have something over me, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. I decide to drop it. For now.

  ‘Tell me about the FBI agents, Ian. The ones who showed up at the Painted Rock instead of you.’

  His smile softens and a tinge of respect comes into his eyes. ‘I figured you were there somewhere. They said you weren’t. But you know every inch of this goddamned island, don’t you? I told them that, but they seem
to think they’re smarter than you.’

  He is not answering my questions. I am ready to scream.

  He moves suddenly, grabbing me, his fingers digging into my arms so hard I know I will have bruises. ‘You asked me if they caught me.’

  ‘You said they didn’t.’

  His face is so close to mine I can feel his breath. ‘I lied.’

  ‘You cut a deal with the Feds, didn’t you?’ I ask, my voice louder than it should be because I am angry. I want to hear him admit it.

  ‘You left me there,’ he says again. ‘I took care of it, you know. I took care of him. I did that for you.’

  I swallow hard, shutting my eyes and then opening them again so I wouldn’t see the image imprinted on them.

  ‘So whose body was identified as yours?’ I manage to ask.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘Are you in witness protection? Did you tell them it was all me, that you could help them find me? When my father was dying, did they send you to see if you could find out if I’d come out of the woodwork?’

  Ian doesn’t answer, which makes me think I am right. But he lets go of me, and I shift away from him, out of reach.

  I can’t stop myself, though. ‘The Feds must have thought you had the real inside scoop on where I was if they helped you stage your own death.’

  Ian’s expression changes slightly, and I begin to question my first instincts. My head is full now with possible scenarios, but I am not sure which one is the right one. He is staring at me, almost daring me to continue. But instead, he begins to talk.

  ‘Tony had the postcard, Tina. I heard him talking about it with Carmine, how he was going to come after you for what you did. I took off, but not fast enough. The Feds nailed me in the Grove later that night. They said they could cut me a deal.’

  ‘So you did sell me out.’ I feel as though he has just set a hundred pound weight on my chest.

  He shifts a little, won’t meet my eyes. ‘I couldn’t believe you left me like that, with nothing.’ He is back to talking about Paris. ‘But then, when I couldn’t find you, I figured I could get away if I faked my death.’ He chuckles nervously. ‘It was almost too easy.’