Interlude

by Anna Cruise

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Oh, really?” Lydia scoffs. “What other explanation is there?”

  Claire doesn’t respond and Lydia looks to me, waiting for me to say something. I stay quiet.

  Because I don’t know what to think. Could it just be coincidence that the cops have suddenly decided to view Lydia as a suspect? Or is she right about Gino tipping someone off and wanting to bring her in to silence her?

  “If they find me, I’m dead,” she says quietly. “You know how it’ll go down. They’ll arrest me – if they don’t kill me in an ‘accidental’ shooting first. You know, an arrest gone awry. If not, something will happen in jail. Maybe I’ll die from blunt force trauma – they’ll say I fell off a bunk bed. Or maybe I’ll hang myself with a sheet – suicide because I couldn’t face the idea of going to jail.”

  “You’re completely overreacting,” Claire tells her.

  “Maybe,” Lydia says, nodding, her eyes bright with tears. “But maybe not. You don’t know what I know, Claire. Let me tell you something. It’s pretty easy to silence a drifter-hacker. My death would barely be a blip on anyone’s radar.”

  “That’s not true!”

  Lydia waves her hand. “You’d care,” she says to her sister. “But that’s about it.” She glances in my direction. “Pretty sure he’d be thrilled to never have to deal with me again.”

  She’s not too far off the mark. She’s used me, lied to me, drugged me. But despite all this, I don’t want to see her dead.

  “They might not do it right away. They’ll need my info first. Make sure it’s destroyed.” She smiles. “But it’s not going away. The drive might disappear, but the information won’t. I promise.”

  Ron is watching the whole exchange like a bewildered baby bird. He shoves his glasses up on to his nose and blinks a few times, as if trying to process everything being said. If he didn’t know anything about the drive, he does now.

  “So doesn’t this mean you should get out of here now?” I ask. “Instead of taking the time to try to dump this product, shouldn’t you just go into hiding now? Or focus on who you can get the info to so you have a shot at clearing your name?”

  “With what money?”

  “I can loan you some.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop myself.

  She shakes her head. “What do you have, twenty bucks? That might buy me a bus ticket to El Cajon. If I’m lucky. And that’s sort of the wrong direction, at least with the information I have.”

  “I have a thousand in the bank.” It’s my life savings.

  Her expression changes, but then she shakes her head again. “Not enough. I need to go far, far away.”

  I know it’s not enough. But it’s all I have. And I can’t believe I’m actually offering it to her.

  “Ron has a buyer.” She looks to him for confirmation and he nods. “We get the cash and we split. And then figure out what to do from there. Because it has to be we. The three of us.”

  “Nope.” It’s my turn to shake my head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You think the cops won’t tie you to me?” Lydia asks. “If Gino narced on me, he told his contact about you, too. He's already pulling info on you, figuring out who you are and how to find you. And you, too,” she said, pointing at Claire. “We’re all sitting ducks right now.”

  “You don’t know that,” I say, but even I can hear the doubt in my voice.

  “Do you really want to stick around and take that chance?”

  “Tell me exactly what you have planned,” Claire says.

  I am surprised. This is the first time Claire has entertained hearing her sister’s ideas, which tells me she’s worried. And she believes her sister might be right.

  “Ron and I go and make the deal.”

  I instantly see something wrong with this. “Seriously? You think they won’t be looking for you if you leave this house?”

  “No one knows we’re here,” she points out. “And we have surveillance. Exterior and network. We’re safe.”

  Ron nods his head in agreement.

  “Okay, but the minute you step out that door, all bets are off,” I say. I reach across the desk and grab a fistful of her ponytail. “Because this is like a beacon for someone looking for you.”

  “Please,” she says, jerking away from me. I drop my hand and her hair drops back to her shoulder. “Dye and scissors will fix that.”

  She continues. “Fake IDs and passports – Ron, you can take care of that, right?”

  He nods again.

  “Ron can hack into the airlines, too – American good with you guys? – and make us reservations. I’m thinking Thailand, some place in Asia, to start. We can be on a plane tomorrow.”

  No, American is not good with me. None of this is good with me. But I don’t know that I have any other choices. Because if what she says is true, I’m not just involved with Gino and his missing drugs.

  I’m involved in everything – that bigger, murkier picture that I still know nothing about.

  But worst of all, I’m in danger of going down with her.

  twenty-seven

  “What do you think?”

  I’m back in the living room with Claire. Ron is still parked in front of the computer, working on creating fake IDs for us.

  “Free of charge,” he told us, grinning. “Happy to be part of the cause.”

  Lydia is upstairs, doing something to her hair. I don’t know how she got hair dye and I don’t ask.

  And Claire and I are sitting on the same couch, shell shocked and quiet. Her question is the first thing either of us have said in twenty minutes.

  “What do I think about what?”

  She sighs. “About what she said. What she’s worried about.”

  “The cops? Being a suspect? Thinking they know about all the dirt she has on them? Assuming they’ll come after both of us because we’re tied to her?”

  Claire nods. “Yeah. All that.”

  “Honestly? I think she’s insane. Certifiable.”

  Claire doesn’t say anything.

  “She makes these massive leaps based on sound bytes of information. She’s basically telling us to abandon everything because we might be in danger. Might.”

  “I know.” Claire’s voice is small. “But what if she’s right?”

  It’s the question that keeps coming back to me, too. I don’t want to believe her. I want to think she’s crazy, paranoid, that her grief over Alex’s death has morphed into this thing that controls her, drives her, makes her see things that aren’t really there.

  But I have to admit there are things that, looked through the right lens, don’t add up. The cops at my house when Chase drove by. Why would they be there? And why was my door open? Did they have a search warrant? And Lydia now being named as a suspect – was that just coincidence, that the story broke a half hour after we’d left Gino?

  “I don’t want to leave.” Claire’s arms are folded across her chest and she rubs her arms like she’s cold. It’s a motion I’ve seen before. “I have a year left of law school. A mountain of student loans. A clerking job that could be my ticket into the firm once I pass the bar. I’m just supposed to walk away from all that?”

  It’s weird to hear these things about her. Weird because I feel like I know her and yet, in reality, I don’t know jack shit about her. But we’ve been through some harrowing stuff, life or death situations, really, and the little details just didn’t seem important.

  But they are.

  Because we both have lives. Lives that have been interrupted. Lives that have been fucked up.

  “But if I stay and she goes, then I lose her.” Her voice catches in her throat. “And she’s all I have left.”

  I want to comfort her, give her advice. I want to know the right answer for her, but I don’t. I don’t even know the right answer for me. As asinine as Lydia’s plan is, she’s put enough doubt in my mind that I’m actually contemplating her plan.

  Which
probably makes me crazy and paranoid, too.

  “I’m sorry we dragged you into this.”

  I look at Claire. She does look sorry; she looks wrecked, actually. Not physically – she’s still beautiful, even though her eyes are tired and her face is pinched tight from stress and worry. But I see beyond the green eyes and sculpted brows, beyond the blond hair that rests perfectly on her shoulders. I see the fear, the worry, the apprehension. And the regret.

  “It’s not your fault.” It isn’t the first time I’ve said this.

  “I know,” she says, nodding. “But it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel responsible.”

  I know she does. And she shouldn’t. She might have appointed herself guardian of her sister, but she can’t control what she does.

  I’m about to tell her this when Ron pokes his head into the living room. “Uh, where’s Lydia?”

  Claire tries to compose herself. “She’s upstairs, I think. Why?”

  “Slight problem,” he says. His voice is high, squeaky, and he looks like he wants to piss his pants.

  Claire’s brow furrows. “Oh?”

  I wonder what constitutes a slight problem for Ron. A glitch in creating fake IDs? A problem hacking into the airlines?

  “Yeah,” he says, his head bobbing up and down. He glances toward the front door, then back at us. “Cops are here.”

  twenty-eight

  “What do we do?”

  Lydia is with us in the living room, pacing back and forth. Except she doesn’t look like the Lydia I know. Her hair is short, just barely below her chin, and it’s black instead of red. She’s plucked her eyebrows too thin, arched lines, and her make-up even looks different. The only part of her that looks the same are her eyes, those green eyes that are now filled with fear.

  “Shit,” Ron mutters, pulling his phone out. “It’s Winslow.”

  “Who is Winslow?” Lydia asks.

  “The owner.” He holds his finger to his lips as he uses the other hand to swipe across the screen. “Hello? Hey. Yeah, everything is fine, why?”

  A pause. We can hear the voice on the other end, a deep, masculine voice, but we can’t make out the words.

  Ron nods. “Oh. Okay. Yeah, sure, I can let him in. No problem. Okay, I’ll let you know if anything’s up.”

  “What?” Lydia demands as soon as he ends the call. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Relax,” Ron tells her. But he still looks nervous as hell. “There have been some burglaries in the neighborhood over the past couple of weeks. Cops are checking in with owners, just touching base. Winslow wants me to talk with them, hear what they have to say, and call him back. It’s no big deal.”

  “No big deal?” Lydia is freaking out. “You think this is just coincidence?”

  “And you think they’re out to get us,” I tell her.

  She whirls on me.

  “Just chill the fuck out for a minute,” I say. “We don’t know anything other than what he just told us.”

  “Right,” Ron agrees. “I’ll have a chat with him and, more likely than not, he’ll be on his way. But just to be safe, I think you guys should disappear.”

  “Disappear?” Claire asks.

  “There’s a safe room,” he says. “Behind the closet in the master bedroom. You guys should hang out there.” He looks around the living room. “Take all your stuff, too. Shoes, phones, bags. Just in case. And hurry. He’s waiting at the gate.”

  Lydia moves quickly, gathering everything into her arms. Claire and I just look at each other and all I can wonder is if this is a real threat or just one of Lydia’s paranoid delusions.

  I’m going to have some time to contemplate this more, because Ron guides us up the stairs, down a hallway on the left, and into the master bedroom. The room is the size of my entire house, complete with sitting area, fireplace, minibar and a king-sized bed. He herds us into the closet, then yanks some clothes aside, dozens of pressed dress shirts, to reveal a small electronic panel. He punches in a code and there’s a click and he pushes on the wall. The wall isn’t a wall – it’s a door and we’re looking into a separate room furnished with a small couch, bed, fridge and microwave and a wall of electronics equipment: monitors and keyboards that make it look like a military command center.

  “Jesus,” I look around, taking everything in. “What is this?”

  “Some place safe,” Lydia says. She tosses our stuff to the ground. “For now, anyway.”

  Ron taps at a keyboard and a monitor lights up. The front door comes into view.

  “Okay, sit tight,” he says. “I’ll be right back.” He glances around nervously. “And, uh, don’t touch anything.” I’m pretty sure this is his mantra.

  He disappears, shutting the door tight behind him. Lydia sits down in front of the monitor but Claire and I remain standing. Within a minute, Ron is on the screen, waiting at the front door. A few minutes later, the doorbell rings and he opens it.

  A cop. I squint, trying to get a better look. The image is fuzzy, definitely not HD. The cop removes his sunglasses and nods a greeting to Ron.

  “Afternoon, sir,” the cop says.

  He doesn’t look familiar. Meaning, he isn’t one of the officers who showed up at my house. I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Good afternoon, Officer.”

  “We’re patrolling the neighborhood, stopping in to chat with residents about some recent burglaries in the area.”

  “Right,” Ron says, nodding. “I’m actually housesitting for James Winslow. He’s on vacation right now.”

  “Yes.” The cop nods, too. “We’ve been in contact with him and he informed us of this. Perhaps you can answer a couple of questions.”

  “I can certainly try.”

  Claire and I both move closer to the monitor, listening.

  “Have you seen anything unusual since you’ve been here?”

  “Unusual? No.”

  “No unfamiliar cars or people in the neighborhood?”

  “I wouldn’t really know if cars or people were familiar or not, seeing as how I don’t live here.”

  The cop nods again. “No signs of trespassing on the property?”

  “No.”

  “I assume the property is outfitted with decent security surveillance.” The cop looks around and spies the camera. He stares directly into it and Claire takes a step back.

  “Yes, sir. Decent.”

  “Nothing on the footage that is cause for alarm?”

  Ron shakes his head. “Nothing that I’ve seen.”

  “Any chance we could take a look at it?”

  “Shit,” Lydia says.

  I know what she’s thinking. If the footage is saved, there will be video of us at the gate. Us driving up the driveway. And us at the front door.

  “I’d have to get Mr. Winslow’s approval,” Ron says politely. “And I would think he would like a formal request from the department. Just so all of our bases are covered.”

  The cop is silent for a moment. “Understandable.” He looks around one last time, leaning forward so that he can see into the house. He straightens and lowers his sunglasses. “Alright, then. Please let us know if you notice anything suspicious. We’ll be in touch.”

  Ron closes the door and slumps against it and the three of us in the safe room breathe a collective sigh of relief.

  “Thank God that’s over,” Claire mutters.

  “He knows we’re here.”

  I glare at Lydia. “How do you jump to that conclusion from what we just saw? He was here to ask about suspicious people in the neighborhood, not people harboring half a kilo of heroin.”

  “That’s what he said,” she says, shaking her head. Her shorn black hair swings freely and a strand lands on her cheek. She brushes it away. “Didn’t you see how he was trying to look inside? Don’t you think it was suspicious that he wanted the security tapes? He was doing anything he could to get inside.”

  “He was doing his job,” I counter. “He wasn’t pushy, he didn’t ask un
usual questions. Why are you so fucking paranoid?”

  “Why are you so stupid?” Her eyes flash at me. “I’m sorry this isn’t an easy little dot-to-dot for you. I’m sorry that sometimes you have to take a couple of leaps to get to the next point. Maybe you seriously don’t have the brain capacity to do so. But I know what I saw. He knows we’re here.”

  “You are insane,” I tell her. “Utterly insane.”

  She is. Her reaction to the situation that just unfolded is my proof. Yeah, we have problems, Gino and her baggie of drugs being the biggest. But police knocking down doors, looking for us? Being the subject of a secretive, police-wide manhunt?

  Not a chance.

  “I’m not insane.”

  “Oh, really?” I raise my eyebrows. “A cop shows up and you instantly think he’s here for us. Tell me something. How the hell would he have found us? It wasn’t like we were followed. The cops weren’t at the storage facility – Gino was. And he was too worried about getting his drugs to think about tailing us.”

  “Our phones were on,” she reminds me. “In the car. They could have tracked—”

  I roll my eyes. “Seriously? You think the cops have people who sit around and track our whereabouts through our phones? You think they have the technology, the budget, to do that? They run a skeleton crew as it is.”

  “It’s not hard,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “If a two-bit hacker like me can figure it out, you don’t think the cops can?”

  “You need help,” I tell her. “Psychological help. You’ve gone off the deep end. Big time. And you’re trying to take me and your sister with you. Well, guess what? It’s not happening.”

  I’m serious. And I’m done. She can chop off her hair and dye it and run to the far ends of the earth. But I’m not going with her. I’ll take my chances here. I’ll rat out Gino – hell, I’ll rat out her – so that he goes to jail and the police really do start looking for her. Because I know I’ll be safe. No one is out to get me except this lowlife thug who thinks I’m involved with his drugs.