Liars, Inc.

by Paula Stokes

  McGhee nodded. “I see. He hasn’t called you, has he?”

  “No.”

  “But he should have his phone with him, wherever he is, right?” McGhee asked. “Preston’s mom said he was always glued to his cell.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. My stomach lurched as I thought about Preston’s phone still hanging out in my trunk.

  “You don’t mind if we take a look around, do you?” McGhee said. “It’s not like you have anything to hide, right?”

  I froze. “I, uh, I think my parents would want to be here for that.”

  “We promise not to disturb anything. We won’t even go in their room,” he said.

  I could feel the blood draining from my face. My phone buzzed sharply. Gonzalez watched as I accessed the text message. It was from Parvati. One word: warrant.

  I tucked the phone into the pocket of my hoodie. “Look. I have to go pick up my sister from school in a little bit. Now’s not a good time for you guys to start looking around.” Then, almost as if it were an afterthought, I added, “Anyway, don’t you need a warrant to search somewhere?”

  “We only need a warrant if you don’t give us permission,” McGhee said.

  “I think my parents would want a warrant.”

  Gonzalez narrowed his eyes. “Just remember, Max. If you make things hard on us we might feel inclined to make them hard on you.”

  “Well, it’s all been easy and fun so far.” I made a big show of pulling my car keys out of my pocket and glancing toward the door. “Talk to you guys soon, I’m sure.”

  “I guess we’ll get out of your hair,” McGhee said. The two agents exchanged a long look. I didn’t know what it meant, but I didn’t like it.

  They got up and headed for the door. “Hey, Max,” Gonzo called back over his shoulder. “You just turned eighteen, right?”

  Just my luck that all of this was going down the exact day I legally became an adult. Happy birthday to me. “Why?” I asked. “Did you buy me something nice?”

  He smirked. “Let us know if you’re going to leave town, okay?”

  FOURTEEN

  PARVATI AND I FISHED THE phone out of my trunk the second McGhee and Gonzalez left. Of course the battery had died. I started scrubbing it down with a baby wipe. No more blood. No more fingerprints.

  A giant clap of thunder came out of nowhere, shaking the windowpanes. Raindrops began to plink against the glass.

  “Nice call on the warrant,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Parvati replied, without looking at me. She was staring at the phone. “If they find that, they’re going to arrest you.”

  “So let’s just get rid of it.” Even as I said the words, I knew we couldn’t. We might need it to find Preston’s mysterious girlfriend. There could be other clues on it too. I finished with the baby wipe and then set the phone on the coffee table.

  Parvati reached for it. Using the sleeve of her shirt, she pressed the power button. The screen stayed dark. “At least if the battery is dead they won’t be able to track it anymore.” She sighed deeply. “But we can’t just baby-wipe away the smears of blood in your trunk.”

  “You really think some random smudges that may or may not be blood are enough to prove I committed a crime?”

  “No, but add the smudges to the fact that you had the phone and got rid of it, and that they have an eyewitness that says you and Pres were arguing. All that is more than enough to convince them to test your trunk for blood and go digging for other stuff.”

  “Other stuff they won’t find.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure about anything,” I said. “Preston wouldn’t make it an hour without his phone. If he thought he lost it he would have pulled over and gone through his whole car to find it. And then he would have realized he forgot it and turned around. How could it end up in my trunk?” With blood on it. “And who the hell told the cops Pres and I were arguing?”

  Parvati rested her forehead against her hands. “It’s almost like you’re being—”

  “Set up.” Like I was a suspect in one of Amanda’s detective shows instead of a high school kid. Like I had fallen into someone else’s life. One that might look fun if I was watching it on TV, but sure as hell didn’t feel fun.

  I thought about the Jacobsens, the only other people at the beach. They had to be the ones who told the FBI about Preston’s car not being parked at the overlook. But were they the ones who lied about seeing Pres and me fighting? If so, why? The surfing brothers had nothing against me.

  At least, I didn’t think so.

  Too much had happened too quickly. I was still waiting for Preston to roll up in his car and tell me a big funny story about his adventures in Vegas. I hadn’t completely wrapped my brain around the possibility that something bad had happened to him, let alone the possibility that someone else had hurt him and was setting me up to take the fall.

  But then I remembered how weird Pres had been acting at the overlook. He was upset about something going on with his family. Bad thoughts started to creep in. “What if someone hired Violet to get close to Preston online? People are speculating about his dad getting tapped as Secretary of Labor. Maybe the FBI is right and some political nutjobs snatched him.”

  Parvati went quiet for a second as she mulled the possibility over in her head. “Did Pres have any enemies of his own that you know of?”

  “He told me he owed Jonas Jacobsen money, but according to Jared that was a lie.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Everyone else worships Preston, don’t they?”

  “Pretty much,” she agreed. “If someone took him, his parents will get a ransom request.” She paused. “But the FBI guys are still going to pounce on you once they find the blood in your trunk. I’ll charge the phone and then drive somewhere and turn it on just long enough to look at the recent calls and texts. But you need to get rid of your car, or find someplace to hide out until we can figure out what really happened.”

  I couldn’t just get rid of my car. Was I supposed to tell my parents that someone stole that twenty-year-old rust bucket? Even if I wrecked it or ran it off a cliff, the agents would still find it unless I set it on fire or something.

  The idea of skipping town until all of this blew over was majorly appealing, but if the feds pulled Preston’s body out of a back alley or some crazy bitch’s apartment in Vegas, I was going to blame myself. “Screw that. I haven’t done anything wrong. If I split I’ll look totally guilty.”

  “And if you stay you’ll look guilty, and you’ll go to jail. I’ve heard my mom talk about stuff like this. Your parents won’t be able to make bail on kidnapping, Max. Or worse. We’re talking six figures, minimum.”

  Worse. Like murder. The agents had decided I was guilty of something from the moment someone had lied about Preston and me arguing, if not earlier. They’d see my trunk, test the blood, and arrest me. I’d never figure out what happened to Preston from inside a jail cell, and they might not waste time looking for other suspects once they had me.

  “Plus they probably know about your assault charge,” she added. “I’m sure that’s not helping matters.”

  “The lawyer told me that couldn’t be used against me,” I protested.

  “Probably not in court, but that doesn’t mean those guys won’t judge you because of it.”

  My assault charge. Technically assault and battery, but what a bunch of bullshit. It happened a couple years ago. Amanda was playing outside after school and I was supposed to be looking after her, but I was inside watching TV instead. I remember I had just found out I had to retake American History in summer school, so I was really pissed off. I peeked out at my sister during a commercial and saw these two boys out in the street hollering at her—calling her a freak. Just as I opened the door to get her safely inside, one of the boys picked up a crushed aluminum can and threw it at her. What kind of epic douchebag throws stuff at a little girl with a disability?

  Props to my siste
r, though, because instead of running away to safety, she picked up the crushed can and threw it back. Then she screamed a word that Darla would definitely not approve of and grabbed a loose clod of dirt and threw that too. I was beside her in an instant, chucking the first thing my hands closed around, which unfortunately was a rock.

  My aim was a little better than Amanda’s.

  Ben and Darla were furious when the cops came around to arrest me. Turned out my aim was so good that one of the little thugs had to get five stitches. I thought my parents were going to leave me locked up until my trial date. But once they shut up and let Amanda tell them what had really happened, they got me out the same day. I still got a lecture about violence, but Ben couldn’t keep from smiling throughout the whole thing. He might as well have high-fived me and taken me out to dinner.

  After that day I was Amanda’s freaking idol. She was kind of my idol, too. The only thing that sucked was that the public defender said I might get tried as an adult, since I was sixteen and obviously knew what I was doing. (It probably didn’t help that the kid I hit was eleven.) She said if I pled guilty I’d just get community service and probation since it was my first offense. If I pled not guilty I might end up going to jail.

  So of course I pled guilty, and now a couple of asshole FBI agents probably thought I was the kind of loser that got my jollies beating up little kids. They’d use that info to paint me as some unstable whack job who jacked his rich, popular friend. Who cares if they didn’t have a motive? Crazy kids committed random acts of violence all the time, didn’t they? My brain was finally catching up to Parvati’s. If I let them take me in, I was done for.

  I started flipping through the possibilities of where I could go and what I could tell Ben and Darla so they wouldn’t worry. Unfortunately, I wasn’t coming up with much.

  “Maybe I’ll head to Vegas,” I said. “See if I can locate this Violet chick. If you find her number on Pres’s phone you can text it to me.” I glanced down at my own phone. “I have to pick up my sister in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll get Amanda,” Parvati said. “The teachers have seen us pick her up together plenty of times. I’ll just tell her your parents needed extra help at The Triple S.” She hopped off the couch. “Going to Vegas is a good idea if we can figure out for sure where Pres went. Otherwise it’s just a waste of an entire day. Give me a few hours and I bet I can con my way into Preston’s room. I’m sure the FBI took his laptop, but he keeps an external hard drive hidden away. There might be information on it.”

  “What am I supposed to do for a few hours?” My heart started banging out a drum solo in my chest. I didn’t know how long it took to get a warrant, but I had a feeling I’d be seeing McGhee and Gonzalez again soon. Maybe I could clean my trunk. Can you even clean blood off fabric? You can’t, can you? It’s one of those things that shows up under those cool purple lights you see on TV. And trying to clean it would only make me look more guilty. Maybe I could just rip the upholstery out of the trunk. Maybe I could set the car on fire.

  “Hide somewhere,” Parvati said. “I’ll grab the hard drive, meet up with you, and we can check out his files together. If Preston is in Vegas we can head there tomorrow after my parents go to work.”

  She made it sound so easy, like there wasn’t anything to think about. Hide. Then find Preston. Get back to a normal life by the weekend. “I guess I could go camping again. Maybe a little ways up the coast, catch a few waves.” I frowned. “Darla’s going to get all freaked out, though. We were supposed to go out to dinner for my birthday.”

  On cue, a bolt of lightning cut the sky outside into two pieces. The rain came down in sheets, blotting out my front yard and the houses across the street.

  “Stupid weather.” Parvati swore under her breath. “You can’t camp in this. What about my dad’s cabin?”

  “Isn’t it still full of his military pals?” I envisioned a few Navy SEALs launching themselves through the plate-glass front window in gas masks and full riot gear.

  “I saw Dad detail-cleaning his rifles last week, so hunting must be done for this year. You should be okay.”

  Being inside was definitely preferable to riding out the storm in a tent. Plus, the cabin was isolated, and McGhee and Gonzalez had no reason to know about it. They didn’t know Parvati and I were still together, so they’d have no reason to suspect she was helping me. Not yet, anyway. By the time they figured out we were still a couple and thought to question her, we’d be on the way to Vegas.

  “I’ll go back to Pres’s house and talk Esmeralda into letting me in his bedroom,” she continued. “Then I’ll meet you at the cabin. We’ll look at anything I manage to find and go from there.”

  “How are you going to get away with cutting class?”

  She grinned. “The same way I’m getting away with it right now. ‘I’m afraid Parvati’s condition has not improved. It might be the influenza,’” she said in an exact imitation of her mother’s lilting Indian accent. “Duh. Liars, Inc. Self-alibis are free, right?”

  I shook my head. “You’re a piece of work, you know it?”

  “A national treasure,” she said, still speaking in her mom’s accent.

  “It’s kind of hot when you talk like that.” For a second, I almost forgot I was preparing to run away to avoid being arrested for a crime against my friend.

  “It’s hot no matter how I talk.” Parvati leaned in and gave me a quick kiss on the lips.

  Both of us smiled, and I realized how glad I was to have her on my side, how everything seemed a little less scary with her around.

  FIFTEEN

  WHILE I SCRIBBLED A NOTE to Darla and Ben about how I left to go look for Preston, Parvati helped me quickly pack a bag of things I’d need for a couple days in case I went straight from the Colonel’s cabin to Vegas. Then she went to pick up Amanda while I headed toward the Angeles National Forest.

  My tires quickly ate up the miles of dusty highway. I still didn’t know if running away was a smart move. Parvati thought it was, but easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one implicating herself in a possible felony. Still, thanks to her mom she knew more about this crap than I did, and what she said made sense. The FBI agents would present my lies to the judge, along with the bloody trunk and missing phone, and I’d be done for. They’d assign me another overworked public defender who would tell me to take a plea bargain, and I’d end up in jail. Not happening.

  I puzzled over two main questions as I drove. The first: who would want to hurt Pres? He was our school’s most beloved athlete, but his rah-rah go-team image was mostly smoke and mirrors. He didn’t give a shit about school spirit or our classmates. He played football because he loved it, the feel of slipping between two hulk-like defenders, the thrill of beating the odds. It was the same reason he liked surfing and gambling. He liked taking risks, especially when he came out on top, which he almost always did.

  In that sense, a lot of people might have wanted to hurt him. People who he had lied to or beaten. People who had gambled with him and lost. Or won. Jared Jacobsen said Preston might have moved on to bigger and better things. Was Pres betting with a professional bookie? Maybe that was why he was so secretive about his recent online activities. Maybe that was the real reason he went to Vegas. I thought about what happened in movies to gamblers who owed money. I hoped Pres wasn’t lying bloody and beaten in an alley somewhere.

  The other question was harder: who would want to hurt me? I was basically invisible at school and tried my best not to piss people off at the beach. I couldn’t think of a single person who had anything against me. But someone had lied about Preston and me fighting at the top of Ravens’ Cliff, and possibly planted Pres’s bloody phone in my trunk. It had to be the Jacobsens, didn’t it? No one else was there.

  No.

  Wait.

  There was another car.

  A gray SUV.

  I had nearly crashed into a gray SUV just down the street from my house when I was daydreaming about Parvati.
It could have been the same one that was parked at the beach overlook on Sunday morning.

  My phone buzzed. Shit. If I left it on, the feds would be able to GPS me. I glanced down at the display before switching it off. Darla. My stomach tightened. I was screwing up everything—our birthday dinner, trimming the tree. I wondered if she and Ben had ever regretted adopting me, if they were secretly glad I was eighteen now so they could be rid of me whenever they wanted.

  I’d been on the road for just under an hour when the turnoff for the cabin appeared. I realized I hadn’t thought about what I should do with my car. Parking it in the Colonel’s driveway didn’t seem like a smart idea.

  I turned off the winding two-lane road about a mile past the cabin when I saw a sign for a nature preserve. Gravel sprayed up on both sides of me as the car lurched and bounced down a shallow incline. I did my best to avoid the bathtub-sized potholes and low-hanging branches. At the bottom of a hill, a tiny parking area sat overgrown with weeds. I pulled the Escort as far into the high grass as I could. Anyone who came this way would find it, but it wouldn’t be visible from the top of the hill.

  A wooden trailhead, with a place for backpackers to register if they were going into the backcountry, stood at the edge of the parking area. If someone found the car, maybe they’d think I hiked into the wilderness to hide.

  The camping gear from Preston’s alibi was still in my trunk. If I remembered right, the cabin was pretty sparsely furnished. I’d need just about everything I had with me to survive comfortably there. I packed my sleeping bag, first aid kit, a thermos of water, and the bag of clothes and toiletries Parvati had gathered for me into my oversized frame pack.

  I hiked back up the gravel road and stood at the edge of the trees, listening for cars approaching on the highway. The last thing I wanted was for some trucker to see me. When the road was empty, I jetted across the street and quickly disappeared into the underbrush on the other side.