by Paula Stokes
I leaned over her shoulder. “I didn’t know you could search by picture.”
“Watch and learn.” Parvati smiled as a social networking profile pulled up. I peeked over her shoulder, but the text was too tiny to read. “Get this,” she said, in a voice that let me know a big reveal was coming. “I think I know why Preston didn’t tell us about her.” She paused for emphasis. “Violet Cain. Las Vegas. Thirty-five years old.”
SEVENTEEN
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OLD? WHAT WAS Preston doing hooking up with someone almost old enough to be his mom?
“Let me see that.” I glanced back at the bikini picture, which was still open on Parvati’s laptop. Violet’s skin was tan, her body flawless. Okay, so she did have that going for her, but still. We had hot teachers younger than her, and Preston had never seemed interested in any of them.
“What else does her profile say?” I asked.
“Violet only shares some of her information.” Parvati read from her phone. “For more about Violet Cain, send her a message or friend request.”
“Should we send her a message?” I asked. “Maybe Pres is totally fine and just lost his phone.”
“But if she’s crazy, we’ll be tipping her off that we know about her. Let’s see if her address is listed.” Abandoning the incomplete profile, Parvati found the page for Las Vegas directory assistance and typed in the name Violet Cain. There were three listings—two in Las Vegas and one in North Las Vegas. “If we went to Vegas ourselves, we could check out all three of these addresses in less than an hour,” she said. “If we left here around seven tomorrow morning, do you think we could make it to Vegas and back by five?”
“Probably not,” I said. “Not without speeding, anyway.”
Parvati furrowed her brow. “Maybe I can just leave my phone off. When I don’t come home from school, my parents will freak, but by that time we’ll have found Pres, or Violet at least. I’ll just tell them you forced me to go along with you.”
“Great.” I mentally added kidnapping to my list of alleged crimes. “With or without you, I’m definitely going to Vegas tomorrow.” It wasn’t like there was anything I could do hanging out around the cabin. The longer I stayed, the greater the chances were that McGhee and Gonzalez would find me.
Me, Max Cantrell, fugitive.
“You can go with me if you can figure out how to get away from your parents,” I continued. Part of me wanted Parvati by my side the whole way. She knew all this stuff about spying and the legal system that I had no clue about. Plus, I wanted her because I wanted her. Not just for the sex, but because she had this gift for making terrible stuff seem okay. Almost fun. And with Parvati, it’d feel like we were two kids searching for our friend. Without her, I’d be one criminal running from the FBI.
But I didn’t want her messed up in anything illegal. Not only because she could get shipped off to military school, but also because every day Preston didn’t come home this whole thing felt more dangerous.
Parvati nodded. “That reminds me.” She pulled a cheap plastic-looking phone out of her purse. “I got us both prepaids so you can call me and no one will be able to trace it. My new number is the only one programmed in.”
“A burner phone and a gun made for dropping people. Whose life is this again?” I tried to keep my voice light because I didn’t want to lose it in front of her, but inside I was starting to crack. I just wanted Preston to come home and everything to go back to being normal. I wanted to spend my birthday like I’d planned, with Amanda and my parents, putting up the Christmas tree while Ji and Jo tried to eat the ornaments. I didn’t want to be hiding from feds or thinking about whether my friend was dead.
“It’s our life, until we figure things out.”
“Good thing I have a master spy on my side.” I forced myself to smile. “Your parents would be so proud.”
“Hah. My mom would be horrified. She still wants me to be a lawyer. My dad would probably ask me if I’d been reading his SERE manuals.”
“What’s seer?”
“S-E-R-E. Survival, evasion, resistance, escape,” she said. “That’s what he does now. Teaches new recruits to be badass. He used to be a combat controller before he got old.”
I didn’t know what a combat controller did, but anything with “control” in the title seemed like it would fit the Colonel.
Parvati looked sad for a moment, snuggling close to me on the vinyl sofa. “I have to leave in an hour. I called my mom to tell her my newspaper meeting was running late, but I need to be home by eight for some big dinner with my grandparents or I’ll be the one needing to survive, evade, resist, and escape.”
“Okay.” I touched my cheek to her forehead. “Hey, can I hang on to your laptop until tomorrow? Maybe go through some more stuff on Preston’s hard drive?”
“Sure. I’m going to leave his phone here, too, so I don’t accidentally get caught with it.” She laid her head back in my lap and looked up at me with her soft, dark eyes. “Poor Max,” she said. “This isn’t how I wanted you to spend your birthday.”
I brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
“But you only turn eighteen once. I wanted it to be unforgettable for you.”
“Unforgettable, huh?” I bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I can think of a few things that might make today unforgettable.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” she whispered. She pulled me down to her level. “Max time. My—”
I cut her off. “Yeah, yeah, your favorite time.” Our mouths met. I forgot the feel of cracked vinyl and the rumbling in my stomach.
A folded gray blanket sat on the top of the sofa. Parvati yanked it down with one hand and shook it out so it unfolded over us. For the next half an hour, I quit worrying about Preston and FBI agents and thirty-five-year-old chicks from Vegas. I just let Parvati wish me a happy birthday.
Afterward, we both lay back, looking up at the light fixture with the burned-out bulbs.
“I don’t know what I would do without you,” I told Parvati. “I don’t think I’d make it through everything that’s happening.”
“You’d be fine, Max.” She slid out from beneath the blanket and started getting dressed. “Your past made you resilient so you don’t fall apart in a crisis. I like that.”
I thought about her words as I watched her get dressed. She wasn’t very tall, but her legs seemed to go for miles. My eyes worked their way up her naked back. Just the slightest hint of tan line lingered at her shoulders. I had never considered myself resilient. I wondered if it was true, or if she was just seeing what she wanted to see.
“But I’m glad I can help,” she continued. Skipping her bra, she slid her T-shirt over her head and then came to lie next to me again. She rested her cheek against my chest.
Warmth radiated through her skin into mine. I angled my neck to look down at her. “You know I didn’t do anything, right?”
“Of course.” She squeezed my hand. “We don’t know that anyone did anything yet.”
“Yeah, but you said they’re searching the water.” I wasn’t sure how I would react if someone pulled Preston’s body out of the ocean. I wasn’t ready to accept that he might really be gone.
“They’re grasping,” she said. “Because they don’t have anything else.”
We lay there in silence, our inhalations and exhalations slowly coming to match up. I felt whole, like I could breathe, like I could figure this thing out. Together, we could find Preston.
When it was time for Parvati to leave, I walked her out to her car. The sky had gone gray; the thick billowy clouds were weighted down with rain. We stood there a few minutes, pressed up against the door of the Grape, kissing. I didn’t want her to go. Ever.
“If I don’t hear from you tomorrow morning—”
“Then it means I can’t get away,” she said. “And that you should go to Vegas without me.” She tossed her hair back from her face. “Where’s your car? We can trade licens
e plates. If you have to go alone, it might keep you from getting busted on the way.”
“God, sometimes I think you’re a spy already, and just undercover as a high school girl,” I muttered. But it was a good plan, and I had the tools in my trunk to make it happen.
“Uh-oh. I’ve been made.” Parvati arched her eyebrows suggestively. “I’m actually twenty-four, but lucky for you I have a thing for younger men.” She poked me until I cracked a smile. “Actually I saw it in some movie Dad was watching a few months ago.” She opened the driver’s-side door and climbed behind the wheel. I jogged around to the passenger side and got in.
Parvati drove me to my car at the trailhead, and after we were sure no one was around we quickly swapped our plates. She headed home and I headed back to her father’s cabin, flipping up the hood of my sweatshirt as the first drops of rain began to fall.
Back inside, I blotted myself with a towel hanging over the edge of the shower. I went back to browsing through Preston’s hard drive, poring over each of Violet’s pictures, looking for clues. I wished I could get into Pres’s email, but even if I could crack his password there wasn’t any Wi-Fi out in the sticks.
Off in the distance, thunder tore the sky apart. Rain pounded the metal above my head. I hated the thought of Parvati navigating the twisting mountain roads during a storm, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Focus, Max. Find Preston.
I skimmed through the list of other folders, looking for anything that caught my eye. None of the initials were familiar to me except mine and Parvati’s. The PA folder had ten pictures, including a recent one of Parvati in her homecoming dress, a short spangly green thing that I got turned on just looking at. Again, I reminded myself to stay focused. The MC folder had three pictures of me. One of them was a pic of me, Darla, and Ben outside The Triple S. I didn’t even remember Preston taking it.
There was a PM folder that turned out to be pictures of Parvati and me together. There were two of us posed at parties, and even one shot of us scrunched together at the lunch table that Pres had snapped with his phone. I couldn’t believe his phone now had nothing on it except a call record that probably implicated me. Total bullshit. He lived on that thing. It should have been full of files.
Clues.
I flipped to the video folder, but it was empty except for a couple of clips he had taken at the latest Kittens of Mass Destruction concert. That seemed odd. Pres was always shooting videos of people he knew. Maybe he only saved them to his phone, or maybe . . .
I scrolled up to the top of the screen to the View menu. Holding my breath, I selected “view hidden files and directories.” A list of subfolders appeared. There was no VC folder for Violet Cain, but there were folders for Parvati and me. I went to click on the PA folder, but my aim was a little off and I opened the PM folder instead.
Thumbnails appeared, laid out in a nice orderly grid, and my blood screeched to a halt in my veins. Preston had videos of Parvati and me having sex.
EIGHTEEN
WE’D ONLY HOOKED UP AT his house the one time, but he had obviously rigged the guest bedroom with cameras. The videos were shot from above and from the side. I didn’t have to play more than a few seconds of any of the clips to know exactly what I was looking at. My face reddened. Parvati would die (or her parents would murder her) if these videos ever got out.
What the fuck? Did Preston have some sort of creepy voyeuristic fetish? Why had he recorded us?
And how, exactly, was I supposed to break this news to Parvati?
A giant clap of thunder shook the cabin, and the lights flickered out. The laptop went dark with the room, the thumbnails of us winking out of view. I remembered Parvati saying something about her laptop battery not working. Just my luck.
I used the faint glow of my cell phone to make my way back into the cabin’s living room. Did this place have candles? Probably, but I didn’t have anything to light them with. I debated going to Vegas right away, but the rain was really coming down and I’d be soaked to the bone if I walked all the way to my car. The best plan was to crash until morning. I’d head to Vegas as soon as I woke up, with or without Parvati.
I bedded down on the sofa, letting my mind wander back to her lying next to me. Closing my eyes, I listened to the rain pinging against the roof. Parvati’s face slowly disappeared, replaced by Preston’s. You ever feel like you don’t know anyone? Could he have meant me, or Parvati? Is that why he was spying on us? Because he didn’t trust us? No, it’s one thing to spy on people. It’s another thing completely to film them naked. Preston was apparently more screwed up in the head than I had ever known.
Turning over, I buried my face in my pillow. After an hour or two of tossing and turning, my brain faded to black.
But even in my dreams, I couldn’t escape thoughts of Pres and Parvati. They were running through the halls of a school. Not Vista Palisades—some place I had never been before. It looked old, with pillars and high hallways and classroom doors inset with big panes of glass. There was a ringing sound, like maybe someone had pulled the fire alarm, but Pres and Parvati didn’t seem worried. I watched as she used a bobby pin to pick a lock. The two of them ducked inside a classroom, laughing, and then came out with a handful of dusty books. Pres dumped them in his duffel bag and they proceeded down the hall, stopping at a door that had CHEMISTRY LAB stenciled in neat black letters across the glass.
The ringing was louder now. Pres turned toward me as Parvati worked her lock-picking magic again. I ducked into a recessed area of the hallway so he wouldn’t see me. I heard footsteps, people speaking in hushed tones. I peered around the corner, and Pres and Parvati were gone. The corridor was empty, but the voices sounded so close.
And then I heard a creak, and a key in the lock. My body jolted completely awake.
Someone was coming.
I slid off the sofa, grabbed the gun, and headed for the back door, just as Agents McGhee and Gonzalez burst through the front door of the darkened cabin and everything got even more fucked up.
THE END
NINETEEN
December 6th
AND JUST LIKE THAT, MY birthday went from a sleeping dream to a waking nightmare. I barely remember brandishing the gun, running from the feds, leaping from the cliff into the frigid water below.
But I’ve passed the last fifteen minutes or so in the river, mostly beneath the surface. That’s one good thing about surfing. You spend enough time getting sucked under by rogue waves, you get good at holding your breath.
My lungs finally give up the last little bits of air and I pop up into the night, just far enough to suck in a couple more deep breaths. Around me, the roar of the water sounds muffled. My ears are still throbbing from the sound of the gun going off.
With a start, I realize the gun is weighing down the side pocket of my cargo pants. I don’t even remember putting it away. Hopefully, I won’t need it. Pretty sure guns aren’t made for swimming.
I let the current carry me to the opposite bank, where I hide in a tall patch of reeds and try to figure out what to do next. McGhee and Gonzalez will either call for backup from a police department around here or set up some kind of river blockade downstream. I’m not sure if I should get out of the water or use the current to float even farther away. I wish Parvati were with me. She’d know. She’d quote some military escape manual. But Parvati is gone. Unreachable. The phone she left me is back at the cabin. I still have my own phone, but even if by some miracle it works after it dries out, calling her on it isn’t safe.
That gives me an idea. I reach my hand below the surface of the murky water and pull my phone out of my hoodie pocket. The screen stays dark when I try to turn it on, but I throw it as hard as I can up onto the riverbank. Maybe it’ll buy me some extra time if it dries out and someone decides to track me by GPSing it.
I take in another big breath of air and let the water carry me farther downstream. Think, Max. Nine years ago, I was the survival expert, not Parvati. There were some seriously bad p
eople trolling the streets and beaches where I lived, and avoiding their psychotic wrath took mad skills. Have I gotten soft since the Cantrells adopted me?
A patch of rapids appears out of nowhere and I adjust my body so that I’m heading into the whitewater feet first to protect my head. The river curves to the left and then back to the right. An owl, or maybe a bat, soars across my field of vision.
I glance up at the sky. It’s black, just like the water. I have no idea what time it is. I think I finally fell asleep around ten thirty, and it seemed like at least an hour passed before McGhee and Gonzalez found me, so now it’s probably somewhere around one in the morning. I’m hoping the feds got distracted by Preston’s phone and hard drive—the thought of them finding those sex clips almost makes me want to drown myself—before they started looking for me. But either way, they won’t stop until they find me. I need to either ride the river far enough away from the cabin that I won’t get caught in a manhunt, or get out of the water and try to hide in plain sight.
I decide to take my chances in the river for a while. It’s cold, but I feel safer in the water. And I’ll be able to see anyone coming before they get close.
My wallet is still in the back pocket of my cargo pants. Thanks to Liars, Inc. I should have enough soggy cash to buy another prepaid phone and some food. All I have to do is eventually find a safe place to get out of the river and make myself into someone other than Max Cantrell. How hard can it be?
I stay in the water for what feels like hours, curling my body into the fetal position to maximize warmth. In a couple places, the river is so shallow that I have to slither along on my elbows and knees to stay hidden beneath the surface. Soft sticky mud clings to my hands and coats the fabric of my pants.
