by Wendy Heard
I don’t believe him. Nothing scares Nico.
My teeth are chattering. “Just tell me what to do. I need to get this over with.”
A gust of ocean wind hits me, and my grip on the peg slips. I go bouncing away from the column. I hear myself scream.
“Jagger. Jagger. You’re okay. You’re attached. You’re safe.”
To a tiny, skinny rope! I’m dangling, bouncing around in the wind.
“When the wind dies down, you’ll swing back to the column, and then you can grab on again,” he says, so terrifyingly calm.
He’s right, though. The next swing takes me right up to the peg, and I grab it for dear life. I clutch at it, find a spot for my foot on the next one below, and try to let the air out of my chest before I faint.
Another crackle in my ear. “You guys okay down there?” It’s David. He’s still on the bridge. He’s in charge of feeding the net down to us.
“We’re good. Just acclimating,” Nico replies. “Now, Mick, breathe. Give yourself a moment to get comfortable. You’re strapped into your harness safe and sound. People climb mountains this way, thousands of feet up in the air. Graffiti artists everywhere have to do shit like this. You’ve seen murals in weird places. This is how it’s done. You’re fine. I promise.”
His words are moving through my veins like medicine. “Okay,” I say, breathing again. “I’m ready to get started.”
“That’s my girl!” David hollers, his voice so triumphant that we laugh.
“Go ahead and give us the first section,” Nico tells him, and from above, a lacy black curtain drifts down over my head. It’s the massive commercial fishing net we’ve been practicing with. We’ve been using these same hooks, attached to the walls of Nico’s warehouse, testing this technique. It only now occurs to me that we didn’t practice with wind. When Nico and I grab hold of the net, it parachutes out between us, pulling me away from the column. I have to clench the hook with all my strength to stay on.
“Damn, that wind is strong,” Nico says. “You good, Jagger? Don’t forget to clip that net to your harness. It’ll leave your hands free for climbing.”
We have to climb all the way down to the water with the net attached to us, where we’ll clip it to the lowest hooks. After that, we’ll climb back up, fastening it to each hook as we go, until the net is secure between the columns, creating a mesh barrier that should be relatively invisible in the dark. Nico’s been drilling these hooks in for months, and right now he’s like a machine making his way hand over hand down the column toward the water. I have to focus, placing my feet carefully as the wind batters me.
I climb down, searching for the four-inch hooks with unstable, terrified feet and clutching at them with hands that burn even in the rock-climbing gloves. It’s scarier the farther down I get, which is counterintuitive. You’d think it’d be reassuring to be closer to the ground. But below me isn’t ground; it’s water, and I know better than anyone how easy it is to drown. In these circumstances, under a massive bridge with unpredictable currents circulating the columns, the water is more frightening than the fall down to it.
At last, I’m close enough to feel the icy spray on my hands and face. Nico can’t see me, not from his column a hundred feet away, but he seems to be pacing me using the tension in the net. “You down here?” he asks in my ear.
“Yes.” I’m shivering.
“Let’s connect to our lowest hooks.”
Beneath my feet, the dark, starving waves slash at the base of the concrete column, their roar drowning out Nico’s voice in my ear. There are three more hooks left to descend.
My foot slips; the pegs here are wet. I cry out and grasp for the column, finding a hook just in time. I think I’ve lost the net. But no. It’s clipped to my harness.
I take a couple of deep breaths. “Nico, I can barely hear you, but I’m going to start attaching.”
“Okay!” he yells over the roar of the waves. “Me too!”
I unclip the net from my harness and, with shaking hands, find the closest loop. I guide it to the lowest hook and make sure it’s secured. I let it go as a test. It holds.
“It’s good!” I cry.
Nico’s voice is high and happy. “Mine is holding too. Let’s get this done!”
I step on the hook I just used and find the next loop in the net. We make our way up. There are fifty hooks on each column. We get into a rhythm. There’s a silence as we hold the wind-blown net in place, as we wrestle it onto the hook, and then as we wait and make sure it holds. There’s an “I got it” or an “all right, let’s go” and then we climb up and do the next one. This process repeats over and over again for what feels like forever, until my hands are numb inside the gloves and my toes are slabs of ice inside the climbing shoes.
At last, David is only twenty feet above me. “Four more to go!” he hollers into the headset, hurting my ears. “Come on, come on!” He’s winding our ropes up as we climb. When I make it to the top, he grabs me by the arms and helps me over the railing. I tumble onto the sidewalk and lie facedown, embracing the solid concrete with more gratitude than I can ever remember feeling.
A blissful realization: I did it. Tomorrow I’ll get the car. I’m done helping Nico. I’m free.
Nico is still on the other side. I hear a rattle, like marbles in a jar, and a hissing sound followed by the smell of fresh spray paint. He does this for a while, invisible below us, painting something on the exterior of the bridge. When he returns, David helps him up and over the railing.
“Look,” Nico says. His voice is reverent, like he’s witnessing a miracle. “Do you see it?”
“See what?” David asks.
“The installation. Look!”
I crawl toward the railing.
The horizon is glimmering, a faint, predawn, silvery glow. No wonder I’m exhausted; we’ve been here for hours. A fishing boat with lights glowing on its prow is heading for the net. It’s the one we were expecting. We’re just in time. David joins Nico at the railing. I can’t make myself let go long enough to walk over to them.
David cranes his torso forward, looking down under the bridge. “Are we sure this is— Do we feel good about this? What if the boat capsizes or something? Could people get hurt?”
“They could get hurt,” Nico answers, unperturbed.
The boat is coming closer. I wonder if it will see the net with its spotlight. Maybe it will. Maybe it will change course before it gets trapped. It does seem like the boat is slowing, actually. Could it be?
“What’s happening?” David asks.
“It’s changing course.” Nico’s face pulls into a frown.
“You think they saw the net?”
“No. I think we’re unlucky and they’re just going between different columns than usual.”
“That sucks.” A long pause while they watch the boat turn. David asks, “Do you think another boat will come along before it gets light?”
“I don’t want to count on it.”
“I’m sorry, dude.” David casts him a sympathetic look, then returns his attention to the boat.
Nico says, “I’m fishing, right? Maybe I need bait.”
“Bait?”
“Yes. Bait.”
Nico steps behind David, puts both hands on his back, and pushes him off the bridge.
CHAPTER THIRTY
VERONICA
My mom and Detective Salcedo were waiting for me in the living room, deep in conversation. He was hanging on whatever she was saying with rapt attention. He totally liked her. Ew.
“Uh, hi,” I said, entering with great trepidation and setting my purse and keys down on a side table.
Salcedo rose from the easy chair and said, “Veronica! There you are.”
My mom rose, too, and kissed me on the cheek. “You want coffee?”
“I guess.” I sat down on the edge of the couch cushion.
My mom hurried into the kitchen, and Salcedo sat back down. “Whatcha been up to? Hanging out with your friend Mi
ck?” His tone was suspiciously casual.
Nico always told me a lie sounds more believable when it’s close to the truth. He swore anyone could pass a polygraph if they told a version of the truth rather than a straight fabrication. So I said, “No. To be honest, we had a fight at the gala and we’re not exactly speaking.”
“Again?” my mom asked, returning with a cup of coffee. I accepted it, and she sank onto the couch beside me.
“Don’t be judgy.” I sipped the coffee. It was sweet and carried the scent of cinnamon. Salcedo had an empty mug at his side, I noticed.
“You don’t approve of Mick?” Salcedo asked my mom.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Are you asking me if I’m homophobic?”
“No, no, no. I mean, of their relationship itself.”
She relaxed. “Mick is a nice girl. But she has problems.”
“Mom!” I cried. Jesus Christ, on a list of things not to say to a cop.
“With her family,” she protested. To Salcedo, she said, “Her mother is irresponsible. She kicked her out of her own house with nowhere to go. That’s—”
“Mom! Oh my God! Private business!”
“It’s illegal,” she argued.
“It is illegal,” Salcedo agreed. “Did you contact social services? I can get you the number.”
“I contacted her mother,” my mom said. “We had a little talk.”
“What?” I was horrified. “How? When? What?”
She shrugged, unrepentant. “When Mick was in the shower, I got her mother’s number off her phone and called her. We talked about responsibility.”
I considered that a bunch of different ways, sifted through the questions that popped up in my head, and finally said, “But Mick’s phone is password protected.”
She snorted. “Her password is 1287. I watched her unlock it. This isn’t my first day as the parent of a teenager.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. Did she know my phone password?
Salcedo was looking at my mom with a recognizable brand of male appreciation. He said, “I’m actually here to ask you about Micaela. I haven’t been able to locate her, and I thought you could help. She’s the only person not accounted for from the charity gala. I spoke with her mother as well, who said she’s been staying with friends, but this helps me understand why it seemed like she was being intentionally vague. Have you seen Micaela? Or do you know where she is?”
I think she’s doing something weird and potentially illegal on Coronado Island with my former best friend, whom I am going to murder. Instead of that, I said, “I wish I could tell you, but my calls to her are going straight to voicemail.” How much was I going to lie to the cops? At what point was it going to be too much?
“Would you be comfortable showing me the texts between you and Mick?”
“What? Wait, seriously?” I looked at my mom. “There’s, like, private stuff in there.”
To Salcedo, my mom said, “That feels like an intrusion. And with them both being girls, it seems inappropriate. You’re a male officer.”
He put his hands up apologetically. “Excuse me.” But his eyes were cunning, and I felt like he saw more than I wanted him to. “I need you to keep me posted if you hear from her. She’s not in trouble, but we are worried. If I didn’t know she’d already been at odds with her mother and not staying at home, I’d have a missing persons investigation underway. As it is, I think we’ll be launching one in the morning. No one has heard from her since she left swim practice on bad terms this morning, and the girls on her team said she was quite upset. Her mother tried to find her iPhone on iCloud, but it’s been powered off. These aren’t good signs. Veronica, if you’re keeping anything from us, I want you to consider that something may have happened to her. She may not just be ignoring you.”
I knew the shock I was feeling must be registering on my face. This was blowing up to bad proportions. Even if I wanted to come clean, I had no idea where to start.
My mom walked Salcedo to the door. I took my coffee to the kitchen and microwaved it. When she returned, she leaned in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest. “Is she a missing person? Tell me the truth, Veronica.”
I kept my eyes on the microwave. “I doubt it.”
“Do you have any idea where she might be staying?”
The microwave beeped. I pulled the door open and got the cup of coffee out. I sipped it, grateful for the scalding heat and the opportunity to stall.
“Veronica.” Her tone was sharp.
“Honestly? That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. I know she had a fight with her friend Liz on the swim team and they aren’t friends anymore, but they could have made up. She could be there. Or with another friend, I don’t know.”
“She has fights with everyone,” my mom muttered.
“Stop it,” I snapped, defensive for no reason.
“Everyone persecutes Mick, right? She’s always in fights with people, but it’s never her fault? Those kinds of people are toxic, Veronica. I know you’re young and you want to save everyone, and I’m sure that’s coming from your issues with your father leaving, and I don’t want to be judgmental, but honey. The people who find themselves always the victim? Those people do the worst things. Because they’re so focused on all the bad things being done to them, they never stop and think about their own capacity for—for—”
“For what? Evil?” I forced a laugh.
She smiled. “Well, maybe not evil. For being destructive. Does that make sense?”
I remembered Mick starting the fire. Mick dragging me into the ocean. Mick helping Nico at the gala.
It made a lot of sense.
I wondered what else she might be capable of.
Lily’s dead face, staring up at me.
Maybe it was time to come clean. I didn’t start the fire. I didn’t do any of the installations. I was there, I was a witness and probably, legally, an assistant? An accomplice?
I couldn’t. I was a lot of things—a pain in the ass, a bitch, a brat—but I was not a snitch.
I went to bed jittery and exhausted. I woke up a dozen times in the darkness, grabbing for my phone, hoping for something, anything.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
MICK
David screams all the way down to the water.
My body is skewered with fear. I scream too, a hoarse, raven sound, and then I clap a hand to my mouth, afraid of upsetting Nico.
A crash.
The screams stop.
I can’t help opening my eyes. I can’t help looking down.
The water is churning where David went in.
The boat, which had seemed to veer away from the bridge, changes course and heads straight for David. They’re going to try to rescue him. By the boat’s trajectory, it looks like the intent is to pass David and swing around in a U-turn; it’s going too fast to stop on a dime.
It steers directly into the net. It pulls hard, stretching the net out to the other side of the bridge. The boat’s nose is wrapped in the black mesh. It whirs and chugs, and then it topples sideways into the water.
“Yes!” Nico screams. He sounds like someone watching sports on TV. He turns his face to me. It’s bright, glowing in the overhead streetlights. “We did it!”
I feel like I’ve been submerged in ice water. I can’t move my lips, can’t make a single word come out of my mouth. Nico starts throwing all our gear over the railing. Leave no trace, he always says. Ropes and harnesses and spray cans—they all go down into the water. None will have fingerprints on them; we’ve worn gloves this whole time. It’s a perfect crime.
“But why?” I cry, the words ripping out of my soul.
Oh my God. Lily.
That was no accident.
But why?
Run, my brain says.
Before my body can obey, Nico clamps a hand around my wrist, encircling it completely. “Don’t worry. I’d never do this to you. You’re on a different level. You deserve so much bigger.” He pulls me to his side
and wraps his free arm around me, my wrist still clamped in his hand. I can feel his heart pounding through his ribs. “I know you’re freaking out right now. You’re thinking about Lily, you’re thinking about David, but what you need to be thinking about is this. Look at it. Look what we’ve done.” His breath is warm on my ear.
Sirens. On the San Diego side of the bridge.
“That’s our cue,” Nico says. “Gotta get back to the van. Come on.” He takes off sprinting, pulling me with him. He’s fast, faster than me. He has my wrist, and the water is roaring far below. I stumble, trying to keep up. He’s so fast. Getting away is not an option, not with him dragging me like this and the police closing in from behind.
This is what he does. He paints you into a picture. He turns you into a puppet.
My brain is flying from solution to solution. Wait for him to get in the van and then jump out the door before it starts going quickly. Or make a run for it when he’s unlocking the doors. The second his hand is off me, I need to make my break.
When the van is in sight, tucked into a bank of bushes on the Coronado Island side of the bridge, he unlocks it with the remote. He pulls me to the rear cargo doors and opens one without letting me go. “Get in, pretty girl.”
I’m horrified, confused. The back is a sealed refrigerator compartment, a small, empty white room. “Into the back? No, I don’t—”
He shoves me inside, slamming the door shut behind me. It’s so fast, I can’t even struggle; I land in a heap on the floor. A muffled click-click tells me he’s locking the door. I push myself up and try to pull the door open, but the handle won’t move.
An overhead light flickers, a tiny ring of fluorescents around the fan mechanism embedded to the ceiling. The van’s engine whirs to life, and the fan starts up with a roar of recycled air.
The air coming from the fan is icy cold.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
VERONICA
When my eyes snapped open, gray daylight was seeping in through cracks in the curtains. I grabbed my phone and went downstairs to make coffee. The house was dark. My mom was still asleep.
