The Girls I've Been

by Tess Sharpe

  What didn’t kill me didn’t make me stronger; what didn’t kill me made me a victim.

  But I made me stronger. I made me a survivor.

  Well, me and Lee and my very patient therapist.

  “Maybe you should answer the phone?” The teller’s voice trembles as she suggests it. “The police—they’ll give you what you want, I’m sure.” Her words dissolve as Gray Cap turns to stare at her, the gun swinging close.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  “Olivia.”

  “I’m going to just get this out there,” he says, leaning forward. “Whatever they’ve trained you to do in a robbery? Throw it away, sweetheart. I know your rules—and the cops’ playbook—front to back.”

  “Please,” she whimpers.

  I’m so sure he’s going to shoot her, I’m about to rise to my feet when the phone stops ringing, and the silence is so abrupt, it snatches his attention away.

  Iris’s shoulder twists against mine, and Gray Cap whirls at the absence of noise, too late to stop Red Cap from picking up my sister’s call.

  “You fucking—” he starts, and then he doesn’t say anything else, running over to the phone and snatching it out of his partner’s hands.

  There’s a split second where he hesitates. I see how his fingers curl around the receiver like he wants it to be a neck, and his shoulders tense like he wants to slam the phone down on the counter.

  But then his shoulders straighten, and instead of breaking the phone, he raises it to his ear.

  “You have twenty seconds.”

  — 9 —

  Phone Transcript, Lee Ann O’Malley Engages Hostage Taker #1 (HT1)

  August 8, 9:33 a.m.

  HT1: You have twenty seconds.

  O’Malley: I’ll get to the point, then, since I already introduced myself. What’s your name?

  HT1: My name doesn’t matter. Ten seconds.

  O’Malley: What do you want?

  HT1: I have seven hostages. I want Theodore Frayn. Get him here. Now. Or I start shooting.

  [Call disconnected]

  — 10 —

  9:34 a.m. (22 minutes captive)

  1 lighter, no plan

  “Get them up,” Gray Cap orders as soon as he hangs up like a big drama king instead of actually talking to Lee. He said he knew the playbook, but he’s not acting like he does. He just played his cards, tossing them out to Lee without holding anything back.

  “Up! You, the boy—grab the guard.” Red Cap jabs his handgun at us, and we already know how trigger-happy he is, so we scramble to obey. I go over to help Wes with the guard, and together we shuffle him down the hall as Red Cap herds us into the back of the bank, where the offices are.

  “Kids in this one,” Gray Cap orders, pointing to the room on the left. “Adults in that one.” He points to the office across from ours.

  “The kids—” Olivia, the teller, starts, her eyes widening as she looks at us.

  “No arguments. Put him in the room with them,” he tells Wes and me.

  We lower the guard to the carpet in the office, and then Wes grabs my hand and tugs me toward the room across the hall.

  “Kids, it’s gonna be okay,” Olivia says to all four of us, but she’s so damn scared that it sounds like more of a shaky question than a reassurance, and then Gray Cap closes the door behind him and he’s alone in the room with them and we can’t do anything but let Red Cap herd us into our own, separate office. He rips the phone off the desk and tucks it under his arm.

  Iris shifts every time he moves, sliding her body in front of the little girl.

  “Stay quiet,” Red Cap says. Then he leaves the room, closing the door behind him, followed by a scraping noise—he’s dragging something to block it.

  There’s no lock, and I don’t try to push it. Not yet. Red Cap might still be outside. I press my ear against it, and I think I hear the snick of the door across the hall opening, but I’m not sure. They might both be out there, and if they see the doorknob turning . . .

  Iris lets out a shaky breath. The kid stifles a sob. Wes’s eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them.

  “We need to focus,” I say, and the words seem to snap the scared silence that’s taken over us. “We can’t fall apart.” I’m not saying it to them, I’m saying it to myself, but it seems to do the same thing for me as it does for them, because the three of us take a breath. We’re older and we need to be okay, because God, the kid is small and scared. Was I that small when I was that scared?

  “You’re right,” Iris says briskly, her shoulders straightening like she’s wearing armor instead of splashes of watercolor on cotton over tulle.

  I turn around, scanning the room. No windows. No doors. A desk.

  “I’ll distract the kid,” Wes mutters.

  “We’ve got the desk,” Iris replies.

  Wes goes over to crouch next to the little girl, talking in a low voice as Iris and I turn to the desk. The phone is out, obviously, but maybe there’s something inside that could help us.

  “Check for weapons.” I hurry over to it and Iris follows me, taking the left drawers as I take the right.

  “They cut the cameras,” Iris says in a low voice. “And they’re already shooting the ones who pose the most threat.”

  I pause midpull. I can see sticky notes and pens in the first drawer, a stapler I suppose I could use as a club in a pinch. But for a second, all I can hear are her words.

  “I know,” I say, just as quiet.

  She reaches out, her fingers closing over my wrist long enough to squeeze. It’s not an It’ll be okay touch, because she’s just spoken the words that say it’s not. It’s an I’m here touch, and it’s enough. It has to be. Because it’s all we have.

  She pulls away, turning back to her side of the desk, rummaging through the drawer.

  “Booze,” Iris reports, holding up three airplane-sized bottles of cheap vodka.

  “Fire starter?”

  “Possibly.” She tucks them into the pocket of her dress.

  Asset #2: 3 bottles of vodka

  I bend back down and yank open the second drawer. It’s just files, but I rake through them in case there’s something hidden between the stacks of papers. There isn’t.

  “Scissors!” I grab them from the last drawer, but they’re the big kind, and there’s no way they’re going to fit in Iris’s pocket. Her dress is not Mary Poppins’s handbag, unfortunately.

  “Maybe I can . . .” She takes them from me and tries to stick them down the neck of her dress, where I know her underwear is, well, kind of delightfully complicated. Vintage lingerie is extensive, and Iris likes authenticity. But she can’t find a way to get the scissors to lie flat, even with whatever antique thingamabob she’s got on today.

  “Let me.” I take them from her when she offers, and push them into the waistband of my baggy jeans, letting my flannel drape over the handle that’s peeking out from beneath my belt. I swish back and forth for a second as Iris watches. “Can you see the outline?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Okay. Good.”

  Asset #3: Scissors

  “Anything else?”

  I pull open the last drawer, but it’s empty.

  “Nothing.”

  Our eyes meet, a clash of her brown with my blue, and in that second, we both let the panic creep in. It’s not enough. We don’t have nearly enough.

  And then she licks her lips and I square my shoulders and we snap to it.

  “We need information,” Iris says.

  “I know,” I answer, but I’m staring at the girl. “Where’s her grown-up?” I ask suddenly.

  “What?”

  “She didn’t go to any of the adults when they put us all together in the lobby,” I say as I think back. “And none of them freaked out when they put h
er in here with us. Wouldn’t you, being separated from your kid?”

  Iris’s head tilts, her eyebrows knitting together. And then without another word, she walks over to Wes and the girl, a gentle smile on her face as she bends down.

  “Hey, honey,” she says. “I’m Iris. What’s your name?”

  “Casey,” the girl says. “Casey Frayn.”

  The bottom drops out of my stomach. The bank manager’s last name. “You’re here waiting for your dad, aren’t you?” and my voice shakes because I know the answer even before she nods.

  “He’s the manager?”

  She nods again.

  I look up at Iris and Wes, and my face has got to be a mirror of theirs right now. All Oh holy fuck, we’re even more screwed.

  Problem #1: Bank robbery goes wrong because of missing bank manager.

  Problem #2: Bank robbers have the ultimate leverage over the missing bank manager . . . They just don’t know it.

  I give her my best bullshit smile. “Casey, will you check that second drawer of the desk for me, the one with all the files? I’m worried I missed something.”

  “Okay.”

  She goes over to the desk, and Wes says, “They wanted the bank manager,” as soon as she’s out of earshot.

  “And they haven’t tried to get the teller to give them any money. They haven’t even mentioned the vault. Just the basement and the bank manager,” Iris adds. “Something strange is going on. This isn’t a normal grab the cash and go kind of robbery.”

  “What are we going to do?” Wes asks.

  I look over my shoulder at Casey, bent down next to the desk, rummaging through the files.

  “We need to learn more. They need the manager for something other than the vault if they keep asking for him.”

  “I don’t think the bank robbers are gonna tell us their whole plan, Nora,” Wes says, and the frustration that’s been simmering in him since the parking lot leaches into his voice so fast it makes my cheeks heat.

  Right. He’s still pissed at me. Like, really, really, really pissed.

  And he has good reason to be. Walking in on your former girlfriend making out with the girl you’re both friends with is basically a fish-slap in the face when it comes to ex encounters. Even worse than that, I’d broken a promise about not lying to him anymore. He and I don’t break promises to each other, not after I broke us and then we managed to painfully assemble the parts back together. Franken-friends, he likes to joke, and it always makes me laugh, because it’s true . . . and it’s edged in a dark twist of humor that the new us—the Franken-friends—needs to exist.

  But there’s no humor in him right now, and if my entire adrenaline system wasn’t firing at the speed of light, it’d scare me. But considering I don’t know if we’re going to last the next five minutes, I have to put it aside. Focus.

  How do you hide a girl in plain sight?

  They’ll want our names, eventually, if they haven’t gotten them off of our IDs already. Shit. Her ID.

  “Casey, did you have an ID with you?”

  She looks up from the desk and shakes her head. “I left my bag at my mom’s. She was mad because she didn’t have time to go back and get it, she had a meeting. My phone was in there, too.”

  “Good,” I say, and she frowns.

  “Listen, if either of them out there asks, do not tell them your real name,” I say. “Do not mention who your dad is. Tell them your last name is Moulton. You’re Iris’s cousin, okay?”

  Her frown deepens. She doesn’t get it, and there’s not enough time to explain, because I hear the scraping outside the door. One of them is coming back.

  “Casey, tell me you’re on board.” I’m throwing her headfirst into this, and her eyes are wide and she doesn’t get it, because deception wasn’t built into her blood and brain like it’s been in mine.

  “I—”

  “Casey Moulton. Say it.”

  Doorknob’s turning.

  “Casey Moulton,” she whispers.

  Door swings open.

  — 11 —

  Rebecca: Sweet, Silent, Smiling

  One of my clearest early memories is my mother standing me in front of the mirror and combing my blond hair back off my shoulders as she said, Rebecca. Your name is Rebecca. Say it, sweetie. Rebecca Wakefield.

  My name isn’t Rebecca, if you were wondering.

  It’s not really Nora, either. But everyone in Clear Creek knows me as Nora.

  I thought it was a game. The Rebecca thing. But later Mom slaps my arm when I answer to anything but Rebecca, and I learn it isn’t a game.

  I learn it’s my life.

  Rebecca. Samantha. Haley. Katie. Ashley.

  The girls I’ve been. The perfect daughters to the women my mother has become to con her marks.

  Each girl was me, but different. The best con has a seed of truth. She taught me well, to take those truths and spin them into stories so believable no one would think to question them.

  Rebecca wears her hair loose with an Alice band holding it back. This is when Mom stops letting me cut it beyond a trim. By the time Lee gets me out when I’m twelve, it hangs down to my hips, and people sometimes stop Mom or me to coo about how pretty it is. Rebecca wears a lot of pink. I tell Mom I don’t like pink as much as purple, and she says Rebecca loves pink, that it’s her favorite color . . . and then she makes me repeat it.

  She makes me repeat a lot of things when we’re alone. My brain is a sponge, that’s what she says, and I need to learn early what the world is like. You and me, baby. We’re going to be something.

  That something turns out to be criminals.

  Rebecca is Justine’s daughter. Justine is my mother and also not her. She wears brown contacts and pencil skirts, and she calls people sugar with a little lilt to her voice that Mom doesn’t have. Justine works as a receptionist in an insurance office, and her mark is Kenneth, the CFO. He’s skimming from the company coffers—not that the insurance game isn’t already a huge racket, but that’s another conversation—and she’s got him paying her in a blackmail scheme quicker than you can snap your fingers.

  I’m little then. I’m still learning. So I don’t have to do much but be cute and charming when she brings me into the office. It softens her image, and no one would ever suspect the sweet widowed receptionist with the adorable little girl.

  Being Rebecca teaches me how to lie. How to look into someone’s eyes while there isn’t a true word coming out of your mouth, but they believe it because enough of you believes it. It sharpens me too soon, this power and the blurred lines between truth and lie. I’m not a cute seven-year-old lying wide-eyed and obvious about stealing a cookie. I’m manipulating people. Figuring out what actions get the desired reactions. What kind of smile gets a smile in return. What cute little twirling dance will make the older ladies at the office clap their hands and give me candy. What whimpering tantrum can work when Mom needs me to be a distraction as she slips past, papers in hand, plotting, always plotting.

  Each step into Rebecca’s skin is a step out of my own, but I’m expected to snap back into myself as soon as Mom says the word, as soon as we’re alone, and I’m constantly reeling from the shift. Nothing’s steady. There’s no solid ground. I learn to dance on a tilting one instead.

  Mom always knows when to pull the plug, and before Kenneth can get vengeful enough or cheap enough to come for us or use whatever he’s stashed away to put a hit out on her, we’re gone, ditching the town and those names. Soon, she’ll be researching a new mark and standing me in front of a mirror in a new town, fixing my hair in a new way, and saying, Samantha. Your name is Samantha.

  She chooses bad men. She says there’s justice in stripping them of their money and therefore their dignity, because to men like that, money is everything, and they’re not much without it.

  But as the years pa
ss and the names on my list of girls grows, the truth is hard to deny. She chooses bad men because she likes bad men. She’s drawn to them and the risk they present, because she’s all risk, full throttle, all the time. She chose this ride and put me on it with no way off, and then I grow up drawn to bad men, too, like mother, like daughter.

  There’s just one difference between her and me. She’s drawn to bad men because deep down, she wants to love them. She needs them to love her.

  I don’t want to love them, and I’ve never needed to be loved by them.

  I learned very early, the best thing you can expect from them is pain.

  And the best thing you can do with a bad man is destroy him.

  — 12 —

  9:47 a.m. (35 minutes captive)

  1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, no plan

  This time, it’s Gray Cap who comes into the office.

  His knuckles are bloody. It’s the first thing I notice, and it makes me want to crowd next to Casey, to hide her from him.

  Who did he hurt? The guard, more? The teller, first? Or the woman who’d just cried, stone-faced, the whole time we were in the lobby?

  What to do, what to do, my mind’s skipping and turning, and all I know is that keeping Casey’s real identity from them is the safest thing for her, so I focus on that. Hide Casey.

  I have the scissors. I’ll use them if I have to.

  A shiver runs down my neck at the thought. I’ve been running from what the girls all taught me for a long time. When Lee got me out that first year, I used to whisper their names to get to sleep. Rebecca. Samantha. Haley. Katie. Ashley.

  I haven’t had to do that in a long time. I want to do it right now, but I force myself to focus. He’s saying something.