You Can't Catch Me(22)

“I think it’s something else. You check her story out?”

“Like I said in the car, I googled her when you sent me the info. She definitely worked at an elementary school in Chicago; I found an article about the school play that she was mentioned in. And then the article in the local paper about her when she moved to the area.”

“Wonder what it is, then?”

The server brings our burgers, and for a few minutes we eat silently, filling up on empty calories. I try to remember how old I was when I came here with my parents. Five? Four? Not long before we were frog-marched up the hill. That’s why they brought me, I think. A last treat.

“Maybe she has something in her past,” I say. “There’s lots of people who aren’t comfortable around the police. It doesn’t matter to me. She met Jessica Two; that’s what’s important. Especially if she can find those photographs.”

“We should go to the cops.”

I sit back and look at him. He’s got some ketchup in the corner of his mouth. I have a sudden urge to reach across and wipe it away, which I quash.

“Since when has that been your modus operandi,” I say instead, “Mr. kidnapper extraordinaire?”

He wipes his mouth with a napkin. “I never kidnapped anyone.”

“Todd would’ve begged to differ.”

“I rescued you.”

“I know you did. I’m just saying, coloring inside the lines isn’t usually your thing. Or going to the authorities.”

He raises his drink to his lips, taking a long slug of his root beer through his straw. Mine’s so sweet it’s making my teeth hurt.

“You’re right,” he says. “But this feels different.”

“The only thing that’s different is that this is my operation, not yours.”

“I’ll accept that.”

“You will?”

“You’re an adult. You can make your own decisions.”

“Or mistakes.”

“That too.”

I take a large bite of my burger. It might be a sexist establishment, but its product is delicious.

“This burger is pretty amazing.”

Liam smiles at me. “You got some . . .” He motions to his face. I reach for a napkin and try to clean myself off.

“Here,” Liam says, taking it from me. He reaches across the picnic table and wipes gently at my chin. I can feel myself blushing and look down at the table to avoid eye contact.

“That’s better.”

“Thank you.”

I pick up some fries and resolve to eat them more daintily.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” Liam says. “This Jessica Two, or whoever she is, is pretty lucky. You having money, this one too . . . you worked out the odds on that?”

“She’s pretty patient, right? Two years between jobs. And maybe she has a string of aliases that she uses in the same way, waiting for the perfect moment. Until she gets a Google Alert telling her that someone she can approach is flush. And from what we know, she’s done well, but it’s not like she’s hit some massive jackpot.”

“How much did she get from you?”

I finished off my burger. Equal parts beef and salt, and probably lots of sulfites. I banish the thought.

“Enough. And don’t give me a lecture. The money was in that account because I was going to invest it like a real grown-up person who doesn’t keep their money in cash and hide it in their mattress.”

“Did I say anything?”

“You didn’t have to. You think Jessie will come through with the photos?”

Liam stands, lifting his tray to take it to the trash. “I don’t think she’s going to do anything.”

“Let’s give her some time to think about it. At least until tomorrow.”

“All right. That gives us the afternoon, anyway.”

“To do what?”

“You’ll see.”

Something about the look in his eyes makes my blood run cold. “It’s not what I think it is, is it?”

He says nothing, so now I know for certain.

We’re going back to Schroon.

Schroon is the town I escaped from. Where my aunt, whose birth name was Caroline, but who went by Tanya then, because all adult Toddians were expected to adopt a T name, had taken me to buy a “pretty dress,” she said. “Something that will look nice in a photograph.”

There were so many confusing things about that sentence. Girls in the Land of Todd didn’t wear dresses, only uniforms—Girl Scouts when younger, and secondhand Park Service outfits when older. I didn’t even know if anyone had ever taken my photograph; Todd was against cameras because they were a way to spy on you and created “evidence” that could be misconstrued. The one exception was the Wall of Honor—a line of photographs of Todd with his “special recruits” on their eighteenth birthdays that hung on the wall in the Gathering Place. That wall fascinated us when we were small and was a place to be avoided when we were older.

The photographs were mostly of Todd with girls, but sometimes boys, often with a cake with many candles. I never thought much about them when I was younger. They were weird, for sure, but everything in the LOT was weird. We knew this even though most of us had never known anything different. But, odd as those photographs were, they never had anything to do with me because if I thought about it at all, I guess I always assumed that I’d never end up there. That if it was a place of honor, it belonged to Kiki.