You Can't Catch Me(77)

The sky’s lightening, turning the tent a rosy orange. I can hear JJ shuffling around outside.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Sorry.”

“She was texting you?”

“Well, I started it, out of frustration—telling her I was coming for her, that sort of thing—but then she answered a couple of times, warning me to stay away. It felt like, I don’t know, a game or something.”

Liam sighs. “Continue.”

“Anyway, I sent her a text—to Jessica Two, I mean—and it dinged on Jessie’s phone, so she admitted it then.”

“What? The whole thing?”

“Not the details. It wasn’t like those times in the movies where the bad guy spills the whole scheme. It was more like a lot of yelling, and us asking for our money back, and her refusing, and saying she’d spent it all, et cetera.”

“That et cetera’s doing a lot of work.”

“I’ll give you the blow-by-blow when we see each other.”

“Where is she now?”

“Dunno. She packed a bag and took off.”

Liam sounds tense. “Took off where?”

“JJ thinks maybe Salt Lake City.”

“When did this happen?”

“Last night. It was late, so we decided to wait to go to the police until this morning.”

“They should take it seriously now.”

“They didn’t before.”

Liam sighs again. A double-sigh conversation. This is not looking good for our romantic future. What with me being a killer and the lies growing between us.

“Do it anyway,” Liam says.

“Are you worried she’s going to come back?”

“I don’t know what she might do, and neither do you. You know her secret and the name she’s been using. You know where she lives. Going to the cops is as much protection for you as anything.”

“I see your point.”

“I mean it, Jess. She’s smart. She made it so she could live in plain sight this whole time, created this whole cover story where she was a victim too. She thinks ahead. She knew you were onto her.”

“And yet, she came along for the ride.”

“She probably couldn’t help herself.”

“That’s what she said. Also, she could monitor our progress. Plus, I think she tried to steal money from Five right in front of me at the airport yesterday.”

“That’s very reckless.”

“Dangerous, you mean.”

“Yes. She’s going to be very dangerous now. Please go to the police immediately.”

She isn’t going to hurt anyone anymore, but Liam can never know that.

“Okay, okay, we will.”

His voice softens. “And then come home.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, if I can. I promise.”

We say our goodbyes and I lie in the cocoon of the tent for a minute, wishing I could close my eyes and fall back to sleep. But my bladder is full, and my brain is whirring, and I can sense JJ waiting for me to emerge.

I unfurl myself from my sleeping bag and climb out of the tent. It’s a cold morning, and my breath clouds around me as I stuff my feet into my running shoes.

JJ’s sitting on the picnic table cradling a cup of coffee. She’s dressed in a puffy jacket and her wool cap from last night.

“How much of that did you hear?” I ask.

She makes a face. “Your boyfriend talks loud.”

“Everyone has a flaw. Besides, there’s no one camped close to us.” The nearest tent is two sites over.

“You think he’s right about going to the police today?”

“Yeah, we probably should.” I sit down next to her. The wood seat is damp. “Everything’s in place, right?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

We’re somber on the drive into town. We spent a bit of time vacillating over who we should tell—the Teton County Sheriff’s Department or the Jackson Police. Or I did, anyway. Stalling. While I was googling, I came across a news story about a woman, a girl, who’d been in the park as part of an outdoor initiative. She was from Ohio, like Jessie said she was at the airport. It was an eight-week program with twenty other kids. Cleaning up, mending fences, that sort of thing. On her last day there, she’d posted a picture of herself on Instagram in Jackson, under one of those signs they have in the town square made out of antlers, saying how much she’d learned and how much she was looking forward to going home. Only, she didn’t make the flight. Instead, on the last hike, she peeled off into the woods and disappeared.

There was a massive search. FBI, local police, the Park Service. Friends reminded one another that she’d had wilderness training, that she knew how to survive in the woods if she needed to. She’d be okay. Her Instagram post gathered hundreds of comments, and her parents were understandably frantic. The searchers found no signs of her. People began to despair. And then, three days later, they found her on a side road. Her hair had been cut and dyed a different color. She was wearing new clothes. She tried to run from the police, but they caught her. She was brought to the hospital for a psych evaluation, and someone wrote on her Instagram that she’d done something like this before when she was fourteen.