How to Disappear(79)

“?‘I’m such an idiot.

“?‘Jack’s whole thing was, he didn’t want me to go into my house. After I convinced him it was Steve who was after me. But I made him take the gun. To protect me from Steve. Turns out he was lucky to have that gun because Alex Yeager would have killed us, right? That was a really big knife.’?”

I look Mr. Ferro dead in the eyes. “That isn’t how it happened.”

“It is now. You tried to give her, and I quote, ‘a bunch of money.’ And you offered to buy her, wait, this gets good, ‘a rubber plantation’ in Argentina.”

I start to speak but Mr. Ferro puts a finger to his lips. “That’s what she says happened. No one believes her. But if she keeps saying it, they can’t prosecute you.”

I say, “But the guy in the parking lot—”

“What guy in what parking park? There’s no police report. She says she stabbed a would-be rapist, but her psychologist thinks it’s the pressure of captivity speaking.”

“They think she was my captive?”

Mr. Ferro massages the bridge of his nose and scans the transcript. “She says not. The party line is you’re a misguided saint who had her stashed away to save her, and she’s a spitfire who thought she was in mortal danger.”

“She was in mortal danger.”

“Not,” Mr. Ferro says, “from you.”

I shrug.

“Look, Jackson—”

“Jack.”

“I know you’re not as stupid as she’s making you out to be, and I know it wasn’t this clear-cut. But this girl is your fairy godmother. Don’t mess this up.” Ferro shakes his head. “And Jack, no guns. Your name is Manx. You can’t go near a gun.”

This is the one thing he doesn’t have to worry about, and not because of what my name is.





87


Nicolette


I beg Steve to let me call up Jack, but it’s a no.

Steve says, “These people aren’t joking. That one with the squinty eyes who asked you why you told your boyfriend to shoot me, he has handcuffs and keys to the jailhouse. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you crossing your fingers?”

“No! You know I would never, ever, ever do something like that to you. You know that, right?”

Steve puts the arm I didn’t wreck around me. “He’s not a great shot. But I know the difference between an accident and a target. I was the accident.”

“And there’s no way—?”

“Ask fifty times, it’s still no. Ask a hundred times, no. Cry and breathe into a grocery bag, no. And forget about the French doors. Welded shut for all the good they’re going to do you.”

“Who’s waving the keys to the jailhouse now?”

“You’re not throwing your life away on a Manx boy. One of them blackmails the other to kill my little girl? They’re scum. I’m sending you back to the counselor. Don’t say no, it’s yes. Say yes.”

I say yes.

I want my life back. This is how to get it.





88


Jack


It’s over.

Don says everything he has to say to save his ass, as expected. For the purpose of Don’s hearing, the Feds—who showed up hoping Don would reveal a vast interstate criminal conspiracy—love me. When it’s all over, the police, in the form of Agent Birdwell, keep coming at me, looking for contradictions I don’t provide. When I come out of Interrogation Room A, I’ve been in there for five hours straight.

My mother’s in the hall thanking Mr. Ferro when Nicolette comes out of Interrogation Room D with her lawyer, who looks like she eats alligators for breakfast. Nicolette looks like she just crawled out of an avalanche, white and traumatized. Esteban Mendes is standing half an inch from her, holding a little pink case with her dog, Gertie, in it.

I want to wrap my arms around Nicolette. I want to take her hand and run out the emergency exit and into the street.

“Nick, are you all right? Can we talk for a minute?”

Mendes says the most definitive no I’ve ever heard.

Ferro tries to steer me to the opposite side of the hall.

Birdwell, just behind us, close enough to grab me in case someone tells him in his earpiece that he gets to arrest me, says, “I would advise against that.”

Mr. Ferro loves getting under this guy’s skin. “You dropped all the charges. You can’t stop them from talking.”

Mendes extends his arm in front of Nicolette, as if they’re in a car that’s about to make a sudden stop, and he won’t let her lurch forward when he hits the brakes. But there’s something about not being allowed to do pretty much anything that galls her. She says, “Steve, don’t. Let me. Just this once. Please.”

He says, “You want to cross me on this?”

“Fifteen minutes. Please.”

Mendes says, “Fifteen minutes is right.”

Her lawyer reaches back and opens the door of the room they just came out of. It’s a lot nicer than the room I just came out of, upholstered chairs, wooden table.

Ferro says, “The recorder still switched on in here? No, thanks,” and pulls open the door to an adjoining break room with a coffee maker and a microwave.