How to Disappear(84)
Not.
Steve keeps his guns locked up, not rattling around with bread knives.
Guns versus knives? Guns take it.
Steve’s arm was collateral damage. I’m truly sorry. That was not supposed to happen.
Jack was supposed to shoot just Alex in defense of me.
Steve was right there. He saw me pitch a fit over a dull knife. He knows his arm getting shot was my fault.
But how could he blame me?
Alex Yeager was going to kill me. And if I turned him in, his dad was going to kill me. Anyone. Anywhere. Anytime. Just like Jack said.
But if Alex turned a knife on a five-foot-two-inch high school cheerleader in her own house, how could anybody call out me or Jack or Steve for stopping him?
If all else failed, I would have done it myself.
Terrified teen girl clutches gun, fires wildly, fatally wounds assailant. Followed by a lot of prayer that nobody who ever saw me shoot the bull’s-eye right out of a target would ask too many questions.
But Alex took the knife.
I screamed.
Jack shot.
Alex went down.
What happened afterward was improv. But all those first responders running around? It was kind of ideal. A great big free-for-all. Terrible tragedy. Look around. Arrest everybody in sight. Interrogate us right and left. Call it self-defense and file it. They already knew Alex Yeager was a very bad guy.
I wanted my life back.
The outcome couldn’t have been better. Except for messing up Jack.
Jack feels guilty as hell. Jack thinks that civilization rises and falls on whether he personally follows the rules. He’s going to feel bad about what he thinks he did forever. He’s going to go through life believing he killed someone when it could have been avoided. The exact opposite of what he wanted. He takes this as proof that any minute he could morph into his dick dad.
He keeps telling me he’s going to reform. He’s going to be a stand-up guy I can count on.
I tell him he has nothing to reform from. He’s the most stand-up guy I’ve ever met. Plus, I already count on him.
He doesn’t buy it.
Jack judges himself so hard.
As for me not having self-control: wrong. I’ll never tell him what actually happened. Him or anyone else.
What good would it do? Alex would still be dead, and Jack would still have gunshot residue all over him. He’d just hate himself that much more.
Plus, he’d leave me.
When I told him how Connie Marino ended up dead by Green Lake (what I did, what I shouldn’t have done, what I knew I shouldn’t have done but did anyway), he said the right words. Not your fault. There, there. So not your fault.
But his eyes.
Different story.
The way he saw me. The way there was an anyway in the middle of his liking me. He liked me anyway.
This time he wouldn’t like me.
I swear to God, if I could think of some way I could tell him and not crush him and not lose him, I’d do it. This guy so deserves not to suffer.
But it beats being dead.
I saved him.
I saved his life. I got rid of the asshat who tried to make him kill me and threatened his mother and would have killed him, too.
But he’d still blame me. And he’d blame himself worse. If he knew.
He’ll never know.
I saved us.
Ask me if I’m sorry.
Or not.
You know the answer.
Acknowledgments
First, thanks to my agent, Brenda Bowen, without whom this book (not to mention my life as a novelist) would not exist.
The team at Simon Pulse has been stellar. Thanks to editors Patrick Price, who acquired How to Disappear; Sara Sargent, who inherited it, but embraced, nurtured, and shaped it as her own; and Sarah McCabe, who has run with it, energetically and brilliantly, toward release. Thanks also to Mara Anastas, Jodie Hockensmith, Carolyn Swerdloff, Tara Grieco, Mary Marotta, Lucille Rettino, Kayley Hoffman, Sara Berko, Michael Rosamilia, Michelle Leo and her team, my sales rep Kelly Stidham and the entire S&S sales force, and jacket artist Regina Flath.
As for the team at JKS—Marissa DeCuir, Chelsea Apple, Caroline Davidson, Jenna Smith, and Angelle Barbazon—magic!!!
To my primary beta reader, Rick, who goes through every word of every draft; to Laura, whose close reading and notes have been spectacular; and to Michael, who gets story structure so well it’s scary, more thanks than can fit in this space.
I am so fortunate to have Alexis O’Neill, Carolyn Arnold, Gretchen Woelfle, and Nina Kidd as my critique group, not only because of their expertise and their constant encouragement, but because it’s a pleasure to know them.
I came close to fan-girling when Sarah Aronson offered to trade manuscripts. Her strong, fresh perspective moved me forward when I was stuck. And having writers whose work I so admire—Carrie Mesrobian, Gretchen McNeil, and Martina Boone—take time from their own work and deadlines to blurb this book put me on the giddy side of grateful.
As for the generous and incisive April Henry, who started off as a blurber and ended up as a forensic expert/plot wrangler/editor/hand holder/and general thriller writer’s best friend and resource, thank you!
The experts who’ve helped me with this book have been extraordinary in the depth of their knowledge and their ability to convey it to a novice in their fields. Special thanks to Robin Burcell in equal measures for her forensic expertise and creativity, and to Jason Scott, whose insights into technology and privacy (or lack thereof) on electronic devices was indispensible. Any technical errors in this book are entirely my fault, not theirs.