I Know Lucy (A Fugitive #1)(37)

It rang three times.

“Hey little bro!” Uncle Alex was always so happy to hear from me, I couldn’t help grinning. He was like a big kid sometimes and I loved him for it. He was actually closer in age to me than my dad, which is why he called me little bro.

“Hey, Uncle Al.”

“What’s up, man?”

“I, uh, was wondering if I could come hang out with you tomorrow, for the day.”

“Okay, sure. You know the answer’s always yes.”

“You’re not working on a big story or anything?”

“I’m always working on a big story.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

I chuckled, but it was dry and sounded hollow.

“Little bro, what’s going on?” His voice was serious, concern rippling the edges of his words.

I sighed. “There’s this girl.”

“Uh-oh.”

“She’s different from anyone I’ve ever met. She’s smart and strong and amazing.”

“Beautiful?”

My eyebrows rose. “Like, ya-huh.”

Uncle Alex laughed. “So, what’s the problem then?”

I grimaced, my lips pushing to the side. This was it. I was about to tell the bloodhound reporter of the San Francisco Chronicle something he wouldn’t be able to ignore. “She’s hiding something.”

I could almost feel Uncle Alex sitting up, his ears buzzing, his eyes lighting with a mystery. “What kind of something?”

“Well.” I cringed. “She’s super secretive about where she lives and where she’s come from and when I was at Luke’s place last night, I found a picture of her in his school yearbook.”

“So?”

“So she had a different name, but I swear it’s her.”

“A girl with two identities. What do you think she’s hiding from?”

“I don’t know and I really need to find out.”

“I take it you can’t just ask her.”

“That wouldn’t go down so well.”

“Okay.” Uncle Alex let out a breath. “Alright, so your mission is to figure out why the two identities so that you can prove she’s just a nice, sweet girl you’re falling for and not some psychopath?”

“Pretty much.”

There was a pause and then I heard my uncle blow out a short chuckle. “Sounds like fun to me. What do you already have?”

“Well, she’s here now with the name Danielle Harrison. She was at Lowell High last year as Riley Mitchell and Luke’s pretty sure she transferred from Washington High.”

“Okay, well let’s start with Lowell. Did Luke tell you who she hung out with there?”

“Yeah, she was dating a senior named Miles Filmore.”

“Find out if he has any siblings, maybe we can go visit his place tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “I’ll call Luke once school gets out.”

“Cool. Make sure you have a decent picture of her, we’ll flash it around and see if we get any bites.”

“Will do. Thanks, Uncle Al.”

“Anything for you, little bro. Hey before you go…”

I paused, the tension within me knotting even further.

“This girl, she uh, she seems important to you.”

“Yeah, she is.”

“You sure you want to unearth the truth? You might not like what you find.”

With a heavy sigh, I nodded. “I know, but I don’t want to go into this blind, either.”

“I get that. I don’t want you dating a phony, I just wanted to warn you that the truth can sometimes hurt. You take this road, it could destroy whatever you have going on with her.”

Closing my eyes, I banged my head against the wall, hating his words.

“Listen, why don’t you think on it. Give me a call later tonight with a definite yes or no, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah okay. Talk to you later.”

He hung up and I decided to text Luke straight away about Miles’ family. If I did say yes, then I wanted to be prepared. I then quickly scrolled through my phone’s camera roll to see if I had any shots of Dani. Not really, she wasn’t a huge fan of pictures, another thing to make my stomach clench. I did have the yearbook photo though.

Shoving the phone back in my pocket, I leaned my head against the wall, feeling the coil within me spring open. I was doing it. This was happening.

It anyone could unearth the truth, it was Uncle Alex. Letting him into this was a risk. If he found something juicy, he’d run with it. I mean I knew I could trust him, but it would take all my persuasive powers to keep it under wraps if he found out anything worthy of a story.

I just hoped it wasn’t.

I hoped whatever Dani was hiding was harmless.

But somehow I knew it wasn’t. Somehow I knew that whoever I spoke with tomorrow was going to have something more to tell me, something that could rip me apart.





Chapter 18





LUCY


October 2012





Lucy nibbled the end of her pen as she read the book, her brow furrowed in concentration. She’d been at this new school for almost two months now and was really enjoying it. She’d never thought she’d miss learning, but when they’d moved to San Francisco and Shorty had enrolled her in her first school, she found she loved being back in a classroom. She hadn’t been able to study with every gig. It all depended on the role she was playing, but for this heist, it was all about the studying. This job required her to learn and she was soaking it up like a sponge. When they’d first moved to San Fran, Lucy had freaked out that she’d come across as this stupid idiot having missed basically three years of school, but she’d caught up relatively easily.