Lies I Told(46)

We walked back toward the car. We’d been waiting about ten minutes when the blue and red lights from a police cruiser passed over the parking lot. It pulled behind the BMW, and a uniformed officer emerged from the driver’s side. She was small, her dark hair pulled back into a short ponytail.

“You the owner of the car that was vandalized?” she asked us.

Logan nodded.

The woman turned toward the squad car, and a tall man got out of the passenger side. He opened the back door.

“Let’s go,” he ordered.

I narrowed my eyes, trying to get a better look at the person in the back of the cruiser. He stepped out, head bowed, posture defiant.

The male officer tugged off the hood that concealed the suspect’s face in shadow.

“Parker?” I said it almost without thinking.

“You know this guy?” the woman asked me.

I nodded, glancing quickly at Logan before turning back to her. “He’s my brother.”

She grabbed hold of Parker’s arms, cuffed behind his back, and tugged him toward me. “What are you doing messing with your sister?” She shone a penlight in his eyes. “You drunk? High?”

“Should we test him?” her partner asked.

She shook her head. “Nah, he’s clean.” She looked at me, tipping her head at the BMW. “This your car?”

“It’s mine,” Logan said softly.

I searched his face, fear welling inside me. Not because I was worried about the con, worried that Parker had blown all my work with the mark. Not for any of the reasons that should have had me afraid.

I was scared because I didn’t want Logan to think less of me. Didn’t want my association with Parker to change the way Logan saw me.

The woman held out her hand. “License, insurance, and registration.”

Logan went around to the passenger side and opened the door. He dug around in the glove compartment before returning with some slips of paper. He handed them over to the woman.

“Run them,” she said, handing them to her partner. He went back to the squad car. “You guys have some kind of beef?” she asked, looking from Logan to Parker.

“Not that I was aware of,” Logan said.

Parker had yet to say anything.

We stood in awkward silence until the male officer returned with Logan’s documents. “He’s clean,” he said, handing them back to Logan.

The woman sighed. “You want to press charges?”

Logan didn’t even hesitate. “No. It’s fine.”

She glanced back at the car before turning to Logan. Her expression as she shook her head said it all: Any seventeen-year-old with a BMW can afford a new paint job.

She looked at Parker. “You got a free pass this time. Looks like you should be nicer to your sister’s boyfriend.”

She returned to the police cruiser with her partner, and they got in the car and pulled slowly out of the lot.

“Parker . . . ,” I started.

He turned around and started to walk away.

“That’s it?” I shouted at his back. “No apology? No explanation?”

But he just kept walking. I watched him go, waiting until he’d disappeared into the shadows to turn to Logan.

“Logan . . . I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

He shook his head and took a step toward me, pulling me into his arms. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. You’re not responsible for Parker.”

I laid my head against his chest, his words echoing through my mind. It wasn’t true. Our parents had taught us well. Taught us that the only way to make it unscathed out of a long con was to stick together no matter what. We were responsible for each other.

All of us.





Thirty-Five


I left the house early Sunday morning before anyone else was awake. I’d spent the night in a kind of half sleep, drifting in and out of consciousness, floating in that space between dreams and the endless loop of my thoughts. It was six thirty when I finally gave up, and I threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt before letting myself quietly out of the house.

I didn’t have a destination in mind. I just needed to move. I headed down Camino Jardin, turned onto another residential side street, and kept on going. The morning was damp, a light mist falling from an overcast sky. The smell of the sea was heavy in the air, the ebb and flow of the tide audible in the distance. Every now and then a flash of color caught my eyes from the trees. I thought about the parrots, making themselves a home in the only one they had. I wondered if they were happy here.

Parker hadn’t been home when Logan had dropped me off, although the door to his bedroom was closed when I left this morning. I knew I should tell our parents about his behavior. It was erratic, a danger to us all. But I wasn’t sure I could do it. Wasn’t sure I could put the job—or even my own security—before Parker.

And that’s what I’d be doing, because if my dad believed that Parker was jeopardizing the job, he would find a way to eliminate Parker from the equation, pay him to leave or hold something over his head to get him to step back.

And then what? After the Fairchild con, we’d move on. There would be no Logan. No Selena to cushion the blow of my loneliness. We needed each other, Parker and I. My isolation had never been more palpable. Normally, I would talk to Parker about my problems. Now he was the problem, and I had nowhere to turn.