The Girls I've Been(19)

Where is it? With Red Cap?

“I’ve gotta hand it to you, kid, you’ve got guts. No fucking sense. But guts.”

“Just lending a hand.”

“Mighty big of you, considering I’m gonna shoot you and your friends.”

It’s like a sucker punch, hearing him say that so casually. To confirm my worst fears. What I knew deep down the second I saw they weren’t wearing masks.

“I’d like to avoid that, if at all possible,” I say, and damn, does it come out steady.

He lets out another huff. I’ve snagged his interest. My gaze is unwavering. If you blink too much, they get nervous. If I show fear, he’ll feed off it. He likes it. But he’s interested in what doesn’t fear him, because he’s interested in making it fear him.

“Who are you?” he asks, and I know he’s not asking for my name. This question is something more.

This question is Why did you risk yourself and Why aren’t you crying and Why aren’t you shaking and all the questions that really boil down to What the fuck is your damage, Nora? And like, dude, you have no idea. You are not even the worst thing that has happened to me and it’s the only knowledge that’s keeping me upright.

I’ve survived worse. I’m not naive enough to think just because of that, I’ll survive this. But I can damn well try.

I glance over at the coffee table that still has all our purses and phones on it.

“I need my cell phone to answer that.”

He looks at me through narrowed eyes for a moment, then goes over to the table where our stuff is piled.

“It’s the one with the blue case.”

He grabs it and brings it back over.

I hold out my finger, and he presses the screen up to it to unlock the phone. I make no effort to reach for it, so he doesn’t think it’s a power grab or a trick, even though it’s absolutely a power grab.

“There’s a file, on the second menu page. Labeled Miscellaneous. Password is TR, dollar sign, 65.”

Breathing in and out, I’m praying that my heart isn’t pumping the blood into my face too fast. If I go red, he’ll notice.

I can see the exact moment the gallery loads. Because his brows snap together, and then his eyes snap up and then down again. Confirming that the blond girl in the pictures is the same as the dark-haired, older one in front of him.

“Yes, it’s me,” I say.

“And that’s . . .”

“Yes, that’s him,” I confirm. And then I wait for the question that comes next. The one Gray Cap has to ask, because everyone knows that man’s face, and no one knows mine. Lee made damn well sure I was far away, looking like another girl, before the tabloids and reporters even got wind of the FBI’s arrest and the whispers of a girl who may or may not exist started.

“Why do you have a gallery of pictures with you and Raymond Keane?”

I take a breath. Not a deep one, not an obvious one, but just a beat. In my mind, I picture a mirror. Ashley. My name is Ashley.

“Because I’m Ashley Keane. He’s my stepfather.”





— 21 —


    The Butcher




What can I say about Raymond Keane?

The tabloids that latched on to the story called him the Butcher of the Bayou. You’d think that’d tell you everything you need to know, but it’s just the start.

He was untouchable. A businessman, a bank, a dealer—not just drugs, but secrets. He donated to the right charities, greased the right politicians’ palms, knew the dirt on the right people, and climbed from the swamp he came from all the way up to a McMansion in the Keys.

When Mom met Raymond, I was ten. By then, she was feeling her age even though she didn’t look it. But still, we’d had a rough time that year—she’d ditched the con on the car dealership owner—and we were both running ragged trying to get enough money to start over. I felt guilty all the time, because she’d left the last con halfway through because of me. It’d been the most motherly thing she’d ever done, and the glow of that made me weak instead of wary.

It should have made me wary. I knew better by then, but . . .

I needed a mom. But two years living with Raymond Keane drove that impulse straight out of me.

It wasn’t even a con. Maybe I could’ve handled it if she was conning him. Maybe my well-being would’ve mattered more, because it had once, before.

But no, Raymond was never a mark.

Raymond was love. True blue, toe-curling, I never thought I’d find him, baby love.

I didn’t have a chance. I was just the daughter. She’d already let go of one daughter with barely a thought.

They were married within six months.

Back then, it felt like it went bad in one night. But now I can see the signs of what was to come.

The first time he hurt me, it was my birthday. It came out of nowhere. He’d been building up to it for months. How can those two opposite things be true at once? I still don’t know. I just know that in the during—in the enduring—it was like I couldn’t get air, couldn’t even breathe deep, let alone zoom out enough to see it was his hands that had been strangling me the whole time.

I guess I hadn’t shown enough appreciation for the present he’d given me. He liked to make a show of things. Loved the idea of being the strong father figure. The strict father figure. Loved the idea of a picture-perfect, ready-made family. The beautiful wife, the pretty blond stepdaughter, both wrapped up in bows. But if you didn’t react exactly how he’d pictured it in his head, those bows went bloody.