The Girls I've Been(62)

It’s all wrong. It’s been wrong since Katie, but I thought it’d get better once I proved that I could do better. And now I have no way to prove that, because I have no one to con.

I get a brush to stroke through her hair, trying to lose myself in the rhythm of it as she dabs perfume on her pulse points.

“I think . . .” She looks down, staring at her hands. She strokes her ring finger, starting at the top of her French tip and ending where a ring would lie. “I think this could be good for us.”

“This?”

“Raymond.”

“How?” It comes out of me in a disbelieving huff.

“He wants to take care of us.”

“You taught me to take care of myself.”

“And look where that got you,” she snaps.

My hands drop from her head, my fingers curling around the brush handle.

“You need a father,” she says. “Clearly.”

I don’t know want to think about what she means. So much lately, I’m half guessing, half hoping there’s another meaning than the obvious—that she’s mad at me for Katie. That she thinks it’s my fault.

It makes me feel like something hot and heavy’s pressing into my head, my neck buckling under the weight of it.

“And just think,” she continues. “You’ve spent all this time playing at being an amazing daughter. So being one for real will be a piece of cake.”

I stare, unable to wrap my head around what she’s saying. “I’m already a daughter,” I remind her. “I’m your daughter.”

“Oh, baby, you know what I mean.” She laughs, getting up, her focus slipping back toward her reflection in the mirror. “Be a good girl,” she says, air-kissing my cheek as she whisks past me. “Don’t wait up.”

I don’t wait up. I also don’t wait in the room for her.

I walk down to the nearest store and I use the gift cards I’ve been saving up to buy three prepaid cell phones, a screwdriver, and duct tape.

When I get back to the room, I don’t call the number that I’ve had memorized for years. I stash one of the phones in the air vent and another in the mess that is my tennis bag, and the third I leave sealed in its plastic and tape to the top of the toilet tank.

Just in case, I tell myself.

Just in case.





— 47 —


12:07 p.m. (175 minutes captive)

1 lighter, 3 bottles 1 bottle of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys, 1 hunting knife, 1 chemical bomb, giant fire starter, the contents of Iris’s purse Plan #1: Scrapped

Plan #2: On hold

Plan #3: Stab

Plan #4: Get gun. Get Iris and Wes. Get out.

Plan #5: Iris’s plan: Boom!



“Don’t touch it,” Iris warns as I stare at the bottle—the bomb—she’s made.

My eyes widen. “Of course I’m not gonna touch it!” I say as quietly as I can. My eyes skitter back to the door. “How do you even know how to do this? Don’t say the internet!”

“And make my search engine history all interesting to the NSA or whatever?” she scoffs. “I want to investigate arson, not be investigated for it. Give me my purse.”

I hand it to her and she roots around, pulling out her makeup bag and digging inside that, coming up with a plastic pin with two little hearts. It’s old, like almost everything she owns. From the time people actually wore brooches. The words Kiss Timer are written on the hearts, an hourglass sand timer set between them. She flips the hourglass, making glittery sand trickle through it. “We need at least ten minutes for the chemicals to strip the wax off the foil,” she says. “I need you to pull out all the paper towels from the dispenser and start twisting them together for a fuse.”

“So how does this work?” I pry open the paper towel holder and pull the stack of them out as she keeps an eye on the timer.

“Chemical reaction. The Drano reacts with the aluminum and builds pressure. When you disrupt the bottle . . .” She flicks her fingers not holding the brooch in a sort of pow! movement.

“And the bobby pins?”

“Shrapnel,” she says grimly. “Just in case it explodes before it hits him. There’s a very short window before detonation. You can blast your fingers off.”

She’s staring at me with a bomb and her brilliance between us, and I’m twisting a paper towel fuse with the kind of trust I didn’t think I could give another person.

“And the trash can?”

She turns the hourglass. Nine minutes to go.

“The trash can’s a fire starter. We need to get out of here,” she says. “We need to force them out of this building. The smoke will be terrible with how we’ve packed it.”

My fingers tighten on the paper towels I’m twisting. “Fire forces everyone out,” I say, falling into her line of thinking so easily, like it’s mine.

Her mouth twitches . . . an almost-smile. “Basic human instinct is to drop everything when you’re on fire.”

“We use the smoke as a distraction when he opens the door and nail the one in red with the Drano bomb.”

She nods. “If the one in gray is still unconscious, we can get everyone out. But if he’s awake, the smoke will make it harder to shoot.”