The Leaving(79)

“You don’t know anything,” Ryan said.

That SUN’S OUT, GUNS OUT shirt was still hanging there in the shop window in town.

They weren’t that far from the house.

He could walk the rest of the way.

“Thanks for the support.” He got out of the car at the next light and headed for the gift shop.

Inside, he wound his way through overstuffed racks, lost in a hedge maze of T-shirts and baseball hats and gnomes on beaches and sea-shells with googly eyes.

This was what people wanted to help them remember? Flamingo snow globes? LIFE’S A BEACH coffee mugs?

The only souvenir he had from his whole life was inked into his skin. It had, over the last week, healed nicely.

And yet . . .

“Can I help you?” A girl with fake blond hair with a purple streak in it sat perched on a barstool by the register reading a magazine. She barely looked up.

“That shirt in the window,” he said. “‘Sun’s Out, Guns Out.’”

“What size?” She moved to get up.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to buy one. I just want to know . . . what does it mean?”

“It’s like a muscle-head thing,” she said.

“Muscle head?”

She bent her arm, made a fist. “Like when it’s warm enough out to show off your arm muscles.”

He couldn’t help but feel disappointed. “That’s got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.”

“Agreed,” she said, and he turned to go and started the long, hot walk home. He would head for the RV—regroup. He’d take a run at everything again.

Sure, they’d erased the shooting.

They’d erased eleven years.

But he still had his inked skin.

He still had his trained eye.

It had to be the thing that would help him prove he was innocent and that they’d gotten it all wrong.

Maybe Sashor and Chambers were onto something with regard to why. But the more important thing, the thing that had always mattered most to Lucas, was who?

Nothing had changed.





AVERY



In her father’s office, she sat at the computer and rooted around through his e-mail and figured out where the audio files were and started to listen to every call that had been recorded since the tip line went live. After a while she started to recognize the voice of the “nutjob” her father had been referring to.

“He didn’t do it. You have to dig deeper. It’s not over.”

“How do you know this? Who are you?” the tip-line guy asked.

“I’m a dead man.”

Click. Gone.

Later, the same voice again: “It was only supposed to be for a few hours, you see.”

And again later,

“I was only there once. I don’t know where it was, but it wasn’t that place.”

“Sir, can you be more specific?”

“I can’t. They’re probably watching me. They’re probably listening.”

And the last one:

“They were going to pin it all on me if I talked. They buried him in my backyard, for Chrissake.”

Maybe everyone was right.

The guy was just crazy.

Or he wasn’t.

She had to go back to the drawing board.

With Lucas in jail, she’d have the RV all to herself.





Scarlett


Drove like a lunatic, then pounded on the door until her fists hurt.

Lucas still hadn’t responded to the texts she’d sent from Anchor Beach. And that had been several hours ago.

She’d forwarded the sketch of Miranda.

Wrote, This is the girl Sarah says was with us.

Then, On my way to you from Anchor Beach.

“Is Lucas here?” she asked when Ryan answered.

“No,” Ryan said, sounding annoyed. “We had a fight after I bailed him out of jail.”

“Is Miranda here?”

“She was.” A look of confusion. “But she ran home to get some stuff she needed. Why?”

“Sarah said she remembered another girl being with us. She sent me a picture she drew of her.” She pulled the picture up on her phone and held it out.

Ryan shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Have they ever met? Miranda and Sarah?”

“I don’t think so. But if Miranda’s . . . that would mean . . .” Ryan sat down, dropped his head. “That she targeted me?”

It was the conclusion Scarlett had come to on her drive, as well. “How did you meet her?”

“She came into the hotel where I work one night with some friends.”

“She could have known who you were before she turned up.” Scarlett’s thoughts were in sharp focus. “It means they knew they were going to let us go . . . because when was that?”

“A few months ago.”

“They wanted someone here in place to watch him . . . or us.”

What if there were more like her?

What if someone closer to her was also watching her?

What if they all had someone watching?

How long had her mother known Steve again?

How long had Adam’s family had that housekeeper?