Pretty Sly (9 page)

All of a sudden I felt aware of the two of us being together as we crossed the parking lot, that people passing by might think we were a couple. Were we? He was here, even when it meant risking his own probation.

He was walking fast and aggressively, as he always did, his jaw set. I glimpsed his biceps poking out of his T-shirt.

Hello, biceps.

What was he thinking about? Was he worried about his parents? Was he afraid? There were so many things I didn’t know about him. Things I wanted to know.

After he ordered, he turned to me. “What are you having? Only the finest here for the lady.”

I scanned the menu. “Turkey and cheese.”

“Excellent choice. One of my favorites.”

The cashier asked, “Is this separate or together?”

“Together,” he said, and a little shiver danced across my shoulder blades.

We sat down at a Formica booth to eat our subs.

“Thanks for dinner,” I said. “You didn’t have to—”

“Pay? Willa, my parents have more money than God, okay? I can cover a freaking sandwich.”

I shrugged, embarrassed. That he was so direct about stuff like that, when so many Paradise Valley people
acted like there was nothing special about having millions, set Aidan apart. But his having money was also something that would always be different between him and me.

“What’s the plan?” he asked, popping a pickle slice in his mouth.

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been wondering.” I’d been so focused on getting to Santa Barbara, I hadn’t thought through the rest of the details.

Like the fact that we were really breaking the law now, as in brand-new crimes. And the fact that my mom said not to come after her.

I was so getting grounded. Probably before
and
after getting arrested. But what choice did I have?

“I’ve got it. Check this: We go in, bum-rush security. You steal a maid’s uniform. We’ll restrain the guards and tie them up, but it’ll just be temporary. . . . Then we go up the service elevator. I’ll hide in your laundry cart.”

I laughed. “I don’t think all of that will be necessary.”

“No?”

“We can probably just go into the lobby and ask for her at the front desk.”

“That doesn’t sound fun at all. I thought you were supposed to be some kind of bandit. Sheesh.” He balled up his paper bag and stuffed it into his soda cup.

“She’s probably sitting in there watching pay-perview,” I said. Though I was saying this more to myself than to Aidan. And in my heart of hearts, I sort of doubted it.

She’d said she was in serious trouble.
A fresh shot of panic thrust me upright. Where was my mom and who was she with? Time was ticking by as we sat here.

“We should really get going,” I said, collecting all of our trash together and grabbing my bag.

“As you wish.” He bowed and tipped an invisible chauffeur’s cap.

We got back in the car and continued on. After a while we passed a sign for Coachella.

“Have you ever been to the music fest?” he asked.

“No, but I’ve always wanted to,” I said. “Have you?”

He nodded. “It’s fun. Maybe we can go this year.” He didn’t look over.

“Yeah,” I said, a tingling sensation spreading over me like static on a wire.
He’s asking me out. Like, on a real date.
“That would be cool.”

Just then, the car flooded with blue and red lights, flashing and bouncing off the windshield. In the rearview mirror it was plain as day: a cop car speeding toward us.

“Oh my God,” I said. “They found us. How fast are you going?”

“I’m only doing sixty,” he said, glancing down at the speedometer.

“It’s a fifty-five zone,” I said. “Slow down!”

Aidan braked gently.

Panic welled in my chest as I remembered the night I was taken to juvie. The cop advanced, shifting into the left lane, so that he was almost beside us. “Is he pulling
us over? What should we do?”

“I don’t know,” Aidan said, biting his lip. He glanced to his left and back again. “I don’t know if I could outrun him, not with this piece of junk.”

The black-and-white car held steady with us, going window-to-window for a bit. I squeezed my eyes shut, preparing for Aidan to hit the gas or for the cop to push us to the shoulder. Something.

But nothing happened. When I opened them again, the cop accelerated and zoomed forward, the lights pulsing out into the horizon.

We both exhaled at the same time.

“Holy crap,” Aidan said, wiping sweat from his hairline. “I thought we were toast.”

I looked down and noticed that I’d been gripping the door handle so tightly the blood had drained from my hand.

Aidan hit the gas and the car sped up again as we covered more ground that stood between us and whatever lay ahead.

I pumped my fingers, trying to regain sensation in them. This whole situation was putting me on edge. My mom, the cops, the stolen car. Of course, being stuffed into a small metal box with Aidan Murphy was nerve-racking in its own way.

“This is it, I think,” Aidan said, ducking his head to see through the windshield. “That says Hadley, right?”

We’d been driving along the coast for some time, though in the dark we could barely see the ocean. Then Aidan turned off the highway onto a street with suburban homes. It was almost midnight as we reached the center of downtown Santa Barbara, and the Hadley Hotel was indeed straight ahead.

With its bell towers and observatory, it looked like it had once been an old convent. Now it was the type of place that cost four hundred dollars a night to lounge around in a fluffy robe and order up shrimp cocktail, or whatever it was that people did in hotels. I personally never had the pleasure of staying in one. My mom, ever the free spirit, had always acted like she preferred cabins and campsites. Maybe that’s why she chose the Hadley, because it would be the last place anyone would expect to find her. Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I might be the only person looking for her. We had no other family, and we’d moved so much she never really had any friends that I knew of.

I watched as Aidan parked the car. My legs were thrumming against the faux-leather seats, and it was all I could do to not jump out of the still-moving vehicle. We were finally here, and I couldn’t wait a minute longer.

I pictured my mom sweeping down a grand staircase to greet us in the lobby. A long, tearful embrace. Maybe even a chamber orchestra. Who knew? I just needed to get in there.

I stripped off my seat belt and grabbed my overnight bag.

“Let’s do this,” Aidan said.

I felt like we were robbing a bank—that was how deeply my pulse was thumping. But it was a different kind of excitement now. A different kind of anticipation.

We marched through the sliding glass doors, past a gigantic floor-to-ceiling floral arrangement with green tentacles, and toward the check-in desk. The young Asian woman sitting behind it looked up as we approached. “Hello. May I help you?” she asked with a hospitalitytrained smile.

“Yes,” I said, breathlessly pushing out the words. “I’m looking for a guest named Joanne Fox. I believe she’s registered here.”

“Hold on,” she said. Her fingers clicked on the keyboard as she consulted her computer. Her eyes dropped down along the lines of the screen. “Hmm, Joanne Fox, you said?”

“Yes,” I said, my heart rising expectantly.

She cocked her head politely. “I don’t see anyone here. Is it possible she checked in under a different name?”

Of course it was. Argh. Why hadn’t I thought of that? If she was in trouble and hiding from someone, she almost certainly wasn’t going to use her real name. I’d heard that celebrities always used pseudonyms, sometimes funny ones, to elude the paparazzi when they checked in to hotels.

Think, Willa.

“Maybe try Julie Christie?” That was my mom’s favorite actress. She loved old movies, and she’d even
imitated her haircut once. It was worth a shot.

The woman smiled. “I think I’d know if someone here was checked in under that name.”

“Can you just look, please?” I asked, feeling increasingly desperate.

“Okay,” she said, and scrolled down her screen again. “Nope. Nobody here under Julie Christie.”

“She’s a blond woman, about five foot six. Looks kind of like me?”

“I’m sorry, but we can’t give out room information without a name. For security reasons—I’m sure you understand. Besides, I just started my shift, so I wouldn’t have seen her.”

I looked at Aidan, at a loss. He shrugged back at me and then pointed a thumb toward a plush-looking sofa across the lobby.

“Do you mind if we sit here for a bit?” I asked the woman.

“Be my guest,” she said, then let out a tinkling laugh. “No pun intended.”

Hotel humor. Awesome.

Aidan and I made our way to the seating area. I sank down onto its soft cushions, dropping my bag on the floor, and felt the weight of my own misgivings.

What had I been thinking? That I could just waltz in here and summon my mom to the front desk and drive away? In my fantasies, yes. That had been exactly what I was thinking.

“No other names she would use, huh?” he asked.

“None that I can think of,” I said. “Besides, I didn’t want her to start getting suspicious.”

He leaned back and folded his arms behind his head. “No offense, but I think she might be a tad suspicious already, given that two teenagers have shown up to her hotel at an ungodly hour on a school night. What now?”

I ran my hand over the elegant embroidery on the throw pillows. The lobby was cool and comfortable, and pleasant flute music played overhead. It did nothing to soothe me. I was all raw edges.

The way I saw it, we only had two choices, and they involved staying or leaving. I still felt reasonably certain that my mom was here, and after driving all this way, I wasn’t just going to turn around and head back to Paradise Valley.

“Let’s stay. I mean, the email came from this hotel. So she must’ve been here, right?”

“Well, not necessarily,” Aidan said slowly. “I was kind of thinking this over on the way up and it’s possible she’s not.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“Well, the email address I found could be a proxy— you know, a fake address people use to hide their real IP. If you wanted to disappear, you could set it up that way.”

“No.” I shook my head. “She’s not that technical.” What I didn’t say was that I really didn’t believe she
wanted to disappear. I couldn’t let myself believe that.

“Either way. She could be here but she might not be,” he said, sounding as conclusive as a Magic 8 Ball.

“Why didn’t you mention that possibility before?” I asked, feeling frustrated. “I mean, that might have been helpful to know before we drove all the way here.”

“You seemed so excited about finding her. I didn’t want to disappoint you. Besides, like I said, it’s pretty much a fifty-fifty.”

Fifty-fifty. The worst ratio ever invented.

“Well, I’m not leaving,” I said. “If she
is
staying here, she’s got to come through the lobby at some point.”

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll wait.” Then he proceeded to close his eyes and drop his head back against one of the throw pillows.

“That’s cool,” I said, realizing that we’d been up all night. I yawned involuntarily. “I’ll keep watch. We can take turns napping.”

But it’s not like he needed my blessing. He was already snoring lightly.

While Aidan slept, I waited. Or tried to. After twenty minutes passed and hardly anyone had come in or out of the hotel, I was impatient.

I decided to do a little more footwork. The front doors slid open and I stepped out into the cool night air.

A valet in a red uniform stood by the entrance. “Hello, can I help you?”

Up close, I could see he was probably middle-aged— short and clean-shaven, with graying hair.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m looking for my mom. She kind of looks like me. I’m wondering if you’ve seen anyone like that over the last couple of days.”

“Hmm.” He frowned. “I see a lot of people coming and going all day.”

“She has shorter hair and she’s a little taller?” I prompted him.

He paused to consider this. “Actually, there was one woman like that, now that I think of it. Traveling alone. I remember parking her car—I think it was a Subaru.”

I inhaled sharply. “A hatchback? Green?”

“Yes, I think that’s it.”

“When did you see her last?”

“I couldn’t say. Maybe a day or two ago? It’s kind of a blur, to be honest.”

“Is she still here, do you think?”

“She could be.” He shrugged. “Look, hon, I don’t have a photographic memory or anything. That’s all I got.”

It was enough for me. So she
was
here. Or had been. At some point.

I thanked him and headed back inside. I could go back to waiting now, or at least waiting until Aidan woke up. He was still curled up in a sprawled version of fetal on the couch. Behind him, in the back of the lobby, I noticed a bar set up with tea and cookies and pastries. I was starving. Complimentary snacks? Yes, please.

I eyed the woman at the front desk. She appeared to be busy checking someone out of the hotel, so I proceeded to the bar and started to help myself.

A TV overhead played CNN news. In the background, it droned reports about tornadoes in the Midwest and a political scandal involving a sexting senator. Then I heard the words
teenager
and
suspect.
My head snapped up.

On the screen a brunette woman was standing in front of the long-term parking lot in Phoenix.

The lot where we’d stolen the car.

I dropped my croissant, and it tumbled to the carpeted floor, flakes of pastry crumbling to bread dust.

“A 1992 Volvo was reported missing yesterday, and now authorities are tying the crime to Aidan Murphy, son of Hanson Murphy, CEO of MTech, the technology firm headquartered here in the Phoenix area.”

The camera flashed to a balding man in a striped polo. “I seen him myself. I’d just gotten back from vacation and I came to get my car and I seen him sitting in the driver’s seat. He looked straight at me and kept driving. The little bugger almost hit me.”