Unraveling (20 page)
“Jared!” I say again, moving into the doorway of the kitchen. I step on a piece of glass and it cracks under my shoe. Jared’s eyes flick to me before they move back to our mother, who has a few small cuts on her face and arms, obviously from pieces of the broken dishes and glass that have ricocheted off the floor.
Struz pushes past me into the kitchen, yelling at my mother to “stop” and “calm down.” Instead she turns on him, throwing the dishes at him.
“Jared, come with me now!” I say, snapping my fingers at him.
This time he rushes toward me and throws his arms around me. I stumble under his weight. We’re about the same height now, and he outweighs me by at least fifteen pounds.
For a moment, I just hug him back. He’s crying, and I stagger to move us both away from the kitchen and close to Dad’s study. “Is it true?” Jared keeps asking.
When we’re almost to the study, I push Jared off me, grab him by the shoulders, and give him a quick shake. “Jared!”
His eyes focus on me.
“This is really important,” I say. “I need you to do exactly what I say. Exactly.”
He nods.
“I need you to run up to my room and get my swimming backpack, the big one, and I need you to bring it to me, here in Dad’s office, and then I need you to go upstairs to your room and stay there until Struz calms Mom down.”
“But—”
“You cannot breathe a word of this to Struz. There’s something I have to do, but I need you to be strong for me. Can you do that?”
He nods.
“Okay,” I say, and turn to the study as Jared runs toward the stairs. I hate doing this to him, I hate that I’m about to make him lock himself in his room and wait for me to get back, make him deal with this alone.
But I have to.
If I’d died that day at Torrey, my dad would have moved heaven and earth in order to know everything about what happened.
He was doing that anyway, even though he thought I walked away without a scratch.
Only I don’t have the same resources. Once the FBI comes in and cleans out everything that had to do with my father’s work, I won’t have any of the information I need. Which means I need to move now, and take care of Jared later.
In my father’s study, I move immediately to his desk. Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I pick up the files that are open, obviously the last ones he looked at last night. I close them and begin piling them on the desk. Then I grab all the ones in the immediate vicinity, ones that look like he might have looked at them in the last few days.
And Jared is back with the exact bag I was thinking of. “Hold it steady,” I say as I dump the files into the bag.
I unplug the laptop and dump it and the power cord in the bag as well, and Jared says, “Why are you taking Dad’s case files?”
“Because this is what killed him,” I say before I can stop to think how to soften it. But when I look at Jared, he just nods. He’s keeping it together. My chest expands with pride and love. He’s my brother and we’re cut from the same cloth—there’s something of our dad in both of us.
“Go to your room and stay there,” I say to Jared, moving around him so we can get out of the study before Struz realizes what we’re doing. On a whim, I grab the case file of the girl who disappeared all those years ago, the case he never solved, and stick it in the bag. It was important to him, and I’m just not ready for the Bureau to swoop in and take it away. “I promise I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Where are you going?” Jared asks.
“It’s better that you don’t know,” I say, pushing him out of the study and toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”
Struz and my mother are still arguing in the kitchen. I hear him call out to me, and for a moment I feel a twinge of guilt that I’m doing this to him, leaving him to sort her out, but I push the guilt away and run up the stairs right behind Jared.
“Stay in your room,” I say again. “I promise I’ll be back tonight.”
Jared nods and does what I say, and I’m glad he’s the kind of brother who respects his sister. Then I go to my dad’s room. Unlike his study, it’s neat and orderly, a throwback to his army days. I’m glad, because this makes it easier.
The files on his nightstand are important—they must be, since he would have looked at them right before getting into bed—so I grab them and throw them into the bag.
In the walk-in closet, I push his suits around until I find the safe. The key code is eight digits, my birthday. I key it in—03241995—and pull the lever.
Inside is a .40-caliber Glock 22. It’s the same issue as the one he got his fourth week at Quantico. My dad carried a Sig Sauer P226 and a Glock 27 for backup, but this gun is the one he taught me how to handle and shoot for my tenth birthday. We used to go to the shooting range once every couple of weeks when I was younger.
The gun is heavy in my hands, like I’ve suddenly recognized the significance of it, the fact that this could be the same model that killed my dad—if he was even shot.
I don’t even know how he died. Whether he saw it coming or if he was caught by surprise. Whether he died instantly or if he had time to think of what he was leaving behind.
My throat constricts, and I remind myself that I’m wasting time. I check the gun—it’s not loaded—before I tuck it into the bag, then I grab the box of bullets, the two file folders, and my father’s passport and put them in there as well. I’ll see what they are later.
“Janelle, where are you?” Struz calls from downstairs, and I zip the bag and put it on my back.
I
open the door to the hallway and see Struz coming up the stairs.
So I guess the front door is out. There’s no way he
won’t
figure out what I’m doing. Pushing the door shut, I lock it and weigh my options.
One of the windows will put me on the roof of the garage. I move that way, throw open the window, and as I’m struggling with the screen, I hear Struz knocking on Jared’s door. “You guys okay?” he calls.
Jared’s voice is muffled, so I don’t hear what he’s saying, but it’s very possible he’ll sell me out without realizing it.
The screen is cheap, and the frame finally bends under my hands. I push it out and watch as it tumbles onto the roof, then slides down into the grass.
“J, are you in here?” Struz says, and the doorknob to my dad’s bedroom twists a little. The lock holds, but only because Struz isn’t trying to bust in here yet. As soon as he makes the attempt, I’m sure it’ll give way. “Janelle, open this door!”
Which means I have to move. Now.
Taking a deep breath, I climb out, one leg at a time, holding on to the window frame as if my life depends on it. I test the shingles with the toe of my sneaker, and when I don’t slip or slide, I go ahead and put my weight on them.
I hold my arms out wide for balance and move carefully to the edge of the roof. The driveway is on the right, and the side yard is on the left. If I take off in the Jeep, all Struz needs is to make a phone call, and any cop in the area will be ready to pull it over. But discarded thoughtlessly in our neighbor’s yard is a gold beach cruiser with a purple leather seat. On a bike I could take back roads and cut through people’s yards.
As I get to the left edge of the roof, I hear Struz break open the door, and I don’t even have time to look down and think about how far the grass is from here. I just jump.
Legs shoulder-width apart, even, not quite straight, relaxed, ready to give when they hit grass.
My landing is almost perfect, and even though my left ankle turns and pain shoots up my leg, it’s as good as I could ask for. The weight of the backpack hurts my balance and I pitch forward to my knees, but I’m up again before I can think about it, moving toward my neighbor’s yard and that gold bike.
Pain stabs my left foot every time I put weight on it, but I try to ignore it as I hop-run to the bike. If it was broken, it would feel worse.
The bike is perfect, maybe a little big for me, but definitely something I can ride. I hop on and start pedaling.
I think I hear someone call my name—Struz, or maybe even Jared—but I don’t turn back. I was interested in the case before because it involved me and my John Doe. But now it’s different. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the stakes are even higher now.
Because now this case has taken something from me.
I
’m out of my neighborhood before I realize I don’t actually have a plan when it comes to
where
I’m going.
Alex picks up on the first ring. “What’s going on at your house? My mom’s been calling for at least the last five minutes.”
“It’s a long story,” I say. I’ll tell him in a minute. First I need him to think for me. “If I have a backpack full of things I want to keep from the FBI, where can I hide them?”
There’s a pause on the other line.
“I just need an answer.”
“Couldn’t you have asked this in person rather than over a phone line?”
“Alex. I don’t have a lot of time, especially for one of your conspiracy theories,” I say, and I hate how harsh my voice sounds. “Can you think for me for a second? I need to know where to go. It would just be to keep something there for a few days.” Until I have a better idea of what I’m doing.
“You could keep stuff here, obviously, but that’d be the first place your dad would look if he knew you were keeping something from him,” he says, and my eyes water at the mention of my dad. “What about Kate’s? Your dad and Struz might not know the details, but they know you had a falling-out and haven’t spoken. And her new house has that pool apartment that nobody ever uses. Her mom keeps the key under the mat.”
Kate’s house is the last place I want to go, but he has a point. I’m already heading toward Santaluz.
“J, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“My dad is dead,” I say, because maybe if I keep saying it, I’ll get used to the idea. “San Diego PD found his body in a canyon behind Park Village.”
I hear Alex suck in a breath, and suddenly I need to see him.
“Can you pick me up at Kate’s? I’ll tell you everything when you get there.”
“Of course,” he says, his voice hoarse. “I’ll see you in five minutes.”
I hang up without saying anything else, because I don’t trust either of us to get the words out.
Kate, Alex, and I all grew up together, only three houses apart—until the summer before freshman year, when Kate’s parents bought the “new” house in Santaluz and they moved. She already knew Brooke and Lesley because the three of them played volleyball together and Kate was likely going to make varsity, even as a freshman, but once she moved into their neighborhood, I could see her change.
Even before the party, even before she drugged me for their approval, she had chosen them over Alex and me. She’d started dressing like them, hanging out with them at the country club instead of going to the beach with me.
That’s what bothers me most about that night: I should have seen it coming.
I knew she’d changed, and I had a moment when I thought,
I should just go home and play
World of Warcraft
with Jared or watch a lame action movie with Alex
, but I stayed. And when Kate gave me that beer, I wanted our friendship to be the same as it had always been. So I did my part to hold on to the past.
I drank it.
A
lex’s car is parked on the street when I get to Kate’s.
Her house is this sprawling monstrosity—peach stucco with a three-car garage, a wraparound balcony, desert-style landscaping that probably cost way more than it looks like it should, and a pretty intense pool. With the accompanying pool house that looks like a mini version of the real thing.
By the time I reach his car, Alex is already out, shutting the door. I drop the bike on the grass, and we have our arms wrapped around each other in the same motion. He’s breathing hard, and his body shakes as it holds on to mine.
My dad is dead.
We cling to each other as it sinks in. “Are you sure?” Alex asks, because like me he can’t believe it’s possible.
I nod. “My dad is dead.” I take a deep breath. “And we have thirteen days to figure out what happened.”
I have to get this bag stowed away and then I have to figure out my next step. “Come on, let’s break into the pool house and get out of here,” I say as I pull away.
Alex turns away so he can wipe his eyes and save face, and we move through the yard to the pool house. He’s right and the key is under the mat, easy for the taking, though I’m not surprised. Kate’s mom is chronically forgetful. She’s always losing her keys and her purse and everything else that isn’t attached to something. When they lived a few doors down from us, we had an extra set of her house and car keys in case she lost them.
And she did. A lot.
Alex is also right about the fact that no one uses the pool house. It makes me wonder if the two of them are still talking.
The whole place is dark and untouched, and there’s a light layer of dust on everything. Given that it’s only September, you’d think this place would look a little more lived in.
“Where should we put it?” I say as I look around. Even though the place isn’t lived in, it still looks like a room that just fell out of
Vogue Living
.
“Here,” Alex says, reaching for the backpack. “I think I have an idea.” I slip it off and hand it to him, only to have him ask, “What the hell do you have in here that’s so heavy?”
I’m not sure if it’s the gun, the laptop, or all the files, but I assume it’s better if he doesn’t know.
“I’ll tell you later.”
He nods, and he must know what I mean, because he doesn’t ask again. Instead we move through the pool house to the back bedroom. There’s a king-size bed and a matching dresser and desk set, and then a huge walk-in closet.
Inside is every outfit Kate ever wore as a child. Boxes of baby clothes, dance recital and Halloween costumes.