Brooke

I’m curled up on the living room couch. The blanket on my lap is cashmere, soft as a cloud, but I don’t want it. I could push it off, but my mom would just tuck it around me again. I don’t really have the heart to tell her I don’t like it. Not when she’s trying so hard to take care of me. Not when this is the only way she knows how.

“Are you thirsty?” she asks me for the fifth time this morning.

I’m not, but I give in and tell her, “A glass of water might help.”

Nothing is going to help, but the way her eyes light up for half a second makes it worth the lie. I know she’s doing the best she can for me. She’s canceled her hair appointment, her bridge club, her charity meetings. I wonder what she’s told them, but not enough to ask. I don’t want to find out that I’ve suddenly come down with the flu.

I stare out the living room window, wishing I’d asked for something that would take longer. A glass of orange juice, but freshly squeezed. I don’t want a drink—I want space. That’s strange considering I would have loved this kind of attention a day ago.

A lot has changed in a day.

She’s on her way back with a glass of water when the doorbell chimes.

Worry flashes across her face, and then she changes direction and goes to the foyer. I listen, mostly disinterested, while she opens the door. I’m expecting some hushed whispers and a thinly veiled reference to the housekeeper having a day off. A few of her society friends have already dropped by, their concern masking blatant curiosity.

I went missing from my own sweet-sixteen party. It’s gone from blood in the water to floating limbs.

Instead she’s coming back in, and there’s someone behind her. Two someones.

Men. Not friends. They look official.

My heart beats faster. Suddenly I’m desperate for that glass of water she’s still holding. In fact I wish I’d taken one of the sleeping pills the hospital sent me home with, so I could avoid this altogether.

One of them nods in greeting, his dark eyes somber. The lines on his face tell me he’s normally expressive, even though I can’t read a thing in his expression now. “Ms. Carson. I’m Detective Emilio Rivera.”

The other detective dips his head and introduces himself too.

“Hi,” I mumble, not quite able to meet his eyes. I already talked to cops at the hospital. They were uniformed officers with uniform questions to match. Something about this man’s presence tells me he won’t be as easy to fool.

It’s crazy, the guilt and fear I feel. Like I did something wrong when I was the one held at gunpoint. He did this to me, by making me keep quiet.

My mom sends me a worried smile. “Are you up for questions? They said it wouldn’t take long.”

“It’s fine,” I say because I’d rather get it over with.

She offers the detectives something to drink, which they refuse. Then she flashes us all a nervous smile and escapes from the room—taking the glass of water with her. I lick my lips.

Suddenly my mouth is completely dry.

The detectives sit down on the plush chairs across from me. The one named Emilio Rivera leans forward, clearly the man in charge. It’s the way he holds himself, the way he speaks first. The way his eyes seem to take in every square inch of me, like I’m a puzzle he’s going to solve. I barely even register the other man, because this one seems to take up all the oxygen.

“Ms. Carson, we’re very sorry to hear about your ordeal,” Detective Rivera says. “I know you must be tired, but we’re in charge of the investigation. It’s important that we speak with you.”

Unease clenches inside me. “I already talked with cops. Told them what I remember.”

His expression doesn’t reveal much, but I get the sense that he’s looking at me. Looking into me, like he knows I kept some stuff back. “It helps to hear things in your own words,” he says. “And sometimes you can remember things later that were fuzzy at first.”

“I don’t,” I say, too quickly.

His eyes narrow slightly. Damn it.

I’m messing this up because it feels wrong to lie to the cops. It feels wrong to lie to my parents. I’ve been raised with a lot of luxuries, especially before the construction business started to tank. But I was also raised pretty strict. Brought up to be obedient, to do and say the right thing.

Lying makes me feel like an accomplice to a crime. An accomplice to my own abduction—and to the murder of that man, Madsen. I don’t even know the name of the man who took me, who carried me into the river, but I feel linked to him now. Partners in crime, almost. I hate it, but I can’t tell on him.

I can’t endanger the people I love.

“I just—” I twist my hands together, looking down at the plush blanket over my legs. Even with my mom in the next room, I can’t bring myself to move it. Even sweating, I leave it there. It covers me. I wish I could pull it over my head. “I was wondering about the man who got hurt.”

Now those dark eyebrows rise. “We have an identification on the man who was murdered. His name was Gerald Madsen. He was a guest at the party. Your party.”

I nod, my throat tight, because my mom already told me this. I don’t remember him, which makes me feel horrible. Did he try the foie gras before he drew his last breath? He wasn’t close to my dad, not close enough that I’d met him before, but he was still one of the guests.

Detective Rivera stares at me. Waits.

Worse, I can’t help but feel guilty about the party Mom worked so hard for. All those nights in secret at the bakery, earning nine-fifty an hour so she could pay for caviar and champagne. So she could make the evening a success, but now it’s not.

Because of him. My abductor. It’s a failure, because of him.

Detective Rivera studies me. “Do you remember anything?” he finally asks. “Anything you might have heard? Anything either one of them said? Even if it seems insignificant.”

I take hold of the throw, running my thumbs over the smooth fabric. Mr. Madsen’s face is etched into my mind. The way he looked tied up in the back of the van. “I heard the fight, I guess. I was hiding, trying to call 911, and the man who took me came up behind me. He put something over my head.”

“You told the officers it was a bag.”

“Soft. Like a pillowcase.”

“Are you sure you didn’t get a glimpse of your attacker’s face?” Rivera’s voice has dropped, becoming almost persuasive. That scares me the most, as if he already knows I did see his face and he’s just trying to persuade me to tell.

But I believe that man when he says he would kill me for telling about him.

I believe he’d kill the people on my cell phone, including my parents. My friends. He’d make it hurt, the way he made that man hurt. Gerald Madsen. “The bag was over my face,” I whisper. “And before, it was dark.” I flash on the anger, the fury as he beat Gerald Madsen half to death.

“He made a stop before the river. Do you remember anything about it?”

I’m thinking about the drive-through.

Do they know about the drive-through?

I furrow my brow as if I’m trying to remember things to help him, but inside, my heart is banging out of my chest.

Detective Rivera sits there, watching my eyes. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t bother to put me at ease. He stares for what seems like an impolitely long time. I would never stare at somebody that long. Is this part of what detectives do? Try to make you feel like a bug under a microscope? Like they can see everything?

Of course it is.

I think about that kid at the drive-through, the way he leered at me. I thought my captor was going to reach up through the little window and drag him out and kill him, too. All for looking at me like that. It felt…strange. Like a twist of fear, but something else, too, deep in my chest.

Something wild and raw.

“Is something coming to you?” he asks. “We need you to tell us everything you remember, even if it seems insignificant or…” He glances toward the kitchen, where my mom is, and lowers his voice. “Or embarrassing.”

I shake my head, thinking about the little house in a nowhere suburb. “I didn’t know where we were.”

“What about sounds? Could you hear anything?”

I close my eyes. It’s a welcome break from his scrutiny. “It was quiet,” I say. “I thought about running, but he said he would kill me if I got out or…” I gesture to my head, because supposedly I had a pillowcase on my head. “He said, ‘You want to live, you do not move.’”

This, at least, is true.

“His voice,” the other detective asks. “Young? Old?”

I shake my head, picturing the scar design on his forearm. Like crossed axes. I think about the question. Young. Old. He seemed both. I open my eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Did he have an accent?”

“No.”

“Did he make any calls?”

“No.”

“He said nothing else? In all the time he took to drive around…”

“He told the man—Mr. Madsen—to shut up a few times.”

“Why? Was Madsen saying something?”

“No. More like groaning. In pain. Maybe scared. I don’t know.”

He keeps pushing. “What about at the end? At the river?”

I shudder, remembering the freezing water against my skin, how hard he held onto me as we went deeper. This is my chance. I could tell the full truth right now. Rivera already gave me an out by saying some people remember things later.

But I won’t do that to the people I love.

“I kept my eyes closed. I thought he was going to—” My voice cracks, and a tear runs down my cheek. The emotion is real, but it’s also convenient. I don’t have to talk anymore. I can’t.

“You closed your eyes so you couldn’t see…” He crosses his arms and frowns like he’s confused. “Except you had a pillowcase over your head,” he points out, unmoved by my tears. “Or is that after it was off? That you closed your eyes? Because if you had the pillowcase over your head, it wouldn’t matter if you’d closed your eyes.”

“I don’t know,” I say, feeling the panic rise in my chest. “I don’t remember.”

“Did your abductor take the pillowcase off you at the end, or did you take it off?”

I don’t know what to say. I didn’t work that part out, and the detective knows I’m hiding something—I’m sure of it. Then I remember what he told me—They can’t make you tell something you don’t remember. “I don’t remember,” I say again. No explanations. He can argue anything I tell him, except for that.

“Were you out of the vehicle at that point?”

“I don’t remember.” I cling to it like a lifeline. Don’t remember, don’t remember, even as the crystal-clear vision of blood and violence and unexpected mercy plays in my mind.

“Do you know how you got out? Can you tell me that?”

Just then my mother appears. The glass of water is gone, and her expression hardens when she sees my face. “I’m sorry, detectives, but Brooke needs to rest. You’ll have to come back another time.”

Gratitude overwhelms me. She may have a problem with my posture, but she loves me. She protects me in her own way. Even the lessons on manners and propriety are a form of protection for a girl in our set.

“Of course,” Rivera says easily, standing, his demeanor full of respect and understanding. There’s something in his eyes, though, that tells me he hasn’t given up. A glint of suspicion that makes my stomach clench tight. “I’ll come back another time.”