9
The knock on the hotel room door comes just as sunlight peeks through the olive-green window coverings. I give the mattress on Dominic’s bed a light kick, rousing him. Through the peephole, I immediately recognize Agent Sheldon. She looks exactly the same—dirty-blond hair tied in a perfect bun, black dress pants, white blouse, black blazer, service weapon no doubt concealed beneath that blazer. Kind of hard to trust someone who can’t leave her firearm out of any conversation. I don’t recognize the guy behind her. He’s younger than Sheldon, maybe fresh out of Quantico.
I open the door, and Agent Sheldon starts to walk in but then stops short when she sees Dominic. “I thought you were alone?”
“I thought your office was in Charleston,” I say, gesturing for them to come inside. “I’m trying to figure out how fast you would have to drive to get here in less than four hours.”
The guy with Sheldon closes and locks the door behind them. He’s covertly checking out the window while Agent Sheldon speaks. “You should have asked to see my badge before opening the door.”
I shrug. “I know what you look like.”
“But—”
“Do you have an evil twin? Or was the government supply of Polyjuice Potion stolen and now ordinary people are posing as FBI agents?” I ask, because seriously, she came all this way to lecture me on safety?
The guy scoping out the window snorts a laugh and then turns it into a cough when Sheldon glares at him. Sheldon is clearly all business. After I introduce Dominic, who looks like he’s in complete hell, she drills me with questions.
“Where were you when your cousin found you?”
My gaze bounces to Dominic for a beat, hoping he can handle this. Sheldon is kind of a robot, but they do teach their fledglings how to spot a liar at Quantico. Unfortunately. “We stopped at a gas station near Holden Prep, the Wawa on the corner of—”
Sheldon holds up a hand to stop me and turns to the guy by the window. “Pull up video surveillance.”
His shoulder bag is plopped onto the table and a laptop emerges. Internally, I start to panic.
“We only drove around the back,” Dominic says. “I needed air in one of my tires.”
Look at you, Dominic DeLuca, telling lies to the FBI.
We wait a beat for any counterarguments, but Sheldon plunges forward. With some selective omissions, Dominic and I relay our adventures with Oscar while Agent No Name continues to study surveillance footage of a gas station that has no record of our visit.
I join Dominic, sitting beside him on the hotel bed while Sheldon passes along information to someone on the phone. When she hangs up, the usually stiff look on her face changes to something like sympathy, and my defenses go up. She exchanges a look with Agent No Name. He shuts his laptop and turns to face us.
“What?” I demand.
“I was planning on getting in touch with you today, actually. Aidan called me after you two got back from Raleigh,” Sheldon says. She sucks at sympathy. Her inflection is all wrong. “Your mother’s sentencing is this morning, as you already know. I talked to the judge making the ruling, asked about her transfer, and there have been some big changes.”
My stomach twists. This doesn’t feel like good news.
“She’s not getting out in February, is she? She has to wait until April? Or is it longer?”
“It’s longer,” Sheldon says. “The judge is sentencing her to ten years.”
For several seconds I don’t move or speak. The air deflates from my lungs and pressure fills my chest. I can make the number ten fit into any reasonable scenario, but not this one.
“You promised me,” I say, barely above a whisper, not wanting my voice to shake. I refuse to cry. Refuse to let them see me cry. “You put it in writing. Twelve to fifteen months.”
“I told you twelve to fifteen months for the crimes at the bank,” she argues. “It turns out the prosecution was able to dig up quite a bit of financial fraud with your mother’s name attached. Two witnesses in Phoenix identified her, and then another two in LA with the Doctor Ames con…”
Her voice falls into the background. I can’t listen or think or hold onto any of the covers I’ve perfected. Ten years. A decade.
What have I done?
All the energy I’d devoted to stewing over what to do when my mom got out was pointless. Because she’s not getting out. Not until she’s old enough to be a grandmother. Several times over. In my most private thoughts, far into the back of my mind, I’ve had fantasies of my mom being there to see me graduate from Holden, go to senior prom. To help Harper plan her inevitable wedding to Aidan. I know these aren’t things someone like me usually wishes for, and I know getting any of this was near impossible. But now it’s actually impossible, and I can’t help feeling like I’ve lost something important, something I truly need. I push away the lump in my throat, but I can’t stop my eyes from burning.
“An appeal?” I croak out the words and then clear my throat. “She can appeal, right?”
“Yes,” Sheldon confirms. “But she’ll lose.”
I stare at the woman who turned me into the world’s biggest snitch, and pure hatred boils inside me. “You knew, didn’t you? You wanted to use me just so you could close that case.”
The sympathy drops from her face, the stiff, pencil-up-the-ass expression back on. “I wanted your father, the ringleader, if you remember? That case is nowhere near closed thanks to their last-minute job swap. And if I knew what the prosecution knew by trial time, I wouldn’t have needed your help to convict her or your father.”
With no clear target for my anger, it falls away as quickly as it hit. Even if she had manipulated and deceived me on purpose, I can’t hate her for that. Manipulation and deception basically sum up my life’s work prior to helping the FBI. And after, if I’m being honest. Identifying Simon’s killer required manipulation and deception in dozens of assorted colors.
I clamp my jaw shut, forcing myself to think first. She didn’t come here just to deliver this news (that’s what cell phones are for) or simply to rescue us (she could have sent a local agent). She wants something. My father’s face pops into my thoughts, the patient sound of his voice when he explained our way of life to me years ago. I was only seven or eight and already a master of the basics—creating covers, lock picking, and planting audio surveillance devices.
“Why are we listening to these people?” I asked my dad while we sat in an old Bronco hearing the voices of a woman and her husband broadcast from an apartment across the street.
“Why do we listen to anyone?” he asked. “To get to know them.”
“You mean like their favorite color?”
“Maybe that,” he agreed. “But more than that.”
My dad turned down the volume on the receiver and angled himself to face me. “Do you remember a few months ago when you went to that doll store in Atlanta?”
I nodded, twisting my hands in my lap. American Girl. I’d never seen anything so beautiful as the dolls in that store and their clothes and shoes and furniture. We’d gone inside only because my “uncle” had just swiped credit card info from half a dozen people and thought he was being followed. He had wanted to hide out in the sea of families and their little girls.
“You wanted one of those dolls,” he said simply. Not a question.
“No I didn’t,” I protested. “They’re stupid.”
“You could have had one,” he said. “Uncle Milky needed a cover, and snagging a doll for you to take into that doll salon would have been perfect.”
I looked down at my hands, then selected a nail to chew on—I hadn’t perfected lying without a tell yet.
My dad narrowed his eyes at me, giving me another second to come clean, and then he turned his attention out the windshield. “You didn’t want Milky to ask Oscar to steal the doll, thought he might get caught. And you thought I would be mad that you like that kind of thing.”
“If it doesn’t teach you anything, then we don’t have room for it in the camper,” I recited from hundreds of paternal lectures.
“I heard you talking to your sister that night,” he continued.
“I didn’t tell Harper—”
“That you want an American Girl doll?” He smiled, knowing he’d caught me. “You didn’t tell her, but I listened to how you described the store, and it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
I tugged at my seat belt and leaned back against the chair. I had nothing to say.
“Because I listened in that night, I know what you want more than anything in the world,” he said. “And that is what a good con treasures. More than cash under a mattress, more than rare jewelry or baseball cards. And what would a good con do with that valuable information?”
“Use it,” I whispered.
“That’s right.” He opened his hand in front of me, palm up, revealing a tiny plastic device. “Plant this inside the silver Lexus two cars up without setting off the alarm and the doll is yours. Your mama’s going to Miami tomorrow, and they’ve got one of those stores.”
He set the listening device in my hand and opened his wallet. “Will this cover it?”
I looked at the six twenty-dollar bills in his hand and slowly nodded. “But it’s a trick, right? You’re supposed to get what you want and then trick me.”
“For a job, yes,” he said. “But for my daughter? No trick.”
I hesitated, watching his face for signs of teasing or deception. But there weren’t any. I glanced at the cash one more time and conjured images of the dolls in that store—I definitely wanted one. I reached for the car door handle, tugging it open.
Shaking off the memory of my father—it’s his fault I’m in this mess right now—I replay Agent Sheldon’s words inside my head, flipping them around for more careful study. What can I use? What does she want more than anything in the world?
I wanted your father.
The case is nowhere near closed.
No. I can’t. Not anymore. I’m not that girl anymore. Unless…it could be done quickly. In and out, no strings attached. Oscar provided me with a smooth transition back inside. The weight of my sister’s reaction to this potential plan already presses down on my shoulders, and I circle back to the “no, I can’t” argument.
But ten years. Ten years until I see my mother again. I can’t let that happen. Just move on with my life and not think about her and my part in her sentencing. My insides fill with resolve. I could live with fifteen months, but not this.
Both agents look startled when, after standing in silence for so long, I turn sharply to face them. “If you want the ringleader, then let me help you catch him.”