I know exactly where they are.
Bertram doesn’t protest when I commandeer the driver’s seat, and he doesn’t say a word when I stomp the gas pedal to the floor. He is a man who doesn’t fear speeding tickets. He has all the money in the world. But he only has one family. That much, we have in common.
I veer into the parking lot of the abandoned mall. The one that Waylen and I set up as our safe space. I’m positive that this is where Annie is.
Is she working with Waylen? Was all of this a conspiracy orchestrated by both of them? But why? Because he wants me to quit my vigilantism so much that he has to scare me out of it, and chasing me around in some blacked-out cars wasn’t enough?
But if Erin—Annie—isn’t dead, then whose blood was in the apartment? And if she isn’t dead, that means Waylen didn’t kill her. But—as the sick feeling in my gut suggests—he did bring her here. He knows that most things don’t rattle me. I’ve dealt with killers, fraudsters, con men, and loan sharks alike. I’ve ventured into dark shadows and damp basements without so much as a hair standing up on the back of my neck.
But for the first time in years, I’m terrified of all the unanswered questions. And because I know better than anyone that things aren’t always what they seem.
sister, brother duo implicated in fire that kills parents
The parking garage is blocked off, so I abandon the car at the entrance and run inside, Bertram at my heels.
“Erin!” he’s shouting. I can hear by the way he says her name that he loves her. It was ingenious of Annie to assume Erin’s identity when there’s virtually nothing about her online. Bertram’s entire family keeps a low profile. I suppose it’s the same principle that compels all major tech figures to keep their families offline. They know better than anyone how their apps are used to spy on us. Someone, somewhere has access to our most intimate thoughts, desires, and fears. My brother taught me that people will tell their search history things that they wouldn’t even tell their spouse.
But I never search for anything for myself. I never type my thoughts out into the tempting clean white search bar. Not even in the middle of the night, when I’m the only one awake and my darkest thoughts tempt me to confide in someone.
“There are things you don’t know about my wife.”Waylen spoke the words, but even he doesn’t know how true they are.
My footsteps echo in the empty, cavernous space. Gray concrete and shadows are all around me. There are no cars. The only life this place has seen in years is from the rodents that hide away in the darkness. My feet stomp in puddles of old grease and water that drip down from the rusty overhead pipes.
“Margaux, wait.” Bertram has kept pace, impressively. Now he grabs my arm and spins me around. “Where are we going?” He’s a bit out of breath. “This place is huge.They could be anywhere. How do you even know they’re here at all?”
“There are no security cameras in the parking garage,” I tell him. “But they’re turning the rest of the mall into storage units, so even though it’s not set up yet, there are cameras. They’re somewhere in here.”
As though on cue, the sound of footsteps emerges from the top of the platform, accompanied by desperately heavy breathing. I expect to see Annie, coming to do God knows what. I know that she’s the inevitable outcome of being here. But it’s Waylen, rumpled and sweaty, with something trailing from one of his wrists. Duct tape.
If someone tried to bind him, he would know to let his captor think they have him, and then he would know how to slam his bound wrists over his knee to sever the tape. I tried to teach Collette once. She giggled at six years old as I bound her wrists with her neon pink duct tape that she used to make no-sew purses. I told her how she could use her own strength against her to escape if she ever needed to. But Waylen overheard us and came running. It turned into an hours-long fight about how I was going to scare her.
“She has to know what to do,” I’d said. “She needs to be prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” he’d cried. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”
As always, I was right. It’s a curse that has followed me all my life. Even as a child, born into the nuclear American dream: two parents, two children, a pretty little house, and an old barn cat that found his way into our yard all thetime for table scraps. Even then, I carried an internalized sense of dread. The sunsets were too pretty. My father’s jokes were too corny and they made us laugh too loud. I knew, somehow, that it was too good to stay that way forever.
I thought that I could prepare Collette the way I wish someone had prepared me.
Now Waylen makes his way to me, and I see a bruise that’s forming on the side of his head. Someone hit him with a blunt object. Someone too small to overpower him themselves, so they knocked him unconscious and tied him up and put him out of the way. Someone slight and slender like Annie.
“Margaux, thank God,” he says. “You’re safe.”
He grabs my shoulders and then pulls me into an embrace, but I feel my body tense up. Earlier he was chasing me out of the house, shouting for me to come back. He was warning Bertram about me. He lured me here.
“You told Annie about our meeting spot,” I say, and I can feel that my accusatory tone stuns him. He draws back.
“Annie? That deranged woman who attacked me?”
Bertram seems to have the same thought I do, that Waylen and Annie are working together somehow, and that she’ll descend like a wraith from the rafters at any moment.
But no one comes.
“I was so worried about you,” Waylen says. “First you ran out of the house and I had no idea where you were going or what was wrong. Then the police came looking for you. They think you killed Bertram’s sister. They refusedto tell me anything. They wanted to search the house, but I wouldn’t let them.”
“You’re not working with the police?” I ask, my voice trailing uncertainly.
“Of course not.” His eyes meet mine, and I see the Waylen who made me fall in love with him. But this is the same Waylen who chased me in a decoy car to scare me out of my vigilante work.
