I looked down at my phone, confused. “If he’s dead, then who called me?”
We didn’t get the chance to discuss because Sandra Whitley came around the corner holding her little boy by the hand. His face was screwed up like he badly needed the bathroom. “Lauren?”
Bray peeled off around the other corner out of sight. I tried to compose myself, and in failing, slipped into the first lie that came to mind and let myself cry.
“Oh, honey, are you okay?” Sandra asked, her face folding with concern.
I held up my phone and sniffled. “Yeah, sorry. I just got news my uncle passed away.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry to hear that.” Her son danced at her feet, looking like the bathroom was higher priority than his mother’s condolences.
“Thank you. I think I need to head home for the rest of the day. Would you please tell Melanie and Jana I had to run?”
“Of course. Don’t you worry. And again, I’m so sorry for your loss.” Her son pulled her into the bathroom so she couldn’t have said more even if she wanted to.
I wiped my eyes and turned the corner to run straight intoBray’s chest again. This time, he gripped my upper arms so I didn’t lose my balance.
“Whoa there,” he said. “You know, you’re a really good liar.” When I kept my eyes down instead of returning some sass, his voice softened with concern. “Hey, are you okay?”
I looked up at him and fought the tears burning my eyes. We stood under the overhang outside the bathroom, half shielded in shade. Still, the sunny day framed his handsome face and his look of honest sympathy.
“Do you want to, um … Do you want to go get some coffee or something?” he asked.
I had never socially hung out with my handler; it was a surefire way to blow my cover. But I had just lost one of the only people in the world who knew who I really was, and I had never felt so impossibly alone.
“Yeah,” I told Bray. “That would be nice.”
CHAPTER7
Ten years ago
I’d had dreams about getting caught. Nightmares, really. My father had promised me it would never happen.We’re too good for that, baby. Trust me.I had trusted him, mainly because I’d had no choice. Nor did I have any other adults around to intervene if they noticed little whatever-my-fake-name-was being forced to play along with a con. And that really was a testament to how good my father was. No one ever knew what we were up to until it was too late, and we had vanished into new identities.
I was alone in so many ways.
And here I was, alone in the worst possible way.
Save for the ones where we died, the darkest versions of my nightmares about getting caught culminated in the scene I was currently sitting amid. Me, alone in an interrogation room with no idea what was happening or who to call for help. On top of the sheer terror tightening my veins with adrenaline, I was soaking wet with someone else’s blood staining my hands. My feet had begun to regain feeling after having gone numb from running in the rain in strappy heels, but I was still freezing. Ishivered in the small, ugly room with concrete walls and a bald floor the color of pea soup.
Hours had passed since everything had gone sideways in the hotel room and I’d fled down the service stairs into a back alley. Lucky me, I’d run straight into an FBI agent ready to arrest me. I had no idea where my father was nor if one of the gunshots I fled had hit him. I’d been sitting in this cold, empty room with no answers and only my spiraling thoughts for company.
I jerked in surprise when someone opened the door.Finally.
A man with dark hair beginning to hint at gray, a mustache, and crow’s feet at his eyes from squinting at criminals like he was squinting at me, stepped inside. He wore a jacket and slacks and a neutral face other than the squinting. He wasn’t the man from the alley who’d cuffed me, and he hadn’t been in the hotel room, but an intimidating authoritative energy pulsed off him, filling the small room and making me stiffen.
My father had trained me on what to do should I ever find myself in this exact situation, but his lessons expired with my childhood. Refusing to talk without a parent present no longer held water since I was one week past my eighteenth birthday. I had to assume the man now sitting across from me at least knew my age, if not many more troubling details based on the textbook-thick folder he set on the table.
“So, Erin Daniels …” he said, flipping the file’s cover.
My stomach sunk through the pea-soup floor. I nearly dissolved in terror. If he knew my real name, I was beyond trouble.
“You were a tough one to track down. Lots of different names in your past, aren’t there,” he said.
It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t phrase it like one. Instead, he began pulling photocopied images of me from the stack. School photos, still surveillance footage, an old library card. The artifacts dated back to the time I was twelve. I recognizedmy class photo from the school in the new town we moved to soon after my mom died. It was the first time my name had changed.
“Looks like you’ve been all over the place for the past six years.”
Visual evidence of my nomadic life put a bitter taste in my mouth. We never stayed anywhere for more than a year. As soon as we finished a job, we were in the wind. I had half a mind to shove all the photos off the table and erase the reminder, but I was still shaking too hard. My teeth had begun to chatter.
