Deadly Little Sins (27 page)

“I’m not writing shit.” Brent’s voice trembles.

“You will, unless you want to watch me cut her into a million pieces.” Natalie presses the knife to my cheek. Brent steps on the gas. She rounds on him with the knife. “Not so fast. Get on the freeway.”

Brent obeys.

“Good boy.” Natalie pats him on the head. “Why didn’t I date a boy like you instead of a dick like Spencer in high school? Then none of us would be here right now.”

I swallow. “I know why you were expelled and Spencer wasn’t. You saw Goddard that night. He must have said something about the records.”

“Try
collusion
,” Natalie says. “The construction workers found them when they knocked down the cabin. The lawyer told Goddard it was a felony to destroy the records. So they buried them. And that’s when they saw me.

“I don’t think he really believed I knew what they were doing. I was just some simple townie girl. Disposable. I’ll bet he never thought of me again after he expelled me.”

“But you thought of Goddard,” I say. “Every day, didn’t you?”

“I thought about killing him.” Natalie leans in toward me. “When I was strung out of my mind. Thought about going up to him and
bam.
” I jolt in my seat. She smiles. “But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail. I’ve been there. The women are horrible.”

I meet Brent’s eyes in the mirror.

“When I became Jessica, I realized I didn’t want the headmaster dead like I wanted Tyler dead.” Natalie’s eyes are frightening. “I liked being Jessica. She was smart. People
loved
Jessica. No one ever loved Natalie. People used Natalie. My mother left me in an orphanage when I was ten days old. My parents adopted me to fill a void in their pathetic little lives, then sent me away when I couldn’t.

“It was so easy to come and go, to be someone else. I thought Natalie, and everything that happened with Tyler and Ryan back in Brockton, was gone for good.”

“You could have disappeared,” I say. “You didn’t have to come back to Wheatley.”

“It takes money to disappear,” she snaps. “And Rowan made me see that I could never stop running. If I was going to live the lie, I was going to have to do it alone. He figured out I wasn’t really Jessica. I needed to get out of the country, and I needed a golden ticket. The records.

“Do you know how long it took me to find them? Months. And
you
almost ruined it, by doing your own snooping down there.” Natalie nods to me. “I thought the photo in the drawer would get you to back off.”

“You—” I resist the urge to lunge at her. “You left that picture—of Isabella’s
dead body—
” I freeze. “You sent me all those texts.
You
threatened me.”

I wait for her to deny it, but her face says I’m right. Her betrayal hits me all over again.

“Quit looking at me like I’m some
monster
,” Natalie says. “I’m not the bad guy, Anne.
Goddard
is. You told me yourself. He protects people who don’t need protecting. Like that creep who stalked your roommate. Who do you think cares about those dead Plymouth boys? Goddard was going to let their corpses rot here forever. To protect his
legacy
.”

Natalie laughs, almost as if it’s at a private joke. “When Tierney introduced me to him, he didn’t even look me in the eye. He just said, ‘It’s lovely to meet you, Jessica.’ Maybe if he looked me in the damn eye, he would have known it was me.

“We all dig our own graves, Anne,” she says.

“Except for you, right? Shouldn’t you be on a plane to Moscow by now?”

“Nicaragua.” Natalie smiles. “Moscow was a decoy, because I knew Luke would sell me out. They’ll never find me. Tyler and Ryan are nothing but maggots in the ground by now, and they
still
haven’t found me.”

Brent is eyeing me.
Get ready
, he mouths. I swallow.

“Where are you taking us?” Brent asks Natalie. He’s doing a solid sixty, but cars are whizzing past us in the left lane.

In the split second Natalie turns to look at the signs on the freeway, I punch her in the eye.

She recoils, but doesn’t drop the knife. I leap into the backseat while she’s holding her face. I try to wrap my hands around her throat, but she recovers and holds up the knife.

“Put it down,” Brent shouts. “Put it down or I’ll drive into oncoming traffic, and we’re all dead.”

Panic corners me—I know he must be bluffing, but his voice is shaky. Serious. As if he’s willing to do it, since Natalie is planning on killing us anyway.

“Go ahead,” she says to Brent. Her eyes on are me. “Natalie’s been dead for eight years.”

“I don’t believe that,” I say. “This isn’t about revenge. If it was, you wouldn’t have extorted Goddard so you could leave the country and escape murder charges. It was never about him, was it? It was about Ryan and Tyler. You made a mess and realized you’d have to spend your whole life running from it.”

Natalie’s upper lip twitches. She holds the knife, daring me not to come closer.

“All you want is to get away,” I say. “It’s all you’ve ever wanted. So go. Go away, and no one else has to get hurt. Brent will pull over, and you can leave.”

“Oh, Anne,” Natalie says. “Do I look like a dumb bitch?”

And she swipes my face with the knife.

Brent screams my name, before veering into the car in the next lane. We spin and hit the guardrail, the airbags exploding.

Then he goes quiet.

CHAPTER

FORTY

I have a split second to decide whether to reach for my phone or go after Natalie. She’s kicked the busted door open, knife in hand.

Screw it. I won’t be able to accomplish much in my state. I’m bleeding, and the numbness in my hands says I’m about to go into shock. I dig my phone out of my bag and call 911. Then I climb into the front seat while I’m on hold.

Brent is massaging his head.

“Oh, thank God.” I pull his chin into my hands and examine his face. “Where are you hurt?”

“I think I’m okay.” He holds my hands to his face. “I’m okay now.”

“I thought—when we crashed…” A sob escapes me. “She got away.”

Brent pulls me to him. “She can’t get away. It’s not going to happen.”

When he pulls me to him, I know it’s true. Natalie Barnes has spent most of her life running, but she won’t get away. Not this time.

And this time I kiss him first. It’s not about letting him choose me.

This time, I choose us.

I’m crying so hard that Brent has to take the phone from me and explain our emergency to the operator himself.

There are police officers waiting for us at the hospital. I don’t recognize any of them. I wonder how far away from Wheatley we are. The EMTs hold me down and pluck glass from the windshield out of the cut on my face.

“This is deep,” one of the EMTs says.

“It’s from a knife.”

They hold gauze to my face while someone runs off to get what the doctor needs to stitch me up. I yell for Brent.

“He’s got a concussion,” a doctor tells me, shouldering his way past the EMTs. “But he’s okay.”

They wheel my stretcher into the emergency room. People fret over my face, but for once in my life, I don’t give a crap how I look.

“Where are they?”

I don’t think I’ve ever been relieved to hear Tierney’s voice, but there she is, standing in the sliding doors to the ER.

Half the Wheatley police department trails behind her.

“Anne,” Tierney barks, coming up beside me. “You don’t have to talk to them until your parents get here.”

“No.” I wince. “I want to.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” one of the cops says.

“Yeah,” I begin. “About that.…”

SIX MONTHS LATER

If I’d waited for Dennis instead of going to the annex myself, I may have gotten away with everything. It turns out that Goddard and Roe didn’t know Natalie hid the records. They never would have gotten to them first.

But Natalie would have gotten away. I don’t know how far she would have gotten, but she’d done a “bang-up job” (the DA’s words, not mine) of planting enough lies and evidence to make it look like Goddard and Roe had had her killed. Not enough to get a jury to convict them, maybe, since it was all circumstantial evidence. But I think making them look guilty in the eyes of the world was enough for her.

I was nothing but a pawn in her plan. She planted the burner phones she texted me from in a dumpster a few blocks away from Nathan Roe’s office. She knew I’d suspect Goddard’s involvement the closer I got to the truth.

I wonder when she figured out that she’d rather use me than get rid of me. Was it when I wouldn’t back off, like Dr. Muller? Or was it even earlier—when I confided in her about Isabella, Lee Anderson, and Goddard’s cover-up?

The body in the burned car was a woman Natalie had carjacked at a truck stop. The coroner determined a single gunshot wound was the cause of death. Execution style. It took months to identify the body—Natalie figured that by the time the police figured out it wasn’t her in the car, she’d be hidden away safely in South America.

Natalie Barnes played me. She played everyone.

But she didn’t get away. And that’s why they sent me to Stonehill Creek School for Girls and not jail, I think.

I wound up in reform school. The irony is so ridiculous I could probably write a killer memoir. But I won’t profit off the stories of the Plymouth boys. I’m not like Natalie Barnes.

She had told Dr. Muller that I reminded her of a younger version of herself. She was wrong.

After I told Tierney and my parents what happened the night Travis Shepherd was killed, they called the DA’s office and said I was willing to testify at Steven Westbrook’s trial.

But it didn’t matter. Steven Westbrook already accepted a second-degree murder plea.

The state is in the middle of a brand-new investigation to determine Goddard’s involvement in concealing the Plymouth records. His cancer is in remission. He’s not going to die. Not yet, at least. I almost think that his real punishment—living the rest of his life with the knowledge of his sins—is worse.

As for me, I’m two months away from finishing high school. Stonehill isn’t so bad. I have to go to group therapy three times a week and do a lot of stupid macaroni crafts. The other girls here have a higher school expulsion count than me, for the most part.

Most of them are cool. A lot of the younger girls look up to me, come to me for boy advice and stuff, which is silly because we’re not allowed off campus, and we’re only allowed one visit a week. I don’t know what’s waiting for me when I get out of here, but sometimes I think I might not be terrible at this stuff. Talking to people. Helping them.

Brent is eyeing Columbia for the fall. He says he won’t pick a school in New York to be closer to me. But I guess he could do a lot worse than Columbia.

He says he could do a lot worse than me. My new goal is convince us both that it’s true.

I want to be better. Not just for him—for me. For my parents.

Most of my other Wheatley friends write and call, too. Remy is already planning a release party for me. There was a lot of petitioning to get Wheatley to overturn my expulsion, especially once all of the details about Natalie’s scheme emerged.

Then I told the truth.

The whole truth—Matt Weaver, Travis Shepherd, everything.

I always knew I would lose everything if I told the truth, but it turns out, starting from scratch isn’t so bad.

Today I have a meeting with my social worker about discussing reintegration plans once I get out. College is obviously out of the question. My father wants me to come work in his office, but I don’t think I have a promising future in terms of a legal career.

Besides, I’m kind of tired of my parents digging me out of my holes.

Danica, my social worker, gives me a funny look when she grabs me from the cafeteria.

“You have a visitor,” she says, clinging to her folder like it’s a life raft.

“It’s not the weekend,” I say.

She frowns, and makes a “follow me” gesture with her finger.

We walk down the corridor, and Danica deposits me in a room with a table and four chairs around it. We’re not alone: There’s a woman at the table. She has one of those faces where she could be anywhere from thirty to fifty. Her chin is prominent and she’s in a black suit. She nods to Danica, who scurries out of the room.

“Anne Dowling,” the woman says. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

She’s not smiling. I can’t tell if she means it as a compliment. In this place, probably not.

“Okay,” is the best response I can come up with.

She folds her hands in front of her. “I spoke with Jacqueline Tierney. It’s quite a story, how the Wheatley PD found Matthew Weaver’s body after all these years.”

So that’s what this is about. “Are you a cop?”

For some reason, that gets a smile out of her. “You’re not in trouble, Anne. Not with me, at least.”

I level with her. She has small brown eyes that could benefit from a swipe or two of mascara. “So what do you want with me?” I ask.

“I want to offer you an opportunity.”

Opportunity.
I would laugh if it weren’t so damn rude. I’ve burned every bridge I have in this world. Who the hell is this lady?

I lick my lips. Rosebud salve is one of many luxuries I’ve had to get used to being without in here. “Not too many opportunities for a screw-up like me.”

“You’re eighteen now, correct?” The woman’s expression unsettles me. She’s serious.

“Who … are you?” I ask.

“I recruit young people to work for my agency,” she says. “People with the right combinations of skill set and personality. Most of the time it’s out of college, but we have a training program for … exceptionally bright candidates that show extraordinary potential.”

I feel as if the floor is falling away. “How could you—how could anyone want me after the things I’ve done?” I ask. “The FBI
hates
me. I screwed up their investigation of Eugene Andreev.”