If You Wrong Us (13 page)

“That’s the one,” I said, and she nodded.

“How’s your dad doing these days?” Rita changed the subject.

“He’s hanging in there,” I said, and then Becca came out of one of the rooms and waved me over. “Ah, looks like I have to go.”

“Oh, okay.” Rita looked disappointed. “Take care of yourself, kiddo,” she said before I made my way to Bec.

We spent about an hour with the kids, and they were pretty great. I’m not going to lie—they didn’t come up and hug Becca or squeal when she arrived—but many of them, especially the smart, shy ones, looked up when she walked in. And though they were slow to warm, they started making their way to her table—where she sat with her puzzles and Legos and crosswords. It was a blast to watch.

I remember the way Becca looked up at me and smiled that day. I lost it. She’d smiled at me before, but never like this. It had never really reached her eyes before. She was always so reserved, and her displays of emotion were so few and far between, that an honest-to-goodness smile from Bec was like a rare gift.

I wanted more.

We finished up with the kids and walked out to the hall, when I stopped her. I couldn’t help it. I pulled her into a private nook by the elevator and moved in slowly, afraid she’d back away. That’s how she always felt to me, just out of my reach. We’d already gotten our first kiss out of the way and were growing slightly more comfortable around each other; it was time to make my next move.

I watched her chest rise and fall as she took quick shallow breaths. It made her boobs bounce in the most fantastic way and drove me insane, so I just went for it. I brushed my lips against hers, prepared for her to shut me down.

She didn’t.

Instead, she followed my lead. Searing her lips to mine. Teasing me with her tongue. It was a surprise. A fucking awesome one. She smelled like girl shampoo, all clean and sweet, and she tasted like orange baby aspirin, because she was always popping those vitamin C tablets anytime we were around people.

I deepened the kiss and pushed into her … until I got hard. I shifted my hips so I wouldn’t freak her out.

There was no need to worry. She reached out and linked her fingers in my belt loops, pushing all her right parts onto my raging hard-on. We had completely forgotten that we were in public.

This went on for some time and I realized I’d better shut it the hell down before we got hauled out of there like a bunch of perverts.

“I liked that,” she said when I pulled away to look at her.

“I liked that, too,” I agreed.

“You know, this is the first time I’ve been with a boy who Brit didn’t pick out for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Brit always set me up on dates. I don’t think I would’ve ever been on one without her. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly a people person.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the way she’d just blurt these things out. It also helped defuse the situation I had going on below the belt.

“I’m serious.”

“Sorry, Bec. I know you are.”

“Even here, the kids always gravitate toward the cheerleaders, the happy people, all bubbly and fun—like you. They really just tolerate me.”

“What are you talking about? The kids love you.”

“The ones who are like me, maybe. But I really like them all.”

“I can tell,” I said.

“It’s their minds. Common sense hasn’t kicked in yet, and they still think everything is possible. They don’t have to pretend or hide who they really are because they’re not worried about being judged or not fitting in yet.” There was so much pain in her voice—I had no idea she even cared what other people thought. She just always seemed like her own island to me. Happy and content to be on her own.

“Do you worry about that?” I asked her. “Fitting in? Being judged?”

“Of course. I’m not a robot,” she deadpanned, in a voice that sounded very much like a robot.

It made me grin. The odd couple, we were.

“You fit in, Bec,” I told her, kissing her one more time. “You fit with me.”

Becca had spent a lot of time at the hospital even
before
she started volunteering. She was there for Brit. Unlike Mom, Brit didn’t die at the scene. It took a month before the Waters family decided to pull the plug. Becca stayed there the entire time.

She’d roam the floors. All the time, watching. Watching the docs, the nurses, the patients. Of course, Becca already knew Brit was gone. I’m sure she understood every word when the surgeon showed the family the brain scan. Becca’s a person of logic, science, numbers—not hope. I think she started devising the plan then, even before Brit was gone.

If it wasn’t for the kids and her volunteer work with them—calculated or not—I don’t think she would’ve made it. Those kids helped bring her back to life. And she really cared for them, I know she did. She could’ve found something else as a front; she could’ve spent a lot less time there. But she didn’t.

That’s why it doesn’t make sense that she’d take Travis’s brother. He’s young, and more importantly, he’s innocent in this whole thing. Looking at her now, it’s hard to believe she’s the same girl I watched at the hospital that day.

She’s become cold, hard, and freaking frightening. It’s making me second-guess everything. Is it possible that she was pretending with those kids for my benefit? Part of her plan to reel me in? Am I the other pawn in her game?

I can’t help but wonder if I’ve been played all along.

21

B
ECCA

I
n the beginning, I went to the accident site to get a sense of what really happened. To figure out how Travis had pulled it off. I continued going there to plant evidence against him. Of course, I soon realized I needed more; the only way I’d get my justice was if he confessed.

Back when I was re-creating the accident scene to make my theory sound believable, I took measurements and worked out equations for the speed and location of the cars on impact, and did some trajectory-based analysis. It wasn’t accurate, only an educated guess. There were a few skid marks left of the road at that time, but nothing that screamed foul play. The police had chalked it up to an accident. But Travis didn’t have to know that.

The crash site was in a fairly isolated area, so I had the privacy I needed for my work.

When I finally confronted Travis, he never really did confirm or deny his part in all of it. But I knew. I ran that last conversation with my sister through my mind, over and over again: “That little psycho is following me,” she’d said. In that moment, Brit had told me all I needed to know.

Even when I wasn’t investigating, I went to the site because I could think better out there. It was almost as if I could feel my sister. I knew it was metaphysical garbage, but at the time, I needed something.

Because of the deep, deep hole.

I lived in there. In darkness. Going through the motions of my life in a haze. The only thing that made sense was seeing that justice was done. But as I worked through how I’d make Travis pay, I was missing something. Someone. I needed another person to pull it off. There was no other way around it.

Then something amazing happened. Johnny Vega started showing up.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him one afternoon, recognizing his face (it was a good face) from the baseball posters in school. I’d reviewed the stats on occasion. Baseball was a mathematician’s sport—statistics and equations galore.

He was on foot. Alone.

“What are
you
doing here?” He answered my question with a question. One of my biggest pet peeves, but I let it go because he didn’t look so good.

When he offered his condolences, I wasn’t surprised. Surely a guy like Johnny knew my sister.

“Thanks,” I said, saying his name softly in my mind.
Johnny Vega.

It clicked.

The police report immediately came to mind:
Anna Vega pronounced dead at the scene.
Until that very moment, I had never once thought about the other driver. I knew about her, surely. And that was it. I didn’t put her family’s loss with ours; I didn’t think of her that way. She was just a casualty of the accident.

Johnny shifted, from his left foot to his right. I realized why he was here. He was mourning his mother, and from the look of it, he had been for quite some time.

He was a gift—the answer to everything. He could help.

I looked over my prize. His dark hair was unkempt, flattened in areas, puffed out in others. It reminded me of the bumpy road we were standing on. He wore a navy track jacket and black jeans that hung off him, puddling at his ankles, though it looked more like weight loss than a fashion statement. He was fairly clean-cut. Most of the athletes in school were. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, distracting from his otherwise flawless face.

I don’t think I’d ever spent so much time looking at someone—trying to figure them out. But I quickly knew that if this was going to work, I’d need to know everything about him. So I took out my tape measure and notebook—I still had them in my bag—and I started measuring things and writing things. I took notes from all angles and wrote my equations down on paper. He wouldn’t be able to resist asking questions.

I felt his eyes on me, trying to understand what I was doing out here.

“What are you doing?” he finally asked.

“Investigating,” I said, pretending to be preoccupied.

“The accident?” he asked.

I nodded, still messing with my tape measure.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think it was an accident.”

Boom!

“First of all, the skid marks on the road don’t seem to match the police report,” I began. “It looks like my sister swerved up there.” I pointed. “Not down here at the point of impact.”

I continued reading off my mental script, the same story I’d given Travis
.
I was so focused on my delivery that I missed the cues. The signal that he was going to vomit.

So he was a little weak, then.

Good to know. Good to know.

Johnny had turned to the side and heaved up his lunch. He looked apologetic, like it was his fault his body betrayed him.

I handed him a tissue from my bag. Waiting just a minute or two to let him recover, I jumped back to the task at hand. I had him on the edge and it was time to lure him in.

“What? It hasn’t crossed your mind?” I asked.

He shrugged.

Hmm. Doesn’t question things.

“Don’t you think the circumstances surrounding the accident are odd?” I asked.

“What do you mean by odd?”

Needs things spelled out.

“Suspect?” I offered.

“What are you saying?” he asked, his jaw tightening with each word.

“I’m saying it wasn’t an accident, as I mentioned when you first started grilling me,” I said, and I went back to my note-taking.

Then he started pushing me with more questions. He wanted details. That was a promising sign.

In the weeks ahead, I kept Johnny on a need-to-know basis. Giving him bits and pieces of information that kept his suspicions up, kept him hungry for more. We spent the rest of the time sitting on the side of the road, talking. I learned that’s what he responded to most of all—our conversations. He craved it.

To keep moving forward, I needed ammunition. I needed to know how to get a boy to do my bidding, so I went into Brit’s arsenal. She always had them eating from her tiny hand.

I used it all. From the overplayed hard-to-get, to unwavering attention, Johnny ate it up. Occasionally I’d throw him a bone with a touch, a smile, or a flash of the eyes that hinted toward something wicked.

It worked.

The Elements of a Crime:
#2 Conduct

Conduct
(actus reus)
refers to the objective element of a crime.
Actus reus
is the Latin term for “guilty act.” When a
guilty act
and
guilty mind
are proven together, beyond a reasonable doubt, it equates to criminal liability. So for
actus reus
to occur, there has to have been a criminal act—a bodily movement, voluntary or involuntary.

So, you ask, was there a bodily movement—a guilty act—for me?

Yeah, you could say there was definitely one of those.

There were a few of them, actually.

And when those acts were done, I watched someone die.

One minute, I had someone’s life in my hands. The next, I stood by as it slipped away.

22

J
OHNNY

I
carry Ethan down the hill to our designated place. His breathing is deep, his body completely pliant, draped over my shoulder. Becca shines the light on the path. Actually, it’s not really a path. We’ve been down here several times before to get the room ready, but we always park in a different place and walk there using a new route.