Promises I Made (2 page)

I took a cab into downtown Bellevue, then hopped a bus to the Amtrak station on King Street. Taking a bus to Los Angeles would have been faster by a few hours, but the truth is, I needed the extra time. I had only the vaguest of ideas about what to do after I got back to LA. I needed every hour to come up with a plan.

The train didn't leave until 9:35 the next morning, so I got a room in a crappy motel near the station, then walked to a market to stock up on snacks and bottled water for the trip. I'd read online that the train had a dining car and a lounge, both of which offered food, but I wanted to minimize my exposure. I wasn't worried about Cormac coming after me; he wouldn't risk hunting me down for such a measly amount of money. But the Fairchild con had been big news in Southern California. Our pictures—old and new—had
been plastered all over the newspapers. I had spent hours poring over the articles in the motel room we'd lived in while Cormac was scamming for a new mark. And while I didn't think I looked like Grace Fontaine anymore—like the person who'd been best friends with Selena Rodriguez, who'd fallen in love with Logan Fairchild—I wasn't sure enough to bet my freedom on it. Not until I'd helped Parker.

I stuffed my purchases into my backpack and then stopped at a diner, where I bought two grilled-cheese sandwiches and fries to go. It was weird to be out in public after months of being cooped up in Miranda's house or walking the waterfront alone. Now everything seemed a little too bright, a little too loud. I had to push away the feeling that everyone was looking at me, that they all knew what I'd done to Logan and his family. That the police would show up any minute and take me away before I had time to go back for Parker. I was relieved to get back to my room, even with the dim lighting and the slight smell of mildew and dust.

I used a proxy server to search online for recent news about Parker while I ate my dinner. A VPN would have been better—some of them didn't keep logs—but I needed a credit card to access them. I made a mental note to pick up a prepaid card somewhere along the way.

Nothing new had developed in Parker's case since the last time I'd combed the internet for information about him. He was being held in Los Angeles County Jail. The judge had cited flight risk as a reason to refuse bail, and Parker had been assigned a public defender named Robin Mannheim
and charged with three counts of felony fraud and one count of grand theft. I knew that the guard from Allied Security had died following a gunshot to his chest. The prosecutor had tried to pin it on Parker but couldn't for lack of evidence, which made perfect sense given the blood on Cormac's shirt the night we stole Warren's gold. Cormac hadn't admitted it, but I knew he'd been the one to shoot the guard. Parker was already on the run by then. Still, the state expected more charges against him pending their investigation. None of it was a surprise, but I had to fight against despair as I closed my computer. How was I supposed to help Parker? I couldn't even visit him in jail without being taken into custody, and then we'd both be screwed. Because one thing I now knew for sure: Cormac and Renee weren't going to lift a finger to help either of us.

I spent a fitful night drifting in the ether between wakefulness and sleep. A sliver of light from the walkway outside sneaked in between the polyester curtains, and I could hear people talking as they passed by my room. At one point, two people stopped outside the door, throwing shadows under it, and I sat up in bed in a panic, listening as they engaged in murmured conversation. When they didn't move on, I jumped out of bed, stuffing my feet into my shoes and grabbing my backpack and laptop, wondering how long it would be before whoever it was broke down the door and came in after me. I felt stupid when their voices faded away a few minutes later, but I wasn't able to go back to sleep afterward. I turned on the TV instead and watched
reruns of
Full House
while the hours ticked by.

I left the room just after nine a.m. and headed to the train station. I held my breath as I slid my driver's license under the ticket window, glad the birth date on Julie Montrose's ID made me eighteen on the Washington State driver's license. A moment later, the gray-haired ticket attendant passed back my change along with my ticket to LA.

I avoided eye contact with the other passengers as I followed the signs to my platform, but I kept my head up. If you act guilty of something, people will remember you, think you
are
guilty of something. Another lesson from Cormac and Renee. I tried to maintain an expression of boredom as I climbed onto the train and looked for a seat, surprised to find that they all swiveled to face the windows. It wasn't nearly as private as I'd expected, and I chose a seat at the end of an empty row, hoping it would stay that way. Then I put in my headphones as a deterrent against conversation.

I kept my eyes on the concrete platform, half expecting someone official-looking to come running for the train at the last minute, holding a flyer with my face plastered all over it. The thought made my heart beat too fast and my skin prickle with nervousness. I'd never been afraid when traveling with Cormac and Renee, even as we changed names and hair colors, addresses and IDs. Somehow they always made me feel like we had every right to be wherever we were. Now I didn't know if it had been a gift or a curse. The safety had been nice, but they had been wrong. We were thieves and liars. We didn't have any rights at all.

I watched a bearded guy on the platform clasp an older man's hand, then draw him into an embrace. A moment later he bent to a slight woman with shining eyes and enveloped her in his arms. When they parted, he grabbed an overstuffed backpack and gave the couple a final wave before disappearing into one of the cars at the front of the train. I watched the couple walk away, arms around each other's waists.

A crackly voice came over the loudspeaker welcoming us aboard the train from Seattle to Los Angeles. I scanned the aisle while I listened to the emergency instructions and was relieved when no one took the seat next to me. I wasn't up to polite conversation, and I didn't want to spend the next thirty-five hours wondering if the person next to me would have a sudden epiphany and recognize my face.

The loudspeaker grew silent, and a few minutes later the train shifted and began to move.

The rocking motion was unsettling at first. The train was moving forward, but it also swayed slightly under my body. I had the odd sensation of being on a boat and in a car at the same time. Then we broke free of the station, and everything smoothed out as we picked up speed.

We moved through the city and past Tacoma, the waters of the Puget Sound glimmering dark under the rising sun. It made me think of Playa Hermosa, of the Cove and the feel of Logan's hand in mine, the way Selena smiled when she made some wry observation, like it was a secret just between us. I was homesick for all of it, which didn't make any sense.
We'd only lived there for three months. How was it possible that it felt like home?

I grew drowsy, the rhythmic sway of the train lulling me into a pleasant fog, and I finally fell asleep with my backpack in my lap, the morning sun warming my body through the big east-facing windows. Every time the train stopped to let passengers on or off, I jerked awake, fear winding sharp and fast through my body. Had Cormac sent someone to find me after all? Had the police somehow subverted my use of a proxy on the internet? I had no idea what kind of resources were used to catch a criminal like me, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was on borrowed time, that my freedom would be short-lived outside of Cormac's protection.

By the time we reached Portland, Oregon, I'd settled into a routine: waking up when we stopped, keeping my stuff close in case I had to run, eating something from my stash, dozing off when we were safely in motion. I took everything with me when I had to use the restroom and made a point of finding a new place to sit when I was done. People came and went in the seats next to me. Old people, young people. Men, women, and once a small girl traveling with her mother, clutching a coloring book and a plastic bag full of crayons. I gave each of them a polite smile and turned back to the book in my hands, rereading the same ten pages across eleven hundred miles. Time was my enemy. There were endless amounts of it, hour upon hour when there was nothing to do but think of Logan. I still felt a hitch in my breath at the thought of him, still felt the hollow place throb in my
chest when I remembered his arms around me. I noticed his absence constantly, like those people you hear about who lose a limb but still feel it ache when it rains. I tried to focus instead on coming up with a plan to rescue Parker, but my mind drew a blank. I never got past the point where I arrived in LA with no place to sleep and no one to call for help.

We pulled into Union Station just after one a.m., a little over twenty-four hours after we'd left Seattle. My body was stiff and a little sore as I grabbed my stuff and disembarked the train, and my footsteps echoed across the cavernous rooms as I made my way through the old building. The stained-glass windows were dark overhead, the ceiling rising so high that I almost couldn't see it beyond the shadows. The station was nearly deserted, but I stayed alert anyway, my gaze skimming over the few people who sat on benches or leaned against the wall. Now was not the time to be sloppy.

I stepped out into a cool California night. It was mid-May, and the heat of summer hadn't yet settled into the concrete. I felt a pang of fear when I realized there were no cabs outside the station, no buses, no people. Just a big empty parking lot sporadically lit with streetlamps and a neighborhood that looked like it had seen better days.

I walked to the sidewalk and headed for the corner, looking around for a hotel. I hadn't gone a block when I passed a group of men leaning in the shadows of a crumbling brick building. They called softly to me as I passed.

“Hey, pretty mama . . .”

“All alone?”

“Oye, muchacha bonita.”

I was suddenly aware of how alone I was, how vulnerable. No one in the world knew where I was. No one cared. I'd left my cell phone in Bellevue in case Cormac tried to track me with it. I could disappear off the face of the earth and no one would even notice.

I turned and headed back for the station, remembering a bank of pay phones near the exit. I couldn't afford to get mugged in some back alley. Who would help Parker then?

I located the phones and was reading the directions to dial information (who knew you could dial 411 for information? Would it be the kind of information that would find me a cab? A motel?) when I noticed a sticker advertising a taxi service. It was half peeled off, but I could still make out the number. I dug in my pocket for some change and dialed.

The dispatcher said it would be twenty minutes, so I waited inside the station, watching out the window until fifteen minutes had passed. Then I ventured outside, careful to stay under one of the streetlights near the parking lot. A couple of minutes later a yellow taxi came to a stop at the curb.

I slid into the backseat, tugging my backpack in after me. The driver was a middle-aged woman, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She held one hand near the cracked window, a swirl of smoke rising from a cigarette in her long fingers.

“Where we headed, honey?” she asked.

“Torrance.” I said it almost without thinking, but then I realized it was the perfect place. Only fifteen minutes
from Playa Hermosa, Torrance was clean and suburban, big enough to get lost in but not too big for comfort. I didn't know what I'd do once I got there, but it was close enough to Playa Hermosa that I could move quickly once I figured it out.

“You got it,” the driver said, pulling out of the parking lot. “I'm Meg. You just get into town?”

“Yep.” It was best to say as little as possible when you were on the run. It was too easy to babble when you were scared or nervous, too easy to let something slip. Even something small could be your ruin on the grift.

“Where you from?” She met my gaze in the rearview mirror, and I tried to see myself through her eyes: a tough girl with eyes that told too many sad stories.

“Chicago,” I said.

“Got family out here?” I sensed a little desperation in her voice as she realized small talk wasn't exactly my forte.

I shook my head. “I'm meeting up with friends. We're going to Mexico.” The lie came easily.

“Ah, Mexico.” I heard the smile in her voice. “What I wouldn't give to be young and in Mexico again.”

I smiled politely and put in my earbuds, then turned my face to the window. My survival depended on making as few connections as possible now that I was close to the scene of our crime. And so did Parker's.

We wound our way through the city and got onto one of LA's freeways. It was nearly two, and the roads were strangely deserted, the streetlamps casting yellow orbs onto the
pavement. The lights on the skyscrapers downtown faded away in favor of concrete that seemed to stretch in every direction, crammed tightly with houses and asphalt, minimalls, and fast-food restaurants, a few palm trees dotting the streets like candles on an otherwise bland birthday cake. It was hard to believe that Playa Hermosa was less than an hour away. That the tropical refuge filled with wild parrots and peacocks, the sea crashing against the cliff at the base of the peninsula, could exist hand in hand with the concrete jungle that was Los Angeles and its surrounding suburbs.

The taxi driver put on her blinker and looked at me in the rearview mirror as she prepared to exit the freeway. “So where exactly am I dropping you?”

I hesitated for a split second. “I think I'm the first one here. If you could get me to a cheap hotel in the area, I'll text my friends and let them know where I am.”

She nodded. “You looking for something by the mall? Or closer to the beach?”

I had a flash of the Cove in Playa Hermosa, the water rushing up the sand, the rise and fall of it, the softest of sighs.