Promises I Made (4 page)

I took a bus to the Galleria later that afternoon. There was another mall that was closer, but I wanted to get as far away as possible from the hotel. I knew the cops couldn't track the disposable phone to me through an account, but I didn't know if they could track its location. I was covering my bases, just in case.

When I got to the mall, I took the elevator to the roof of the parking garage to make sure I had a solid signal. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the piece of paper where I'd written the phone number. Then I dialed.

“Good afternoon. You have reached the Playa Hermosa Police Department.” A recorded voice filled my ear. “If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial nine-one-one. Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed. If you know your party's extension, you may dial it at any time.
If you know the name of your party, please press one now.”

I took the phone away from my ear and pressed the 1 key.

I followed the directions to enter the first three letters of Raul Castillo's last name. A moment later I heard a soft click, followed by a tinny electronic voice:

“Raul Castillo, extension four-twenty-three.”

I made a mental note of the extension number as the phone started to ring. A few seconds later, a purposeful male voice spoke.

“You have reached voice mail for Raul Castillo, detective with the Playa Hermosa Police Department. Please leave your name and number, and I'll return your call.”

I was frozen by the beep. Seconds ticked by in silence before I finally spoke, afraid the voice mail would disconnect without some kind of noise indicating I was still on the line.

“Uh . . . this is . . . this is Grace Fontaine. I want to talk about Parker. Parker Fontaine.” I hesitated, then finished in a rush, worried about staying on the line too long. “I'll call you back.”

I disconnected the call, my heart bumping against my chest like a wild bird in a cage. I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself down enough to figure out what was next. I had been stupid to think Detective Castillo would pick up on my first try. Everyone had voice mail, and cops probably weren't at their desks a whole lot, especially cops investigating a high-profile crime like the Fairchild theft.

It was after four in the afternoon, but detectives
sometimes worked late, didn't they? And maybe it would be better to catch Raul Castillo when most of the people in his office were gone. Would he wait for my call when he got my message? Would he even get it tonight?

I finally headed into the mall. I wasn't anxious to go back to the four walls of my hotel room, the taupe paint and bad art a reminder that it was temporary shelter, that I'd have to find another place to stay soon.

I wandered around for an hour, looking in the windows of the stores Selena and I had visited together, remembering how it had felt to have a friend, to laugh about clothes and guys and forget myself for just a little while. At the time, it had felt unexplainably like a beginning. Like the mistakes of my past had been wiped clean and I was finally getting a chance to start over. That's what people say when you're young, isn't it? That it's okay to make mistakes, that you can afford to make them because there's always time to set things right?

I knew now that it was a romantic notion, one that was only true for certain kinds of people. People who had a storehouse of opportunity like a cat that has nine lives. People who hadn't made mistakes that were so big, there was no coming back from them.

When I'd circled the mall twice, I stopped at the food court and got a plate of greasy Chinese food. I ate it at a table on the edge of the crowd, watching people come and go. When I was finished, I dumped my trash, careful not to look at anyone too long or too hard.

It was almost six thirty when I headed back to the parking garage. I took the stairs to the top again and pulled out my phone. I'd give Raul Castillo one more try tonight. If he didn't answer, I'd go back to the hotel and try again tomorrow.

I dialed the number for the Playa Hermosa Police Department, but this time I entered Raul Castillo's extension number. I was preparing to leave another message when a voice filled my ear.

“Raul Castillo.”

There was expectation in it, and I knew he'd been waiting for me.

“It's Grace Fontaine.”

He exhaled. “Grace, I'm so glad you called back. Where are you?”

“I'm not ready to tell you that yet,” I said. “I want to talk about Parker.”

“Okay, let's talk.”

“I want . . .” I stumbled a little. I wanted Parker to be free, to be let go, but I wasn't naive enough to believe just asking for it would make it happen. “What happened wasn't his fault. I want to help him.”

“That's a tough one, Grace.” I thought I heard genuine kindness in his voice, although it could have been an act. He was a detective. They were probably trained to get people to turn themselves in or give themselves away. “Crimes have been committed. Someone has died. Parker is the only one here to take the fall.”

I glanced at my phone, wanting to keep track of how long I was on the line so I could disconnect the call before too much time had passed. It had been forty-five seconds.

“That's not his fault. He's just a kid like me.”

“Not a kid.” I could almost hear Detective Castillo shaking his head. “Parker's eighteen. Even you're not considered a kid by the justice system. Not if you're seventeen or older.”

My stomach clutched a little at his words. I'd celebrated my seventeenth birthday in Bellevue, with a gourmet strawberry cake from Miranda's favorite bakery and a Tiffany bracelet, probably bought with Miranda's money, from her and Cormac. Miranda had thought I was turning eighteen.

“We were forced to do what we did. We had no choice.” Saying the words out loud for the first time did something to me. Made my voice crack, my throat fill with thick and tangled tears.

“I have no doubt that's true, Grace. Why don't you come in so we can talk about it?” He hesitated, and when he spoke again, his voice was gentle. “Are you all alone?”

I looked at the phone. One minute and thirty-two seconds. I thought I remembered Cormac saying that it took the police two minutes to trace a call, but I couldn't be sure.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Listen to me, Grace.” His voice was a rush of wind into the phone. Then he spoke lower, softer. “I can help you, but things are getting complicated here. There's not much time.”

One minute forty-one seconds.

“I have to go.”

“Meet me somewhere,” he said hurriedly, trying to get the words in before I hung up. “Anywhere. Just you and me. We'll figure out a way to help Parker.”

One minute forty-eight seconds.

“I'll call you back.”

I hung up, my chest rising and falling, breath coming fast and hard, like I'd been running.

I spent the night eating takeout in my underwear while my clothes, washed in the bathtub, dried on hangers around the room. I stared at the TV while I ate, letting the images flash in front of my eyes as I replayed Detective Castillo's words. He'd sounded sincere, like he really cared and wanted to help.

Are you all alone?

I was. More alone than I'd ever been, and that was saying something.

I finally turned off the TV and fell into a dream-filled sleep.

Logan floated in the ocean next to me, our bodies rising and falling with the swell of the tide. We held hands, our entwined fingers buoyant on the briny water. I felt his hand slip from mine, but when I looked over at him, his face morphed into Parker's. He sank slowly below the surface, still
on his back, the pale flash of his skin growing dimmer as I reached for him. I ducked under the water and opened my eyes, but instead of Parker, I saw a flash of gold underneath me: the gold bars we'd stolen from Warren Fairchild, stacked on the sandy ocean floor. I looked frantically around, but Parker was nowhere to be found. I was starting to swim for the surface, my breath swelling in my lungs, clamoring for release, when something grabbed me. I looked down, a cry of protest arising in a stream of bubbles from my mouth as I saw a dark-haired woman, her face gray and bloated, her fingers wrapped tightly around my arm.

It was after ten o'clock in the morning when I woke up sweating, clutching my throat and gasping for air like I'd been holding my breath. I took a shower and brushed my teeth, still shaken from the nightmare. After I got dressed, I opened the curtains. I was hoping the California sun would banish the residual dread in my veins, but I was greeted with a bank of gunmetal clouds that almost completely blotted out the light. Rain beaded the window, the ocean lost to fog in the distance. I wondered if Logan and the others had been surfing. He always said some of the best swells came in just before a storm.

The thought brought forward a flash of memory: Logan emerging from the water with his surfboard as the sun hung over the horizon. I was sitting on a blanket, trying to focus on my book when all I really wanted to do was look at him. He'd shaken his wet hair over me, causing me to shriek in protest, and he'd laughed as he peeled off his wet suit. After that, we'd huddled under a blanket, kissing and touching and talking,
until the sun went down on the deserted beach. His skin had been cold and smooth. He'd smelled like the sea.

I took a shower and spent an hour in front of the mirror using makeup to sculpt a different face. I made my eyes look smaller by rimming them with black liner all the way around, then swept dark blush into the hollows of my cheekbones to make my face appear even gaunter than it already was. Subtle shading along either side of my nose made it look longer and more narrow, and nude gloss took the attention off my lips. By the time I was finished, I didn't look at all like Grace Fontaine. I didn't look like Julie Montrose either. I stared at the stranger in the mirror and felt completely unattached to the reflection.

I paid for another day at the hotel on my way out. If I didn't find a solution soon, I'd have to move. Budget hotels were havens for transients: businesspeople, travelers on their way someplace else, families stopping for the night during a road trip. I'd already been there four days. I was going to draw attention to myself if I didn't move soon.

I stopped at Denny's for breakfast, then walked to the corner of Hawthorne and Pacific Coast Highway and caught the bus. My pulse quickened as we made our way up the winding hills of the peninsula, the bus's engine straining against the incline. The light was already dim and gray, but once we hit Cove Road, it grew even darker, the thick net of foliage overhead blocking out what little light made it through the clouds.

I remembered the first time I'd seen Playa Hermosa, the
way it had felt like a tropical jungle, like I was leaving reality behind for someplace warm and magical, removed from all of life's ugly realities. Maybe it was just the weather, but this time felt different, like I was swimming into an underwater cave, hoping for an exit on the other side but knowing deep down I would be met with a wall of rock.

The bus slowly emptied out as we climbed the winding roads. By the time we stopped at the Town Center, the bus's last stop before heading back to Torrance, I was the only one left. I wasn't surprised. Who took the bus to Playa Hermosa? The people who lived here had multiple vehicles in their driveways, usually expensive European sports cars, luxury sedans, and high-end SUVs, plenty to go around for the parents and their kids, gifted with brand-new models on their sixteenth birthdays.

I got off the bus and immediately started walking, making a point to avoid Mike's. Other than the Cove, it was the most likely spot for Logan and the others to hang out. School didn't let out for an hour, but it was the end of senior year for most of them, and I couldn't be sure they were all on a normal schedule. I imagined them there, clustered around the big red booth in the back, laughing and eating cheese fries. Rachel would be playing tic-tac-toe on the back of a menu with Harper while Liam entertained everyone with his latest exploits in the water. Would Logan be there, too? Or did his carefree days with the group end the night we took his father's gold?

I pushed the thought away. I couldn't do anything about
that. I was here for Parker. He was the one I could still help, the one who was counting on me. I didn't know if I could live with the damage I'd done to Logan and his family, but for now I would live for Parker. I would put one foot in front of the other to right the only wrong I had any control over. I would have to figure out what I could and couldn't live with later, after Parker was free.

I turned off the main road as soon as I could. Playa Hermosa's residential neighborhoods were connected to the rest of the South Bay by one main artery, and I didn't want to be seen by anyone who might be driving by. I knew I looked different on the outside, but it was hard to believe my crime wasn't emblazoned on my face, visible to everyone.

Above the Town Center, Playa Hermosa was nothing but a series of twisty, steeply inclined roads. My legs burned as I climbed, and I was suddenly grateful for the cloud cover that kept the sun from burning too hot on my head. I felt the tug of melancholy as I walked, the breeze salty and familiar, the smell of wild jasmine permeating the air. Bougainvillea climbed across stone walls and trellises, over fences and up the sides of houses. Somewhere in the trees I heard the caw of the wild parrots that made their home here. It made me think of the man who had lived next door on Camino Jardin, the old music he liked to hum, his voice calling out to the birds in the trees.

I wondered how the peacocks were faring, if the residents of Playa Hermosa had won their battle to have them removed because of the noise and their penchant for standing in the
middle of the road. I thought with a pang of sadness of the one Cormac had run over after the Fairchild con. Another casualty of all our lies.

It took me twenty minutes to reach Selena's neighborhood and another fifteen to find a good place to hide. The street was fronted by houses on both sides, the road clear except for an empty blue Range Rover at the curb. Not exactly overflowing with possibilities. I finally tucked myself into the nook created by a small arbor in front of the house across the street from Selena's. It didn't have a garage—a lot of the older houses in Playa Hermosa didn't—and there were no cars in the driveway. I guessed it was empty, and I felt relatively certain the bougainvillea growing up the sides of the arbor would conceal me from a casual observer.

I'd been there about a half hour when a fine mist started to fall from the sky. I pulled the hood up on my jacket and tucked myself farther back into the arbor, keeping my eyes on the small stucco house that belonged to Selena and the father who'd raised her. I flashed back to my dream, to the woman underwater. I had somehow known she was Selena's mother even though she'd been long gone by the time we came to Playa Hermosa. I was contemplating the subconscious meaning of her appearance in my nightmare when I saw a flash of red on the sidewalk across the street.

I squinted, trying to focus through the water netting the air. A lone figure walked down the sidewalk. The person was almost completely obscured by a red raincoat, but I would have known it was Selena even without the strand
of curly dark hair that escaped from the hood. It was something in the way she walked, body leaning forward like she always had somewhere important to be, gaze focused like she was so far inside her own head that she wasn't aware of the world around her. Until she looked at you. Then there was never any doubt that she was really there.

I watched her hurry toward the walkway leading to the house across the street. She was alone, and I wondered what had happened to Nina, the girl who'd walked home with Selena before I'd pulled her into Logan's crowd. Selena hadn't had a lot of friends, but the ones she had were consistent, people she could eat lunch with every day or walk home from school with. Had they turned on her because of her association with me? I could hardly stand to think about it.

I took a step forward as she turned onto the landscaped path leading to her house. I needed to talk to her. We'd been friends first, before I'd been accepted into Logan's group. I don't know why that made me think she might give me a chance to make things right. Maybe because it was the only hope I had.

But I couldn't make my feet move, and I stood helplessly by as she stepped onto the stone porch. She put a hand into her bag, then reached for the door. It swung open, and a minute later she disappeared behind it, as lost to me as I'd been to her when we left Playa Hermosa the night everything had gone so wrong.